Upside down and sideways, twirling and stepping to a rhythm made by the live band to match your beat. Dancers are in control and free to swing as they wish. They make up the moves with their partner as they go along. There is only one dance that allows students to feel so thrilled and alive; it’s called swing dancing and the Cowboy Country Swing Club shows people how to kick their boots every Thursday night in the Union Ballroom. They end up moving like Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer from Footloose when they were swing dancing their hearts out.
Instructors like Brice Nichols and Kylie Lambry demonstrate the basic moves to get people started; the first level of swing dancing. This consists of the “basic step”, the “basic spin”, the “basic dip”, as well as the “backstabber” and the “belt loop”, which are a little more complicated but easy to accomplish.
Then the intermediate moves get to be a little more complicated, and finally the most advanced participants start to learn the lifts. It only goes up from there. Brice’s favorite lift is called the “figure four” where the gentleman swings his lady and lifts her up so that her left leg wraps around his neck and is locked in by her right leg. Then all hands break loose as the gentleman spins his lady with only her legs holding them together. It took Brice and his wife about an hour to accomplish this.
“If you mess up there are severe consequences, but if you get them right they look really nice,” said Brice when asked about lifts.
The Cowboy Country Swing Club even took swing dancing to Australia. Kylie Lambry has been an instructor for two years now. She learned how to swing dance in high school with her one-legged P.E teacher and has enjoyed it ever since. Kylie has even perfected the Dirty Dancing move; this was the first move she learned as a swing dancer. Kylie recently went to Australia to study Zoology abroad. While she was overseas there was a country dance night at the Australian college she was attending. There Kylie, and another Wyoming student studying with her, showed off her swing dancing amazing the natives.
“There were kangaroos in the background that were looking at us and everybody wanted us to teach them,” said Kylie. “We became known as the country kids.”
There is a world record of the largest swing dance still held by the Cowboy Country Swing Club. It consisted of about a thousand individuals staying in sync with each other while doing some basic swing dancing moves. A northern school tried a few years ago to beat this world record, but has had no luck so far. Swing dancing is a competitive and thrilling experience to have while at the University of Wyoming.
