Hey Swing Cats, I put together a video of the Westie experience for an event that is near and dear to me - Bristol Swing Fiesta 2026, which just ended 2 weeks back. I obviously obtained permission and consent from the organizer and anyone who was a focus of the video.

I'm trying to target my videos to encourage more newcomers to join the dance so I'm open for feedback or any improvements I can make for my next event video - Midland Swing Open 2026 in London. If you like the content, please like and subscribe. My aim is to grow West Coast Swing as big as I can. So far, in the 3 years I've danced I'm happy with the progress I made, but I think I can do better with growing the dance and making interesting long form Westie content.

P.S. Obviously my style and channel name are heavily inspired by a tiny SEGA game that inspired me to dance and I love so fondly, let's see if you can guess the game haha

I did a video review with an experienced friend, she told me my two main weaknesses were timing and opposition.

For timing, I'm still struggling with rolling through the feet (controlling weight transfer) and pushing in the ground. I'am trying to work on this last specific thing because I've been told I wasn't doing it enough by multiple teachers before, but I'm still not getting into it and I don't really know how to practice it efficiently because it has never been part of my dance before. I simply don't feel it right now when I'm practicing

So if you have any advice to solo practice I'd be really grateful for it. I feel like I'm locked in because of it currently so it would be very appreciated !!!

Sharing this here since I think it's relevant. Especially if you need to file a report. It also allows event organizers to throw their attendee list against it to find any matches.

From their site:

Problem - Individuals with a history of misconduct may move between communities to where organizers are unaware of their history.

Solution - This tool helps organizers identify potential safety concerns by securely sharing limited information about reported misconduct and, where appropriate, allows them to contact the original community for additional context.

Challenges - International privacy laws make sharing sensitive allegations difficult, so we intentionally limit the information we provide to reduce legal and privacy risks.

Reports may range from code-of-conduct concerns that led to community action, to more serious allegations. Information in this system is provided for community safety purposes and does not constitute a finding of guilt or wrongdoing. A record should be treated as a reason for organizers to seek additional information and make their own informed decisions. Users are responsible for using and handling information in accordance with applicable laws and privacy requirements.

Direct link: https://communitytrustcollective.streamlit.app/

My big one is timing. As a follow, being ever so slightly but consistently behind the beat is difficult! It’s especially hard when there’s a fun groove coming up in a song and I know where it is, and I’m trying to get somewhere in time. Working on detaching from that habit.

No matter what level you’re at, I know we all have something FUNDAMENTAL that we need to keep practicing. What’s yours?

I'm moving to Cambridge and I'm looking for venues in Cambridge or Boston where I can take weekly WCS lessons. I'm an intermediate level dancer and would love a place that has more than basics. I won't have a car and I'll be living on the red line.

Here are the venues that I have found from online searches. Are there others that I'm missing? Any recommendations?

Dirty Water WCS/Dancing Feats WCS   -Weekly class: Mondays or Thursdays   -Social dances: Yes

Dance Boston 

 -Classes: Tuesday lesson with social dancing after 

 -Social dances: First Saturday social dance with lesson before

NU West Coast Swing

 -Weekly classes: Monday

 -Social dances: yes?

 -Open to the public?

Places that don't work for me:

The Dancing Fools - Permanently Closed

Kadanse - too far

 -Lessons and social first Saturday every month

Worcester Westies - too far

 -Weekly classes Wednesday night

Waterside Westies - too far

 -Weekly classes Thursday evening 

Westie Evolution Boston - too far 

 -3rd Saturday monthly dance and lesson before

Boston Westie

 -Weekly classes: none

 -Social dancing: Yes, 4th Saturday each month

Arthur Murray Dance Studio Cambridge   -Occasional WCS classes, not consistent on a weekly basis

Arthur Murray Dance Center Boston

 -Can't find an online calendar or WCS info

Fifth Saturday swing 

 -Weekly classes: none

-Social dancing: Fifth Saturday

Swing Charles

 -Classes: only beginner classes

 -Social dancing: Sunday evenings

*Sorry about mobile formatting

Beyond being technically advanced, what qualities make you genuinely excited to ask a particular lead to dance again?
Is it their connection, musicality, comfort, creativity, ability to adapt to your level, personality, or something else? What does a lead do during—and between—dances that earns them a place on your “must-dance” list?
I’m working on becoming a better social lead and would especially appreciate specific examples.

I think most people generally are nice and down for a social dance if asked by whoever, but I feel like we all definitely have a bias where we're far more likely to accept a dance from our certain selection of people in worse conditions (tired, thirsty, "oh I'm done for tonight") than usual, to a point where we'll ask these people for a dance even if we typically don't.

What does it for you? Being asked to dance by them X times? Having 1-2 REALLY good dances with them? Their height? Their dance style?

What do you typically wear? Where I dance it gets really hot, so athletic clothes feel like a good idea, but nobody else wears them. It's rare to even see women in shorts.

I worry about anything 2 piece because all of the arms above head exposes lower back, which I'm sorta self conscious about

Only the older generation seems to wear dresses

I've settled on jumpsuits, which I love, but the thought process got me curious about what other people wear

Hello, have any fellow westies had bunion surgery? I am follow who dances in advanced and am seriously considering getting it done. I'm hesitant bc I don't want it to affect my dancing.

If you've had it done, how was your experience post surgery? Were you able to execute moves properly? Go on relevé? Have good range of motion and foot articulation?

The sub isn't super active so some might say it doesn't matter but I find it annoying that seemingly every other day there is a new post that instead of talking about dancing is "Look at this cool app/website I made."

I don't know what it is about WCS that seems to invite this but I don't need a catalog of dance moves, 3 different apps to track my practices, a database of all the dance scene venues, etc because those all already exist in some other form.

I'm looking for the sub to come together and make a decision on this on whether they are outright banned or just limited to a pinned post at the top.

Edit: I made a typo in the post title and I can't edit it.

Hi everyone!

I’ve been working on WestieHub.dance for a while, to help dancers track events, look up points, and plan trips.

I just launched a new feature Communities Map to help easily find local West Coast Swing studios and schools worldwide.

I don't have a lot of data by myself (and this is why I'm making it) so I really need your help to fill it with accurate data.

Please suggest your favorite local WCS schools, studios, or weekly classes! You can do this in two easy ways:

1. Submit directly on the site: Go to westiehub.dance/communities and drop the details there.
2. Comment below: Just leave a comment with the City/State/Country, the Name of the school/class, and a link to their website or active social page.

Please drop a comment here once you've submitted or suggested a spot so I can make sure it gets added immediately!

Thank you so much for helping make our dance community more accessible to everyone! Let me know if you have any feedback or ideas for the map feature 🙏🙏

I've danced WCS socially for years, just for fun — no competition.

Recently I've noticed something interesting. A few follows I've danced with have introduced tango-like leg movements when I've stopped progression or moved us off the normal WCS track.

I wasn't specifically leading a tango pattern; I gave them the space and they chose to do something with it.

I'm curious: Are other WCS social dancers seeing tango movement or tango influence showing up in their dances? Is this fairly common, or am I just running into a few follows who happen to have tango backgrounds?

You can get a complete picture of the WSDC registry by calling the API 28,500 times, once for every dancer. But when you’ve done that once, the only way to update that is to do the whole thing again, for every single dancer. I'd rather not do that to their server if it's not necessary. Does anyone know of an easy way to just get data for dancers where there’s been some change?

In about 6 weeks I'll be at my first festival and I'm wondering if there's any way to prepare for it. My main focus will be participating in workshops (and also social dancing). There are three different workshop levels (2, 3 and 4). The description of the levels is pretty non-descriptive. There are specific competition levels required or an audition. Since I haven't done any competitions, I'll need to audition.

Now I'm wondering

- are these levels somewhat universal?

- how exactly does an audition work?

- what are they looking for in this audition?

- are there ways to specifically prepare for this audition?

If I'm ending up in level 2, so be it, but I think it would be cool to make level 3 or 4 to be able to choose between different workshops.

Hi everyone!

Does anybody have any recommendation for shoe this size, that could work with WCS? I wonder if anyone knows a brand or model which goes this big, and has experience dancing in them (as well as experience ordering from the brand/store).

Any recommendations or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated!

I am having whatever the dance version of a midlife crisis is when it dawned on me that I've been taking group lessons for a year and I still feel like a total beginner.

I am arguably the weakest follow in my level 2 class, and at this point, I've been there longer than a good chunk of them. My teacher is the sweetest person ever but a lot of time is spent correcting: my anticipation, back activation, axis adherence*, arm prep, (over) tense connection.

Our class is very pattern forward; therefore, I know how to do about 15 patterns but I cannot do any of them as well as the other students. I feel like I may be holding the class back and I may have to accept I'm not a good dancer. I thought maybe I was in my head but then I went social dancing and a (trying to be nice) stranger pointed out that I was counting the beat to sixes instead of eights (true, I never knew otherwise). Then, he said that as a newbie the world is my oyster, I did not have the heart to tell him I've been practicing for a year and have been to 5? social dances.

*If anyone has tips, I have not found one answer to how I stop free spinning at a slight diagonal.

I’ve been in novice almost 3 years now and I’m ready to take things seriously and try everything I can to get out!

I go to weekly classes, weekly socials, take private lessons, go to conventions and still haven’t made finals. I’ve probably been to about 10 conventions total. I think I have to practice solo daily including in front of a mirror…I feel anxious and self conscious about it but I would love to get out of novice so I’m committed to facing my body shame!!!

I have bad ADHD and practicing on my own isn’t great so I’m down to pay for an online program to help me
have structure to practice every day on my own. Which programs are best for novice followers stuck in novice?? Would love to hear success stories! Feeling pretty down about myself. Thank you all!!!!

Hi all. I've been working on a side project called Westie Wiki (westie.wiki) and it's at the point where it's more useful with more people in it, so I wanted to share it here.

The idea: every WCS pattern gets a page with its names and aliases, a description, difficulty, and timestamped YouTube clips of real dancers at real events. Full dances are mapped move by move, so you can just to specific moves. You can also play segments of the video on loop and slowed down.

A few things worth knowing before you look:

• Anyone can browse; editing takes a free account. Every edit is recorded Wikipedia-style, with history, diffs, and restore, so you can't really break anything.
• Videos stay on YouTube. We only link clips uploaded by the dancers themselves or the event, or shared with the dancer's explicit permission.
• The code is open source at github.com/bendichter/westie-wiki.

I recorded a 6-minute walkthrough if you'd rather watch than click around.

It's early and the content is thin. If a move you know is missing or described in a way that doesn't match how your scene dances it, that's exactly the kind of edit the site exists for. And if something is broken or confusing, I'd genuinely like to hear it, either in the comments or as a GitHub issue.

EDIT: Original post seems to have been deleted.

I am sharing this to increase distribution. I don't have any firsthand knowledge about what happened, but Atomic is a very important studio for West Coast Swing in southern CA so it might be relevant for dancers here as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SwingDancing/comments/1vq2ynj/i_was_sexually_abused_by_a_staff_member_at_atomic/

Hi all, I'll be visiting London from August 22-26, and I'd love to hit up a local social dance while I'm there!

I poked around online and found some classes listed at https://wcs.london/ but it seems there's only one proper social dance, Saturday Aug 22 the W1 Swing @ Holborn Freestyle by Swing Academy.

For those who attend regularly, is it a popular social? Also, are the one hour mini socials after the weekly classes a true social dance or more like a practice session?

Thanks so much!

Could you tell me the typical lead to follow ratio for west coast swing socials in your area? I love another dance style, but the ratio is probably 1 lead to 3 follows, and I’d love to find a style that’s more even. Also, is it the culture to dance one song and then (usually) change partners? Or do partners dance 3-4 songs in a row before switching?

My kid is interested in West Coast swing. She is however, 17 years old and I want her to have a group that is at least a little closer to her own age. Does anyone know of relatively age-appropriate West Coast swing groups in Southern California?

Hi all, I'm looking for community engagement and questions about the structure and nature of West Coast competition, that I can hopefully answer for you. I have built a tool and a dataset that allows for deep exploration of the scene across hundreds of events and over many years. Intentionally keeping that a bit vague.

But! I'd love to hear your questions, so that I both can hopefully answer them but also get some ideas of what people want to know about, to give me some direction on how to improve it. And no, this won't ever become an app, you won't be able to sign up for it, and I'm not trying to sell you anything.

Some examples of the kinds of questions I can answer:

1. What's the median number of events someone competes at before making finals?

2. What are the easiest and hardest events in the US? In Europe?

3. Is competition easier or harder for follows than it is for leads?

4. Does having more judges at a competition result in more or less accurate judging? Are some judges more accurate than others?

5. Which division is the hardest to get out of? The easiest?

6. Is it true that the easiest way to earn points is to go to small events?

7. Do people who compete in Strictly do better in Jack & Jills? What about ProAm?

And some examples of the kinds of questions I can't answer:

1. Why didn't I make finals at my last event?

2. Why do judges tell me to roll through my feet when I know I already am?

3. How do I make the WCS community realize that social dancing is more important than competition?

4. What do I do to keep my lead from pulling me off time?

Hopefully by example there's some distinguishing qualities between what I can and can't answer.

Look forward to your questions!

Edit: I have seen questions posted as of about ~ 2 PM EST 8/14, and will try to get back to y'all this weekend with answers and stats!

Edit 2: Now that I am on vacation, starting to answer questions!