Feature Stories

Swing Spotlight: Kayleen Rice

“I don’t think I knew swing was a way to dance before coming here.” This is what current co-president of Principia College’s Swing Dance Club, senior Kayleen Rice said when describing the start of her journey with swing dance. Four years later, she is teaching swing twice a week, choreographing a piece that will premiere in the campus-wide Dance Production, and involving herself in every avenue of swing possible. She leads the club alongside her co-president, junior Billy Brooke, who also has been dancing since his freshman year.

After hearing about the fun reputation of the swing dance club during her visiting weekends, Kayleen knew that she had to join. The rest of her story with swing unfolded with a plethora of turns, spins, and dips along the way.

So why does she love to swing dance? “It’s fun dancing with a partner exploring the ways to have a conversation through dancing…it’s a very 50-50, equal relationship,” she commented. While some may be surprised to hear this, considering the lead-follow relationship, Kayleen mentioned that at a more advanced level, follows can lead moves and add their own interpretation. She enjoys the camaraderie and bond formed from teaching with a partner.

A typical week in the life of a swing club co-president includes two club meetings, planning for these sessions with Billy, and choreographing for Dance Production.

Both Billy and Kayleen take their roles as co-presidents seriously as they plan lessons for each club meeting and often learn new moves and technical details about familiar steps. Many of their steps come from their own knowledge gained from swing club, summer dance lessons, online videos, and learning from other dancers while social dancing.

One challenge the two have faced has been finding adequate time to meet to learn new steps, especially as their semesters have been busy.

Kayleen has still added to the club’s vision. “I feel like I’m always growing in how to teach people and keep them interested while still doing what we need to do.” This is a fine balance but is needed especially when it comes to teaching more technical moves.

Kayleen assists a dancer with Lindy moves

As for swing after college, Kayleen says that there is always a swing scene to be discovered in whichever city she may be living in. For now, as a leader of swing club, she is “hoping that all the tools that dancers are learning from swing are ones they can take out there and use to continue to learn how to dance.”

Hailing from the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington State, Kayleen is majoring in biology with a minor in English. She hopes to also achieve a dance minor by graduation.

She has loved marine biology since high school and this passion was reinforced when she had the opportunity to study at the Island School in the Bahamas. This school offers summer and semester-long programs where high school students learn how to live sustainably and gain hands-on experience with marine biology. Kayleen stated several times how much she enjoyed taking Bio Block at Principia and how the opportunity challenged her and let her bond with those in her major.

Fun Facts:

What she likes to do for fun (besides swing): painting, hanging out with friends, hiking, swimming, and traveling
Favorite travel spot: she’s loved everywhere she has gone but especially experienced growth from going to India which included a 9-day trek through the Himalayas
If she could be any swing move she would be: double-spin, free-turn, or swing-out (only part of Lindy)
Other Principia highlights: England abroad + Bio Block

Lifts & Lindy: Exploring the Advanced Side of Swing

“How do they do that?” might be a question some ask when watching swing dancers. Thursday night advanced swing nights are one way Principia College Swing Dance Club answers that question.

Thursday nights from 8:30-10pm is a time dedicated to diving into more advanced moves. The first half hour is spent in the dance studio learning various Lindy-hop moves including send outs, he-goes, and she-goes. The last hour is spent practicing lifts on the mats by the bouldering wall.

Lindy-hop is a style of swing dance composed of 8 or 6 steps. It began in the 1920s and ended up uniting various races as they each learned new evolutions of the dance from one another. While not used in social dancing, lifts are a fun element to swing that add excitement, challenge, and greater partnership.

The previous club presidents, senior Lauren Weiss and Max Bruch (C’17), invited advanced swing members to join them in exploring technique more in-depth on Thursday nights. As interest grew, the meetings expanded to include more people. Weiss and Bruch decided to build technique work into the club’s weekly activities and the lessons have remained ever since.

A wider range of skill levels have been attending Thursday nights in the last year. While the attendance has been robust – with an average of 8-10 dancers per session this semester - the varying skill levels give less of an ability to emphasize technique. Thus, Thursday nights have become more similar to regular Sunday night dance lessons.

Dancers practicing "Mop the Floor," a technique used to get into certain lifts

In the spirit of technique, current presidents Kayleen Rice and Billy Brooke still repeat moves several times with a meticulous eye to detail. The reaction to this has been mixed. The co-presidents can sense that some dancers feel impatient and want to move on after learning technique. While Rice is aware that Thursday nights can be more tedious in nature, the technique is “really important to drill down into because that’s why Thursday nights were born.” The presidents are trying to find ways to combat boredom with technique while still maintaining the integrity of honing skill.

Freshman Emmett Wainwright, who regularly attends both Sunday and Thursday dance nights, commented that he swing dances and enjoys technique because "it's different than anything else I've ever done."

Brooke and Rice want to have Thursday nights be more focused on technique, similar to how they used to be. To keep the spirit of these sessions, it is helpful for dancers to come already knowing certain moves “because it’s difficult for us to teach basic moves if we need to backtrack,” said Rice. Brooke also appreciates the strong attendance but wants to be able to teach technique fully.

Shifting who may come to technique nights won’t change this semester. Even with possibly shifting the attendance on Thursday nights, anyone could still come to practicing lifts.

Thursday night technique sessions are a special way that the Swing Club has expanded its reach and raised the caliber of dancing. This vision will hopefully be carried forward to help more dancers engage with swing dancing in more dynamic and challenging ways.