UGA Swing Dance Club History
When Greg and Effie first started their PhDs at UGA
in 1999-2000, the
Swing Club was run by
Lanier Edwards. At the time, the Ballroom Dance Club, Ballroom Performance Group and its Friday
night dances, DJ'd dances with Bugg in downtown Athens, and Georgia
Tech dances in Atlanta were all going strong. Through these various
dance events, Greg and Effie became friends with undergrad Jennifer Humphries, who
is now an alumnus of UGA (graduated in 2003). Jennifer was primarily trained by social dancing Lindy hop
with the great Lindy dancers who were in Atlanta at the time.
Greg and Effie had been doing
some swing dance
teaching through the Ballroom Dance Club during that first year (1999-2000), but it was Jennifer
who initiated the idea, in the Fall of 2000, for the three of them to
take over the UGA Swing Club from Lanier Edwards, to teach a
combination of East Coast Swing and Lindy Hop on Sunday
nights. Nick, whom they all met through the same venues, soon became
involved too, organizing advertising events and getting serious about
learning Lindy hop from Jennifer, Greg, and Effie, to add to his
solid east coast swing skills.
One of the major goals for the Swing Club was
to raise enough money to bring in nationally-known Lindy hop teachers
to do a workshop at UGA. With help from co-sponsors (BPG, BDC,
Georgia Tech Dance Association) in addition to the money they raised
from teaching on Sunday nights, they reached this goal and hosted Sylvia
Sykes and Jason Christodoulou for a set of classes at one of the
Friday night BPG dances and a workshop the following Sunday in the Fall of
2002.
Lauren, like all of them, came to Swing Club
having first gotton into partner dancing with BPG dances and BDC so she too
came with lots of dance knowledge already. Greg and Effie went on a
semester away from Athens
and Nick and Lauren took over the Swing Club during Spring semester 2003,
their last semester before graduating.
Greg and Effie returned for Fall of
2003 and resumed leadership of the Swing Club until the end of Fall of
2004, when demands from their graduate programs finally overwhelmed
them. Erik and Allison continued to take lessons from them,
though, before Greg and Effie left Athens for California.
In September of 2005, Erik and
Allison reformed the UGA Swing Club and had weekly lessons throughout
the semester. At the end of the semester, Allison retired from
teaching duties to pursue her studies. Susan assumed the role of
follow instructor and assumed the role of President starting in the
Spring 2006 semester.
In November of 2006, the UGA
Swing Club decided to form an official performance troupe. The
performance troupe's purposes are to practice, choreograph, and perform
pieces of swing dancing (which includes Lindy Hop, Charleston, Balboa
[Bal-Swing], East Coast, and West Coast), to serve in an outreach
capacity for the UGA Swing Club and help improve the swing community
and social swing dancing in Athens, and to have fun! The charter
members of the troupe were Erik Hofmeister, Susan Elrod, Allison
Barfield, Micah Williams, Jason Long, Megan Boyd, Sherrie Hines, Scott
Davis, and Wendy Reynolds. Future membership is by invitation,
and the first President was Erik Hofmeister.
At the end of the 2006-2007 school
year, Susan stepped down as Swing Club President and Cydney Smith was
appointed as President. Cydney appointed Rachelle Hoehn as Vice
President. Cydney and James Hao taught for the following school
year. Thereafter, Sam Cook taught with Cydney for the 2008-2009
school year. Sam was also voted in as President of Swung in the
summer of 2008. After Cydney graduated in 2009, Rachelle took
over as President, with Erik, Susan, and Sam instructing.