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.