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).
When they first met Jennifer, she was a hardcore east coast girl and didn't
know any Lindy. But Jennifer
was a very talented and self-motivated dancer and when
she developed an interest in Lindy, boy did she learn fast! Effie remembers
that before she went away for her first summer field season in Puerto Rico,
Jennifer couldn't even swivel, let alone do a swingout, but when Effie got
back a couple months later, Jennifer's Lindy hop was awesome and worthy of
jealousy! And Greg and Effie were not the only lindy hoppers influencing
her...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.
Jennifer, Greg and Effie definitely taught her some of her first Lindy hop...but
it was little work on their part because she was a quick learner and had lots
of talent. Greg and Effie then went on a semester away from Athens and
Nick and Lauren took over the Swing Club during Spring semester 2003, their
last semester..
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. If you
want the performance troupe to perform at YOUR function, email Erik at
kasteel@yahoo.com.
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.
A crack team of Swing Club Instructors was formed to continue teaching swing
through the next school year.