They congregate at one of Fountain Square’s marvels of architecture. Patrons of all ages find fellowship on the dance floor, letting the sounds of live music energize their elegant maneuvers. Some come early for initiatory lessons, while others arrive later with years of wisdom.
Every second and fourth Friday, dancers of all ages, backgrounds and aptitudes convene at Fountain Square’s Theatre Building, unifying in step and letting the live music steal their collective fun-loving mind.
Some might call it a cult, others simply a subculture. But no matter how you pick the event apart, one thing is certain — hundreds of people gather and speak the exquisitely physical language of swing dance.
As a member of Ball State’s Swing Society, Mary Alexander, an advertising and visual communications major, takes a “carful of girls” to Fountain Square every other week. A long-time swing dancer, Alexander feels at home when she goes to the Fountain Square events, knowing she can easily feel like a part of the collective swing community.
“I’ve heard some people call it a subculture because we do have our own way of thinking you could say,” Alexander said.
For more than a decade now, the Theatre Building has been hosting swing dance events, said Priscilla Erickson, manager of the Fountain Square Theatre Building. Since holding her position in 2003, Erickson has been the main person in charge of the bimonthly swing nights, with responsibilities ranging from booking the bands to coordinating the one-hour lessons that take place prior to the swing dance events.
Erickson admits that she originally feared the swing dancing event would be a fad; however, with live bands continually coming to her in hopes of performing and hundreds of people young and old flocking to the theatre, her doubts have quickly faded.
“Since we continued to host swing with a live band and dance lessons, and because our venue is so ornate and has character to it, it has become one of the mainstays in the swing scene,” Erickson said.
MASTERING YOUR STEP
In conjunction with the bimonthly swing dancing event, Erickson coordinates lessons to precede the night of dancing for those new to swing. The lessons are used as a way to prepare beginners in order for them to enjoy the rest of their night at the Theatre Building.
“The point of the lesson is to give them [newcomers] a foundation to have a good time that night, so really we just go over the basic steps and maybe five moves that they could do so then when it gets to the open dancing they actually have dance steps that they can do,” said Josh Doane, one of the dance instructors at each event. “It just gives them something to have a really good night with.”
Doane is also an executive board member for Naptown Stomp, an Indianapolis organization devoted to swing who use Fountain Square events to baptize newbies with dance floor know-how.
Thomas Wysocki was once a teacher at the Fountain Square events. Now bogged down by his job at Eli Lilly, he can only attend regularly, bringing his mastery footwork along for all to see.
Thinking back on what he used to tell new swing dancers, Wysocki recalls emphasizing “the basics.”
“Once you really get the basics down then you can really work on stylistic moves or whatever you want to do,” Wysocki said, speaking from years of experience. “Otherwise it doesn’t help to go out there and thrash around the dance floor. You can potentially hurt somebody.”
For Alexander, swing dancing is more than a hobby — it’s a means of relaxation, what she calls an “escape from all the stressful things in reality.”
Nevertheless, she believes that confidence is crucial to becoming a sultan of swing.
“I’d say that if you can go into a dance, even if you don’t know what the heck you’re doing, if you go in there and you act like you know what you’re going to do and you own all of your mistakes, I won’t be able to tell,” she said. “I’ll just be like, ‘Oh this is a great dancer,’ or, ‘Oh he’s got potential.’”
MUSIC’S RAW POWER
Erickson has made live music a priority since she first headed up the Fountain Square swing dance program. At first, she only had a few bands rotating from week to week, but she admits that since the program has grown in reputation, bands have come to her in hopes of lighting up the dance floor.
From jazz to rockabilly, there are currently more than 10 bands in the rotation.
“I am amazed at times where I just sit back and look at the live band that is on the stage and the number of people and the all age groups that are out on the dance floor dancing and the exchange that takes place between the band members and the dancers,” Erickson said.
The success of the Fountain Square program is undoubtedly appealing to live bands, said Erickson. Rather than paying in a low-key venue, such as a park for example, the bands can be apart of a collective body of one, serving as the conductors to a choir of moving bodies.
“When [bands] come to Fountain Square, they get to see dancers dancing. It thrills the band members just as much as the dancers appreciate the good music,” Erickson said. “It’s a really good exchange.”
In his many years of swing dancing, Wysocki has jived to all kinds of music, both live and recorded. He would take live music over recorded music in a heartbeat, adding yet another reason to his list of praises for Fountain Square swing.
And when it comes to the historic personality of swing, Doane points out that a live band completes the old-time portrait of swing dance.
“People see swing dancing in old movies and they’re never dancing to a DJ. There’s always a live band in the back,” Doane said. “I think people want to latch onto that and get into that spirit of how it used to be. I think part of that is through music.”
ONE IN HEART, ONE IN SOLE
Swing dancing is more than a social occurrence in Fountain Square; it is a network of people around the world who love to dance and have a sociable time while doing so.
Take Wysocki for example.
“Honestly, I’m a chemist and that really is a profession that keeps you anti-social if you let it,” he said. “Really, what [swing dancing] allowed me to do is it forced me out and about. I got to travel a lot. I got to meet a lot of local and foreign individuals that like to dance.”
Wysocki has travelled the world, connecting with people from many cultures over their love for swing.
He said swing is a “universal language.”
“I was in Sweden, and there were a lot of Germans, Russians and Swedes, and not a lot of English folk. But you had no problem going up to a female and asking if she wanted to dance, and she knew what you were getting at,” he said.
And Wysocki adds, the diversity of the dance is not only tied to ethnicity.
“I would say it’s holistically a very diverse culture because you will bump into engineers, artists, musicians, chemists — it’s just a very large variety of individuals that come together and do one thing,” he said.
Doane speaks to swing’s barrier-breaking power.
“This is very different than other types of dance in that it’s a social dance,” he says. “At Fountain Square, you may dance with 20-30 people, different ages, different backgrounds. And really, you’re just there, talking to them and dancing with them for three or four minutes.”
And with these interactions come opportunities to become one with the congregation of swing.
