Imperial Swingers hit the mark
Ben Howitt on Imperial’s first Dance Open Day
Over the weekend of Saturday 15th November, Imperial’s dance societies combined forces to run a Pineapple style open day, offering classes ranging from Salsa and Swing Dancing through to Hiphop, Break and Belly Dance.
The event saw over 100 different students attending classes over the two days, with many attendees able to try out classes in styles they’d never tried before.
In addition to the styles that have been running for some time, the event also saw Pole Dancing’s Strength & Conditioning class and a Musical Theatre Jazz class to ‘Shake Your Tail Feather’ from The Blues Brothers.
The majority of classes were taught by Imperial students, with one notable exception: the Swing Dance class on Sunday, led by Katie from London-based Swing Patrol. This forms part of a longer term plan to start running swing classes on a more regular basis at Imperial.
Special thanks go to ICU Dance Company and Funkology for the generous use of practice space, and to all of the volunteer choreographers who ran classes.
Following on from the Workshop Weekend, the collaboration, titling itself ‘Dance Imperial’ (DI), is aiming to produce a show to run in the last week of term, with acts from all of the existing dance societies and some fusion acts put together by choreographers who met during the event. There are also plans to run a similar event in the Spring term, offering a wider variety of styles and types of dance.
If you want to know more about the collaboration, the show or the next DI Workshop Weekend, please feel free to get in touch at danceicu@gmail.com.
