Dancing swings back into Ottawa scene

By Christine Boyd

The early birds slip out of the night and past a coat hanger that props open the door of St. Giles Presbyterian Church at the corner of Bank Street and First Avenue.

Soon a handful of people have gathered in a hall in the basement, drawn together by a mutual addiction – but this is no 12-step program, no Alcoholics or Gamblers Anonymous.

No, these people have come to step-step-triple-step the eight-count beat of the Lindy Hop, a type of swing dance with a small but intense following in Ottawa.

“It’s an addiction in the best sense of the word,” says Geoff Dinsdale, 32, who leads the Monday night practice sessions with a partner and is one of the top Lindy Hoppers in town, according to others in the scene.

“A lot of us are pretty passionate about it.”

See him in his regular weekday gear – a crisp shirt tucked into leather-belted khakis, blonde hair buzzed short around the ears and leather dress shoes shining – and Dinsdale looks like what he is, a successful management consultant.

But tonight he’s marching to the beat of a different drummer, in loose cargo pants and a cotton shirt that stretches across broad shoulders as he kicks and twirls with his partner across the floor.

“When I’m dancing, I can never really think of other things going on in my life,” Dinsdale says, capturing a sentiment that seems shared by the others gazing intently at their partners as they swirl to the music.

“It’s beat to beat for three minutes.”

Dinsdale devotes much of his spare time to dancing: St. Giles on Mondays, Maxwell’s on Wednesdays, the Ottawa Swing Dance Society’s swing night at the Jack Purcell Community Centre on Saturdays, and anywhere else a suitable band hits the stage.

When he gets home, he’ll grab one of the dozens of dance videos piled by the VCR and play, rewind and replay excerpts from various competitions until he knows the moves by heart. He figures he attended out-of-town dance competitions and workshops more than 20 times last year, in cities as far away as Cleveland, Boston and New York.

But Dinsdale isn’t the only one with an insatiable addiction – there’s something about the Lindy that hooks people. His former dance partner Nathalie Hetu, 31, an accountant from Gatineau, plans to spend much of the next three months traveling to Boston, Minneapolis and other U.S. cities to attend dance workshops.

Rhonda Arsenault, 28, who co-ordinates Web projects for Human Resources Development Canada, says she hits the dance floor three to five times a week.

All three know a variety of ballroom and swing dances, including the most popular variety in North America, the East Coast Swing.

But they say the Lindy Hop is tops because of both the dance itself and the people it attracts.

The Lindy Hop first evolved from the Charleston and other social dances in black Harlem in the 1920s. Fueled by the new jazz and Big Band music, the Lindy and other forms of swing dance were picked up by hipsters across the continent and thrived until the rock ’n’ roll explosion of the 1950s.

Then swing all but disappeared until the 1980s, when some young Americans were inspired by dance sequences in classic films such as A Day at the Races (1937) and Hellzapoppin (1941). When Hollywood cranked out the movies Swingers and Swing Kids and the Gap clothing store used swing dancers in a khakis advertisement, the underground swing revival went mainstream.

The Lindy Hop that re-emerged during the mainstream swing revival of the early 1990s maintained much of that original spirit of improvisation, Dinsdale says.

Many of the 30 or so people who dance the Lindy regularly in Ottawa are attracted to that spirit, he says.

The Lindy suits a wide variety of music, from classic music like The Entertainer to smooth sophisticated sounds like Oscar Peterson or smoky blues like Ray Charles. And, unlike many traditional social dances, it doesn’t restrict people to a set series of moves.

“It’s not ‘wink three times, we’re going to do that nutty segment,’ ” Dinsdale says. “It’s not about moves, it’s about movement. We create, depending on what happens with the music. It can be goofy, or really soulful and sexy.”

Hetu – who is one of the most advanced Lindy dancers in the region and once performed with Dinsdale at the Montreal Jazz Festival before a crowd of 5,000 – says she was lured by the challenge of the Lindy.

“It takes a lot of energy and takes a lot to learn – you really have to concentrate,” Hetu says.

Arsenault, who is on the executive of the Ottawa Swing Dance Society, says she finds the Lindy makes a welcome change from the usual nightclub scene.

“This kind of dance is very different from club dancing,” Arsenault says. “Club dancing is like standing alone and reciting poetry. This is like having a conversation.”

That “conversation” often spins into what Dinsdale calls the “whee factor.”

“You know…when you’re dancing with a girl and going faster and faster, and you hear a giggle come out of her mouth – it’s like, ‘whee!’ ” he says, grinning. “We’re like kids in a playground. It’s a kick.”

But there’s another compelling draw for these dancers – the social aspect. The neo-swing scene in Ottawa exploded about four years ago when clubs like the Cave, Zaphod Beeblebrox and others began hosting regular swing nights.

Now Lindy Hop and other swing dancers in Ottawa often see each other as often as four or five times a week at various locations around town.

Further, the connections they’ve made through swing dancing have opened doors for them throughout the continent, they say.

“You just walk into an instant circle of friends,” Arsenault says. “I have a place to stay in Korea, I have a place to stay in France, I have a place to stay in the United States… and I never would have had that without swing dancing.”