She moved to Britain after meeting and marrying a Scottish west coast swing champ and now teaches at West Coast Swing Edinburgh, while co-owning dance shoe company Key & Crosbie.Īustralian Jo has been in Scotland for 22 years.

She learned from some of the original Lindy hoppers-Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, and Dawn Hampton-at Dance Manhattan in the 1990s. Taryn, a New York native now living in Scotland, has danced for over 20 years. For three years their event took place at another spa hotel in November, involved a bigger team and was called Moonshine Lindy and Blues Festival. Taryn Crosbie and Jo Meyer are the driving (or dancing) force behind Moonshine Blues Dance Festival, which debuts in October 2019 at the Macdonald Marine Hotel and Spa, Scotland. Its organizers say the separation of swing from blues is historically accurate, artistically justified and long overdue. And full-time blues dancers-dedicated ones who study it in the day time-are getting sick of this so much so that one of Scotland’s biggest swing and blues dance festivals has ditched swing to focus solely on blues dance.

It’s danced to slower blues music and exclusively in the early morning.īut this is a misappropriation of a distinct art form with a much longer history. In short, many swing dancers know blues dancing only (or primarily) as a slow style performed only when quicker alternatives (Lindy hop, collegiate shag, balboa, etc.) seem too tiring or awkward.

Blues musicality dancing break