Then There was a Team
A while back, swing dancing in Columbus, Ohio meant East Coast Swing or Jitterbug. Then through the perseverance of one lady with the help of a talented instructor, Mario Robau, and about 10 years of effort, West Coast Swing finally took hold and became popular.
As we began dancing at places other than Columbus, we made established some great friendships in Michigan (an unthinkable act for Buckeyes) and discovered hustle. We quickly learned to dance the hustle and added it to our dance repertoire. However there was still something missing.
When we formed our club with the help of the Cincinnati Bop, most of our danceable music came from the Carolinas. This exposed us to SOS and the Carolina Shag. About 8 years ago Georgia and Jim began teaching Carolina Shag to our club members. As with West Coast Swing, people were interested, took the lessons, but were slow to take up this “new” dance in the Columbus area.
A group of people interested in Shag got together and started learning Shag on a non-dance night. We practicing one night a week at our normal dance location. This then lead to the idea of developing and performing a Shag routine at our Mid-Ohio Boogie Bash event. Steve and Kathy Day, members of the Carolina Shag Team and instructors, helped us develop a Shag routine. Thank you Steve and Kathy!
As the routine developed, we found the dance floor we were practicing on was too small and moved our practice to a larger facility at an ice skating rink, which had a huge tiled floor on their second floor. This enabled us to dance through the routine and the various floor configurations without bumping into one other or into tables and chairs. We could now visualize dancing on the big dance floor at the event.
Every dance team experiences some difficulties and one of the things that set the Mid Ohio Boogie Club Shag team back were three of the original team members couldn't continue and we had to replace them. And of course, they didn't quit at the same time which would have been a little easier to handle. Finding and keeping enough people on the team was not a easy task. Each time one person quit, we had to start at the beginning again and this delayed our progress. However, the remaining team members were always very helpful in assisting the new members learn the routine. About two months before the event, the team felt they would like to practice twice a week, so they could be sure to they were ready for the Boogie Bash. Most of the team had not performed before an audience and were getting a little jittery. As the Boogie Bash drew nearer, what seemed like a very long routine was now a short fun shag dance.
It was a lot of work, but we had fun and enjoyed performing for our guests.
The Mid-Ohio Boogie Club Shag Team.
