On a Saturday afternoon in mid-October, I’m one of around 180 dancers in a hotel ballroom in Burlingame, California, waiting for their turn to dazzle the judges. Soon, we’ll pair up with partners we may be meeting for the first time to improvise a dance to whatever song is selected for us.
This is a West Coast swing competition, an energetic celebration of California’s official state dance.
I’m not a professional dancer, but I’m here to win it. While the actual stakes are low (novice-category winners will each receive $125, champions $250), the sheer joy is impossible to quantify.
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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West Coast swing may be the perfect dance for the social media age, combining the human desires to connect and to be the center of attention. WCS dates back to the 1930s, when Southern California dancers modified Harlem’s acrobatic Lindy hop. Unlike partner
dances such as the waltz or salsa, West Coast swing is done mostly in an open position, which lends itself to more improvisation. Dancing along a linear track (or “in the slot”), partners are often connected by only one hand, creating space for each to add their own moves.
Over nearly a century, West Coast swing continued to evolve with changing music tastes: It can be danced to pretty much any midtempo piece of music. “It’s partner dancing to pop music,” explains Phoenix Grey, a WCS instructor based in Portland. “I’ve always thought WCS would be so popular if people just knew it existed.”
Thanks to the proliferation of online videos, though, especially on TikTok, West Coast swing’s existence is fast becoming known.
One of West Coast swing’s features is the competition format it popularized. In the 1950s, to keep the same few couples from always winning his dance contests, Jack Carey, a pioneer of WCS who died in 2013, started encouraging dancers to pair up at random. The Jack and Jill (J&J) competitions that arose from this practice became a big hit and continue to attract audiences with their contestants’ perfect synchronization, witty interpretations of song lyrics, and impressive moves. With competitors often casually dressed in sneakers and athleisure, West Coast swing is more laid-back than competitive ballroom dancing.
Growing interest in West Coast swing has given rise to dance conventions worldwide, with events held nearly every weekend of the year. Boogie by the Bay, where I’m competing, is one of the largest and longest-running conventions, celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024 with more than 1,100 attendees. My $180 weekend pass (plus an additional $60 in competition fees) got me three days of workshops and dances into the wee hours of all four nights.
For casual dancers like me, competing is daunting. Just looking at the Boogie schedule causes me anxiety. Competitive WCS has a five-tiered ladder of progression that ideally encourages improvement but also creates a hierarchy that can mess with even the most confident dancer’s self-esteem. “Do you think the community has a healthy relationship with competition?” was a recent hot topic in a WCS Facebook group.
Entering the competition is a chance to see how I stack up after years of dancing, but I also have to figure out how to cushion my ego in case my dreams of glory are dashed. “Novice is a gauntlet—it’s very easy to be disappointed,” says Alison Gibson, a WCS dancer in the Bay Area who has competed at 60 conventions over the past six years. She and other competition-hardened dancers counsel me to create a personal goal, like making sure to smile while dancing, rather than fixate on what the judges think. I challenge myself to use the competition to improve my ability to lead.
In West Coast swing, as in other traditional partner dances, men have historically done the leading; women, the following. In 2014, Grey, the instructor from Portland, and other advocates successfully petitioned the World Swing Dance Council to make WCS competitions gender-neutral, a change that offers freedom of choice on the social dance floor.
Switching unlocks yet more opportunities for dancers. After one of my random partners, a male WCS champion, dips me a couple of times, I’m inspired to reciprocate. At first, he’s reluctant to transfer his weight to me, but he eventually goes for it, and the audience laughs. It’s my own viral moment that I enjoy playing back in my mind.
I squeak through the first round of Novice J&J before getting cut. But while I may not have gotten very far in the competition, I’ve won my battle with anxiety. Learning to be comfortable leading on the social dance floor has been its own reward.
After all the competitions are over, Boogie has one more night of social dancing. I dance with out-of-towners and even a few folks from out of the country. I dance with people who are more skilled than I am and with some who are less so, but all of us are equally matched in enthusiasm. Each time, I ask my partner whether they want to “lead, follow, or switch.” An older gentleman who’s never followed before takes me up on my offer to lead and soon tells me he’s having a great time, which makes me happy.
I dance until I’m dizzy and dehydrated but exhilarated nonetheless. I’m experiencing what WCS coach Tashina Beckmann-King described in an online video class as “those incredible social dances…those magical moments where you’ve tapped into some dimension that’s only available to a few.” But not too few: You should join us. Lead, follow, or switch?•
Lydia Lee writes frequently about design and architecture in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a local bicycle advocate.
