Birmingham Bounce 2017

After waiting for what seemed like an age for it to arrive, the inaugural Birmingham Bounce has already come and gone.

For me it very nearly didn't happen at all, courtesy of delayed flights and lost, then found but damaged luggage, so I eventually arrived on the Saturday afternoon a tad knackered but raring to go.

Sadly, however, that meant I missed two highlights - the classes by Tatiana Udry, and seeing Swing Belfast's own Anna kicking ass in Friday night's competitions: coming second in the strictly finals with James, and third in the jack & jill.

I'm sorry not to have been there cheering Anna and James on but, just as I had mentioned before, anyone representing Belfast was not shy of support as I think we ended up taking about 35 people to Birmingham, and to say I am not also immensely proud of that in and of itself would be an understatement.

I don't think I've ever been to an event with more than three others from Belfast, so to more than decuple* that number (*yes, it's a new word to me also) was a glorious thing. But quantity isn't much without quality and from the many accounts I heard it sounded like everyone represented Swing Belfast with distinction.

In fact, when I got chatting to Paul on the Sunday afternoon, he told me that a number of people had even described the Belfast dancers as being "aggressively friendly", so it's clear to me that the enthusiasm and warmth that I fell in love with in our nascent scene is also an exportable quality!

Having such safety in numbers I think also proved to be a brilliant way for some of our newer dancers to experience their first ever big event and as I'm sure all of them would agree, the weekend itself was a lot of fun and a fantastic introduction to Lindy hop outside Belfast.

The weekend's teachers were Swing Express' own Paul & Sarah Neary and Scott Cupit & Jenny Thomas with Felix Berghäll rather enviably teaming up with both Tatiana Udry and Katja Završnik (probably my two favourite follows on the planet) for their partnered workshops, and between what I experienced and what I heard, it seems that the classes all went down a treat.

As I said, I missed Tatiana's classes with Felix but I was determined to make up for it somehow and decided that the Saturday night social was where to do it. Not only was I going to try to make up for the dancing I had missed that morning, and indeed the night before, but I was also going to attempt to compensate for missing out on a class with Tatiana by asking her for a dance.

I've commented before how my confidence escapes me when approaching my favourite top tier dancers and as the Birmingham Bounce was my first weekender in over a year, it's safe to say that I was feeling distinctly chutzpah-lite. But the second I rediscovered some testicular fortitude and actually approached Tatiana it turned out, unsurprisingly, that she was absolutely lovely and every bit as spectacular to dance with as to watch.

My erstwhile reticence was then completely shown up by some of the newer Belfast leads (some with less than a year of classes under their belts) who walked straight up to Tatiana and the rest weekend's pros and asked one or all of them for a dance: Brett, Curtis, Luke and Mark and a probably a few more didn't even blink, and I believe a few of our follows did the same!

And then when the inevitable jam circle kicked off, the Belfast crowd once again showed up and made us proud with about a third of the dancers who took the floor hailing from our scene.

Furthermore, a special mention must also go to Mark and Kristina who, despite being one of our newer couples, waited out the regular jam cool as you like and then bounced into the middle of the action as the fabulous Basin Street Brawlers really started to crank up the BPM.

All in all, it was a really fun weekend of dancing that I hope whetted the collective appetites of the 30-odd Belfast dancers for whom this was their first big event. A big thanks must go to Paul & Sarah and Swing Express for putting on a brilliant inaugural Birmingham Bounce (as well as an apology for taking so long to finally write this up but I'm using wedding prep as my excuse!) and I'm sure we're all looking forward to our next trip to Brum!