Introduction

I don’t think I knew anything about swing before this film came along back in 1993 (I was just graduating from high school then). Ever since, I wanted to learn how to swing, but back in those days nobody cared about swing in Greece. In 2008 some very passionate people brought swing dancing, or “lindy hop” which is its official name, to Athens where I live (for the history, lindy hop came to Greece some years earlier than that, in 2006, but in a different city, Thessaloniki) but for various reasons I could not start learning how to lindy hop until this year, 2011. 

Learning about the culture surrounding the lindy hop but also listening to lots of music from that era I think is very much part of learning to dance the lindy hop, so for some months now I have been trying to collect various information about anything swing related. My source has been the internet exclusively so far. I have been reading stuff on wikipedia, watching clips on youtube, bookmarking anything that I found interesting and jotting down bits and pieces that I considered worthy of holding on to. Then I thought why not share all this with others that might want to learn together with me, so this is how this blog came about. It is my own personal swing notebook, or archive, with stuff that I am learning as I go and as I continue my lindy hop lessons. Everything in here you can find elsewhere on the internet and I will always be citing my sources, but these are my personal highlights, let’s say. Also, I need to note right here that I do not own the copyright to any of the photos - I found them all on the internet. As you see, I have disabled the comments because I wanted to keep the blog more clean and archival. However, if you have any corrections to the citations, additions, or suggestions, or anything to say about anything, you can always contact me via email. I hope you enjoy it and keep me company. xxx 

Swingjugend: The Real Swing Kids is a wonderful and thoroughly researched post written by Bobby White (international swing dance instructor & blogger) setting things right about the actual Swing Kids and saying among other things that the film is not actually historically very correct. I think it's a post definitely worth reading. Nonetheless, the film is the reason I fell in love with the era, the music and the Lindy Hop and I will always be indebted to its creators.

Note: later additions to the posts appear in red