Total Swing Experience | Tampere, Finland

Teaching

Rhythmical Dancing & Power of The Boom Chakka!

Dax is known of his unique style of teaching, and Sarah is at least as cool and understanding – now you have the chance to try a long weekend with Dax and Sarah!

This workshop builds on the understanding of dancing as rhythmical movement, which can often be described in lindy with the saying "Boom Chakka". The workshop aims at giving every participant tools for developing their own dancing – making everyone better, not different.

Teaching

The responsible main teachers for the whole camp are Dax Hock and Sarah Breck. Some of the lessons are taught by other teachers who have deep understanding of the concepts Dax is using and who have typically taken between 150-300 hours of lessons from Dax including plenty of teacher training. All the lessons are planned to create a 4 day long learning experience - the exercises and classes are knit together - for your learning pleasure!

News! In TSE you can get lessons also from Martynas and Egle from Lithuania, Ali and Katja from Germany and our own Finnish specialists Aleksis and Minna and Anni and Mikko.

Searching for more info on the teachers? Please note, that this camp is not a usual dance camp, with a bunch of teachers giving each their own style of different lessons. In that type of a camp, you will understandably want to know exactly, who the teachers are and what they do. Rather this camp is a learning experience built from the very start around the main teacher's (Dax Hock) teaching and concepts. The different teachers communicate the lesson contents with each other before and during the camp. All the teachers have done long-term co-operation with Dax as dancers and as teachers, and are able to bring to life the ideas to fulfill the goals of this camp as a learning journey. Therefore, originally we didn't publish the teachers' names at all - now they are published due to requests.

Teaching philosophy

The workshop is designed to give every participant a learning experience – to enable taking the next step in everyone's own dancing. The workshop progresses lesson by lesson.

The cooperation of teachers enables us having a progressive workshop – not a regular workshop with different teachers each giving miscellanous lessons. In other words, the classes have been planned to fit together, and give you a nice journey through secrets of good dancing.

To whom

The workshop is for all the lindy hoppers, who are eager to develop their skills in rhythmical dancing, body awareness, leading and following - and most of all dancing. The participants will be divided into groups for parts of the workshop, and the more experienced will be served with more challenging content. We await to have a bunch of people, who have taken plenty of Dax's classes, and also several newcomers – the classes are planned from this starting point.

Content of the workshop

The workshop will include the following themes.

Lindy Hop Classes
Focus on rhythmical dancing, partner connection, and natural body movement. Dax and Sarah teach effective variations that work on the social dance floor, feel good and are musically flexible! Understand tension, relaxation and the importance of rhythmical body movement. Most of all, learn to Dance.

Technique Simplified
How do you lead it? - Do it! How do you follow it? – Release and React! Dancing has never been made so simple, yet so effective. Discover how to dance, by actually dancing instead of focusing on an overload of complex sequences and complex dance technique.

Feel the music and dance
What makes swing music swing? How to live that with our bodies? Learn to understand the music as a starting point for dancing.

Solo Training
Enjoy special solo lessons designed to help your personal dance technique, rhythm and body movement.

Extra classes
Bonbon-classes will be offered including Balboa and Aerials – and you name it! Please make requests to our boomchakka email.

Lindy Sauna
Some of the best dance ideas are distributed during the workshops aftermath, in sauna! Relax the body and educate the mind during the "heated" sauna discussions. "I learned so much about Swing by talking with Dax in the sauna that I think it should be a obligatory part of the workshop!"– Aki Luoma

Note
Dax and Alice visited Finland for 4 months in Spring 2008 giving both weekly classes and workshops for hundreds of Finnish dancers. For the first time, Dax and Alice were able to focus on teaching long term, plant the seeds and watch them grow. We welcome everyone to come enjoy social dancing, learning and partying in this unique scene heavily influenced by the boomchakka-based rhythmical lindy hop taught by Dax and Alice!

Schedule

Timetable for Total Swing Experience (pdf)

There will be approximately 4 hours of teaching of lindy hop + 1-2 hours of extra lessons every day.

On Thursday evening we have reception open in Tempo from 19.30 onwards, where you can enroll to the camp.

In the first day (Friday) enrollment to the camp starts at 9.00. You need to be enrolled by 10.30 when our first lesson starts. The first lesson is common for all camp participants, except for beginners course.

Beginners course starts on Friday at 16, you should arrive around 15.30 to ensure that you have time to register before the lessons begin.

Breakfast is usually served around 9-10.30, check the detailed schedule for each day from the timetable. Lunch is typically served around 13-14.20, depending on the day, the lunch time can vary a bit. Usually there is 1h 20min reserved for lunch, so you have time to eat and relax before your next lesson. Check the detailed schedule for lunch in each day from the timetable.

Groups

Beginners group is there after all! Due to the demand, we have decided to arrange 2 days beginners course during the camp. Beginners course will be held from 2.-3. of April.

Schedule for the beginners
Fri 2.4. at 16-19 (including some short breaks)
Sat 3.4. at 10-13 (including some short breaks)

Open the gates is for those who want to spend four days diving in to the world of changing their lindy hop to more rhythmical direction. There are no requirements for accomplishing pre-tasks before the workshop, but be ready to work hard for the four days.

Release the beast will be using online learning environment RhythmJuice. Those who sign in for that are committed to do pre-tasks before the workshop. Due to the pre-tasks we will be able to get further in developing our dancing skills in Dax’s instruction during the camp. You can register only if you reserve your time to study specific courses in RhythmJuice before the camp.

Rhythm nerds is invitational. This group is similar to the second group in the use of the online learning environment with pre-tasks. This group is for very advanced dancers who have already worked several years for their skills and are already familiar with Dax’s teaching principles and techniques. Usually these dancers travel around the world in Lindy Hop camps and are always seen in the social dance floor. You can state your interest to join this group when you register to the camp, or you may get invited. In every case, the group members will be selected by the dancers.

Note for rhytmJuice groups

Please note that the exercises require partner so you will need someone to practice with before the camp. Please reserve at least two hours weekly during March 2010 for practicing. The approximate time for accomplishing the tasks is between 8-16 hours depending on your previous experience. Camp registration can be done with or without a partner.

You need to subcribe separately to RhythmJuice to do the pre-tasks. There is a monthly subscription fee. For those who subscribe at least for one month, we are giving a refund from the camp price, see more details from Registration and Costs page.