Thammasat University students will have an opportunity to demonstrate their interest in a popular dance form at Big Bang: Swing Dancing on Sunday, February 24 from 7pm to 10pm in front of Phra Pathom Chedi. As the event’s website states, all weekend there will be related activities:

This is a swing dancing camp for Lindy Hoppers to let themselves loose, go wild, and feel like they lived in a fairy tale for a weekend. We want to dance dance dance, improve our dancing, and spread the love of swing. Organized by a dream team from Bangkok Swing, we are super excited to host and jam with you on the dance floor ; )

Over 300 swing dancers from 20 countries are expected. The site can be reached by van from CentralPlaza Pinklao or BTS Bang Wa.

Bangkok Swing was founded to spread an interest in swing dancing in Bangkok. TU students have the opportunity to consult some books in the collection of the TU Library about swing music and swing dancing, to better understand the phenomenon. Swing dance is closely associated with a style of jazz music that became popular from the 1920s to the 1940s. The time when this music and dance were most popular is remembered as the swing era. All Thais are aware that HM King Rama IX was a gifted composer and performer of swing orchestral music. The TU Library owns sound recordings of some of his His Majesty’s best-loved compositions.

American swing musicians included Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, and Fletcher Henderson. The TU Library has recordings by, and books about, some of these important popular musicians.

There are many types of swing dancing. The Lindy Hop, mentioned on the Big Bang: Swing Dancing website, is a very athletic dance, involving a lot of jumping around. It was developed on the East Coast of America and named in honor of the American pilot Charles Lindbergh, who flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, winning worldwide fame. In the same way that the pilot leapt across the ocean, the dancers of the Lindy Hop were jumping too.

Another swing dance form still seen today is Balboa, which originated in Southern California during the 1920s. It was named after the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, California, where the dance was created. Unlike the Lindy Hop, where the dance partners throw each other around, in Balboa, the partners embrace and dance more closely together. For that reason, Balboa is considered less of a showy dance than the Lindy Hop.

Swing dance in Thailand

One of the leaders of the revived interest in swing dance in the Kingdom is Chayapong (Oat) Naviroj, who graduated with the bachelor’s degree in Economics, with minor studies in East Asian Studies and Music, from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Khun Oat then worked as an Associate Intern for The Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm with over 80 offices around the world, including Bangkok.

Khun Oat is a co-founder of Bangkok Swing and also created The Hop, a venue for swing dancing and other forms of artistic expression. It is located at 252/8 Si Lom, Suriya Wong, Bang Rak, Bangkok. Today, around three quarters of Bangkok Swing’s participants are Thai. Around 80 members regularly attend swing dance classes and events, along with many other people who try the experience for the first time.

In August 2016, Khun Oat made a presentation at a TEDxBangkok gathering. In his speech, Create your community, Khun Oat noted:

Believe it or not, among all the chaos in Bangkok, there lies a small community where every step of their lives aren’t moving with time. Their steps spin, twist, and swing alongside groovy jazz music. It’s a true utopia where they hold hands, communicate only by body language and let loose with an energy of freedom like no other. Multinational women and men are able to enjoy dancing in retro clothing – almost like they’re in a vintage film! This part-time activity transformed into a community where close relationships were formed with the beat of the music. Bangkok Swing pride themselves on their enthusiasm and high levels of fun as they sway to the music and spread dance culture and joy to everyone they run into!

His presentation was part of an evening devoted to the theme: Learn, Unlearn, Relearn. Trying an unfamiliar dance style is one way to keep learning:

Amidst competitions in business, education or even the pressure to keep relationships among friends, we are forced to consume a great amount of information so we are equally as knowledgeable as others. There are times where we may have accumulated information without much precautions, leading to a set of knowledge and beliefs that instead of opening us up, are blocking us from new possibilities. An intriguing question follows, can we self-develop not by adding more information, but by questioning and subtracting information out? Alvin Toffler, an American writer, once said “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

The TU Library also owns books by Alvin Toffler, who wrote about the future in terms of modern technology, especially the digital and communications revolution.

Khun Oat explained to The Bangkok Post in September 2015 that during his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, he was intrigued to see a

poster of Lindy hoppers dancing. It looked incredibly fun, just from the photo, so I went to a free class held by the West Philly Swingers dance group, despite the fact that I had zero experience. What I didn’t know was that it was actually an audition! Thankfully, I was chosen, and the rest is history. I started to perform every semester in college, choreographing, teaching and dancing wherever there was good swing music. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but it grew on me. The more people I met, the more moves I learned, the better music I encountered and the more charming people I met as I travelled around the world. And that’s what made me fall in love with swing dancing.

Asked why he prefers swing dancing to other dance forms, he replied:

Swing is incredibly fun for me because it’s a lively dance filled with improvisation. It’s a partner dance during which you can smile and laugh throughout the song. It also recharges my energy after a day at work. Then, there is the social aspect of swing, where you get to meet friendly people from all different walks of life. 

Khun Oat advised that potentially interested dancers listen to the music of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, among others, to get into the spirit of the dance.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)