Valentine’s Day celebrated with swing dancing

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Valentine’s celebrations at Central Michigan University was kicked off with swing on Saturday.

CMU’s registered student organization Swing Kids held their annual Valentine’s Dance from 6 to 10 p.m in the Finch 113 gym. Surrounded by multi-colored hearts and snowflakes, the formally dressed dancers spun and twirled to the music of swing, jazz, and hip hop.

Croswell junior Sarah Sly, the president of Swing Kids, said that more students from other schools attended the dance than did CMU students. Sly took a poll of the 30 person crowd and discovered that 14 were from CMU and 16 were from other schools, including Alma, MI Tech, Bowling Green, Delta, and the Midland area.

“I’m a little excited because that means people are hearing about us,” Sly said. “I don’t care where they’re from as long as they want to dance.”

At one point the dancers made a Snowball, a dance where one couple starts and grabs more couples until everyone is dancing. Line dances, polkas, salsas and jig also were part of the dancing festivities of the night.

“It’s been a good dance,” said Saginaw Valley sophomore Craig Anderson of Hoton who drove almost an hour to be there. “I’m glad that everyone’s dancing.”

Alma College junior Hannah Livingston of Hillsdale brought 10 people from Alma to the dance and said she had a lot of fun. Livingston started her college’s swing group, the Alma College Hepcats. She heard about CMU’s Swing Kids through a friend and got in touch with Sly. She said the groups visit and learn different styles of swing from each other.

“They dance Lindy Hop and two-step East Coast and we do single-step East Coast,” she said. “It’s been a really good learning experience for the both of us.”

Regular Swing Kids attender Reese senior Kyle Kerns said he loves the nonchalant social interaction of the swingers. He said he enjoyed the crowd and getting to dance with all the new faces.

“Tonight’s been a lot of fun,” Kerns said. “I’m glad we got a lot of people.”

Sly said normally an influx of 20 people meet to dance with them from 7 to 8 p.m on Sunday nights in the Finch 113 gym. Different faces float in and out, said Sly. At the beginning of last semester, she said the group had an enormous amount of incomers that has dwindled since.

She thinks that due to the fun nature of the RSO, people get busy and focus more on serious activities relating to class or future careers. But she said that the joy of swing is why she still comes every week.

“It’s something that I’m excited to come to every time,” she said. “And the fact that there’s one thing that makes me happy makes life better.”