Swing Des Moines serves as Artists in Residence at Western Hills Elementary

It's hard to say who had more fun - the teachers or the students - last week as Swing Des Moines served as the Artists in Residence at Western Hills Elementary.

Many of you may already know that one of Swing Des Moines' purposes is to work with area schools to educate students not only in the art of America's Folk Dance - Swing dancing - but also in the history behind the dance. We had another chance to do just that last week.

The week kicked off with an all-school assembly featuring Capitol City Swing, our performance troupe, showing the kids (and teachers) our hour-long presentation covering the entire swing era. The kids particularly liked the Charleston, the Shim Sham, and East Coast swing (which we danced to Great Balls of Fire). We ended the assembly by letting all the kids get up and learn a few steps as a preview to what they'd learn in their PE classes that week.

Then we had each class twice over the course of the next four days during their PE time. Students learned 20s Charleston - from Kindergarten all the way up through Sixth grade. They all seemed to just love it.

And the teachers seemed to have a great time, too. The kids were just so fun to be with - particularly the littler kids. A few of the kindergarteners preferred to hold hands while learning new steps. One of the first graders took a particular interest in helping Wally to get the steps right. Some of the older students developed elaborate group poses for Posin'. It was great.



Swing Des Moines owes a huge thanks to Mike Dennis and Kevin Spencer for taking on this project. Mike was at the school all four days, and Kevin was there for three of the four. They did the bulk of the work, that's for certain. Randy and I helped out on Thursday, but I feel like we did very little while we were there.

You can view our photo stream from the event here. I failed to take a camera to the assembly, and wouldn't have had time to photograph anyway. The pictures show the Thursday classes, and Kevin is missing because that's the one day he wasn't there. I'm sorry Kevin!! If anyone else took pictures at the event, please add them!

There is also a small write-up at the Register here.