Have more dance fun without injuries! Learn how to warm up for social dancing and protect your joints with foundational ballet exercises led by Meaghan Efford.
Meaghan is classically trained in ballet, jazz, contemporary, and other styles. She completed her four-year professional dance training at Ballet San Jose in California, before working as a Corps de Ballet dancer here in Canada. She now dances and competes in West Coast Swing, and is in the Swing Literacy Development Method Teacher Training Program.
In this class Meaghan will lead you through foundational ballet exercises and movements to help build your strength and range of motion, conditioning you into a stronger, more well rounded dancer! After taking this workshop, you’ll know specific exercises to help you warm up for social dancing and take care of your body. You’ll get stronger, be able to protect your joints, and have more fun dancing West Coast Swing without injuries!
No experience required, but a chair is recommended for balance.
When: Wed July 8th at 7 – 8 pm Vancouver time (the meeting will be open from 6:45 pm) Price: By donation (recommended donation $5) Donate at: https://tinyurl.com/donateBCSDC Donations are used to pay our amazing teachers Where: Zoom Video Class
Add more groove to your West Coast Swing. Join us on Wed June 24th for a fun virtual solo dance class taught by our fellow westie Celina Villarroel Whiting.
Celina began her dance journey at the age of 8, starting with Modern dance and then expanding her training to include Contemporary, Jazz, Ballet, Hip Hop, Salsa, Ballroom, Brazilian Samba, Dancehall, and West Coast Swing. She is a professional dancer and instructor with past credits that include music videos, corporate performances, theatre shows, and dance competitions. She is a graduate from SFU with a BSc. Kinesiology and also works as a Practicing Kinesiologist alongside her dance career. Her expertise in both dance and kinesiology allows her to help teach her students to master their own unique movement.
Join us for Celina’s class and learn fun solo moves you can use in West Coast Swing.
When: Wed June 24th at 7 – 8 pm Vancouver time (the meeting will be open from 6:30 pm, feel free to join early to make sure everything is set up correctly on your end before the class starts at 7 pm) Price: By donation (recommended donation $5) (donation link will be shared during the class) Where: Zoom Video Class
While finally getting to all those household chores is fun, I think we all agree that we miss dancing! The Board would like to help, but we don’t know how best to focus our efforts.
We have created a short survey at the link below. Please consider filling it out (should take 1 to 2 minutes max) which will help us orientate ourselves. https://forms.gle/XT8DZCL8hUQbWDvC7
The world is an interesting place right now. Lots of things changed and big changes came to our dance too. It is great time to focus more on other hobbies but there is no need to leave west coast swing behind. We can’t meet and social dance right now but we can still have fun and enjoy the dance in other forms!
The world of west coast swing is adapting to the current situation and we want to make sure that you know how to keep connected to west coast swing even now. There are online west coast swing shows, classes, workshops and more. We’ve listed some options and resources below.
Let’s start with a few events coming up in the next few days:
“West Coast Swing Pros will share their art with you during this crazy time, with whomever they are with and wherever they are quarantined at. That may mean some pros will be dancing with their significant others, their traditional dance partner, their children, their parents, or they might even freestyle solo dance. Our hope is simply to provide a space where the Pros can share their art and joy of movement with the global West Coast Swing community.
The show will be held LIVE on April 10th, 2020 at 5:30pm Pacific. If you are unable to view it LIVE, a recording will be posted in the learning portal for later enjoyment!! The show order will be randomized as is the DJ that will choose each “households” song.”
“As a summit participant, you will have access to 8 LIVE-online classes and 2 LIVE Bonus classes over the course of the two days. Each of these instructors will teach material that is geared towards ALL-levels (Novice-Champion).
This summit can truly impact your dance as you will discover specific ways to continuously grow your dance from wherever you are in the world.
One of the best parts is all the lessons are recorded. As a registered participant, you will have life-long access to the recordings from this summit. Even if you are not able to make it to the LIVE lesson, you will still be able to access the material at a time that best suits your schedule.”
Zoom Westie Fest 2!
When: Saturday April 18 at 12 noon Pacific Time Cost: By donation (Can be attended completely for free. Recommended donations are listed at the link below.) Click here for more info or to register.
Learn, watch or just hang out virtually with other people:
“Ben Morris will teach a workshop for those of you that have partners, Glenn and Emeline will teach a solo styling line dance choreographed just for this event, then we’ll have awesome music you can dance to…and you’ll be able to see others dancing as well so you can vibe off each other like at a real dance.”
Find more events like the ones listed above
For more online westie opportunities check following resources:
Virtual Westie (website): Click here for list of online wcs learning platforms.
Online West Coast Swing Opportunities (Facebook Group): Click here to see one off events, classes, intensives, online hangouts and other wcs online opportunities.
WCS Professionals Online (Google Calendar) Calendar displaying online wcs opportunities (most events list all the necessary details about how to join the event but some of the events are missing these details so it takes a bit of Googling to find it). Click here to view the calendar. If you’d like to add the calendar to your Google Account please click here.
Stay safe and hopefully we’ll see you soon on the real non-virtual dance floor.
