A festival was born in 2015
Dunedin has had a small, transient lindy hop scene since it started classes at Otago University Students Association under the name of Vintage and Swing Society back in 2006. Swing Riot was born out of this scene - to differentiate itself from the student group and broaden its reach. It wasn't until 2015 though, that it had its first festival event! The Vintage Street Swing Festival.
In 2020 we went online
This was the first year we were faced with cancelling our Swing Festival. This just didn't sit right with us - so we went ONLINE!
Covid-19 brought the world to its knees. Dancing with others just seemed impossible and like a far off dream.
Swing Riot was determined to keep our crew engaged and we were running a lot of classes online throughout the national lockdown. So this seemed like a no brainer to do the same for our festival punters. Making sure as many people could access this as possible, the event was free.
Noni (Melbourne) taught a class on some not usually danced shim sham extras, Shob and Andy (Melbourne) taught a beautiful blues class and Leo (Wellington) taught a class on solo jamming choreography.
