Dance Camps vs exchanges

I just sent in my registration for Swingout Northwest, a swing camp that takes place every other year during the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's a good time for me because I don't usually see a big demand for dance lessons that week. (This year, however, I may miss a gig now that I'm performing with the Tinamania show.) Two years ago I noticed a serious decline in the skill level of the students. Four years ago, an intermediate Balboa class meant you had to have the basics down cold or you were lost. At the last camp, intermediate Bal students were people who had just taken beginning Bal the day before. There were no advance students, to say the least. Discussing the phenomenon with Sylvia Sykes, she said she thought it was due to the popularity of Lindy Exchanges. A lindy exchange is a custom we started several years ago when a bunch of dancers from SF went to Chicago and stayed in the homes of the local dance community. We returned the favor, and a trend began. Now exchanges happen all over the world. You can go to another place and dance, with no instruction and a lot less money so a lot of people are going to exchanges instead of camps. Now I feel like a real old timer, reminiscing about the old days, but here I go anyway. In the early days of the Lindy Hop revival, there was a lot of emphasis on learning the dance, getting better and better, experiencing new teachers from far off places, etc. I have to agree with Sylvia that along with the popularity of Lindy Exchanges, has come an increase in sloppy dancing. I'll be interested to see if this year brings a change for the better, particularly in Balboa. For those of you confused by the terminology, Bal is a dance from the swing era usually dance to very fast music. It's a difficult dance, but not physically tiring. There has been considerable renewed interest in it in this area in the last couple of years so I'm hoping that interest will show up at Swingout Northwest. Stay tuned!