Blog

We had a fabulous workshop in Birmingham with Jenny & Scott hosted by the amazing Swing Era.

Look at all our lovely new dancers!   Here’s our gallery of our Learn to Dance in a Day workshops of 2026 starting their new Swing Dance journey.   If you would like to join them, have a look at all our beginner workshops here.

Regular blues dancer, Dalvinder, has written about blues dancing and kindly shared it with us: 1) Dance to some awesome music… Muddy Waters, Irma Thomas and Etta James are just some of the artists you might hear when you dance the blues. Whether it’s a just one man and his guitar or a singer backed […]

Swing dancer extraordinaire Frankie Manning was a leading dancer at Harlem’s legendary Savoy Ballroom where in the mid-1930s, he revolutionised the course of the lindy hop with his innovations, including the air step. As a featured dancer and chief choreographer for the spectacular Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, he performed in numerous films (including Hellzapoppin’ (1941)), and […]

Safer dance spaces are important to us at Stompin’ the Blues and at Blues at the Ritzy. We value the safety and comfort of dancers, musicians and guests in our spaces above all else. As part of Swing Patrol, both events adhere to the Swing Patrol Code of Conduct. As described in the Code of […]

After a difficult time for us all, we were finally able to return to dancing and we kicked it all off with one our favourite events – swinging outside at Spitalfields Market.

Swing Patrol is committed to the development of a sustainable future. We recognise that climate justice is social justice, and that our everyday actions are inextricably linked to both. We are taking conscious steps to reduce our dance community’s and our company’s waste and carbon footprints. We acknowledge that if we want to keep swinging […]

We acknowledge that the core dances we teach, perform and share come from African American and Black culture, as does the jazz music we love. We acknowledge that we do so without lived experience of this culture and are deeply grateful to be able to experience this amazing art form. We endeavour to continue educating […]

We’re setting up a group that can help us all be better and represent and work on the issues we need to address and do better. Please share/recommend to any one that you think could play a positive role on such a committee. We are considering forming this committee inspired by suggestions made by Aboriginal […]

Our next phase is to plan more on-line activities and for now it was easier to add a small calendar to our Australian SP website. Check it out here. You can see that many great events are listed for the UK morning so we have highlighted some for your ease. Note that 8pm AEST means […]

We miss our classes!  While we can’t dance and learn together at the moment, we’ve been busy creating some online lessons that you be interested in. All the classes are pre-recorded and when you book, you’ll be sent an email with the links to the classes.  Please don’t share these links with others as the […]