shag

Weekly Tuesday Night Swing Dance – Third Coast Swing

/ Cassidy Kuchenbecker / Leave a comment

You spend the week often isolated, in front of screens, toiling away. Then your dance night comes around and you see people you recognize, some you know deeply. You move your body and you sink into the music. Sometimes you dance until you can’t. Sometimes you mostly sit and chat. The night is what you needed it to be that week.

Social dancing is…special. It hits in a deeply humanizing way. You are connecting with people individually and collectively. You are physically challenging yourself at the pace that is comfortable for you. You start to recognize people at other music and dance events and suddenly you know you are in a true community. Whether you enjoy swing, Latin, ballroom, contra, or contact improvisation dance – you understand that feeling of going out to social dance.

Since 2023 Falcon Bowl has been hosting the weekly Tuesday night live band swing dance that is put on by the dancer/band collaboration called Third Coast Swing. The dance typically has between 80 and 120 swing/blues dancers on the spacious 2,000 ft2 wood ballroom floor in front of around 12 rotating bands. The night starts with a 1-hour basic swing dance lesson designed both for people who have never danced and those who are looking to refine their skills. The band then plays their hearts out for two hours. If you’ve been to this dance, you know how impassioned both the dancers and bands can be.

If you haven’t yet tried swing dancing or have been to the Tuesday night dance, you are missing out. Come at 7:00 for that basic lesson or 8:00 to 10:00 for the band. The event is free to enter. The instructors, hosts, and organizers are volunteers. The bands gets paid through tips only. If you enjoy the show, please tip the band to keep it going.

Falcon Bowl is located at 801 East Clarke Street, Milwaukee.

If you want to swing dance but Tuesday is not your night, see the Milwaukee Stomp dance calendar to find more dance options throughout Milwaukee.

Bix Fest is Back! – March 12-15

/ Cassidy Kuchenbecker / Leave a comment

“A Tribute to Bix Fest” is a weekend-long swing jazz fest in Mt. Pleasant celebrating Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke. Bix was a musical prodigy that lived hard, died young, and made an unforgettable impact on trad and early swing jazz. Learn more about Bix here. This yearly fest started in 1989 as a ‘birthday party to Bix’ by the early jazz enthusiast Phil Pospychala. It grew over the next 31 years to be a destination for some of the best known hot jazz bands, rare 78 disc collectors, and the dancers and jazz aficionados that filled the crowd.

The last fest occurred a month before the COVID shutdown. For some, this was the last music/dance event for several years. But like the legend of Bix himself, the fest lives on and has been resurrected by the efforts of Jack Garrison, Allissa Norland, and others. With new Grand Masters also comes a few new events. Shag and Balboa lessons and vintage clothing vendors that will be joining the usual band concerts, record vendors, late night jam sessions, movies, and such. The content/level of the Shag and Balboa lessons will modulate based on the attendees.

The band list is impressive with both local talent from Milwaukee and Chicago and bands from around the US. The music is true to Bix’s time of being 1920 and earlier 1930s-inspired. For newer Milwaukee dancers who are wondering exactly what that sounds like, think The Sweet Sheiks and The Westerlees (which are both playing Friday night!).

You can see the schedule and buy day passes or a whole weekend pass by clicking here. The organizers are offering a $25 off of Full Weekend Passes discount for dancers at https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/544LERR2QUBXS. They are also offering $10 off the a-la-carte passes at the door for dancers.

If you go for just a day – try to do the whole day. If you can stretch that weekend a bit earlier, then join the Thursday “Bus Tour to Hell” – a 9:00 to 5:00 bus tour of Chicago’s early jazz history. Jack will be leading this guided tour. He says, “We sniff the molecules, as Phil would say, and take in the spots where jazz history was made”. Jack is currently working to include entering a space where recordings were made and speakeasy bar at the end of the tour.

After the bus tour, we go back to the hotel for the round-robin record spinning by the vendors. Jack says that “You will hear music that – in some cases – only exists on the one copy of the 78 RPM disc in that room.”

Events like this are rare. To have it just a 40 minute drive from Milwaukee is a treat indeed.