A month ago we organized a big swing dance party in our home town Zaprešić. If the first party should had an addition in the title “Awakening”, then this one should have “From Dusk Till Dawn”

Actually, what we are trying to do is to gain some interest in swing dancing at local folk – in Zaprešić there are couple of recreational centers and occasional dance workshops, but there’s no proper dance school for adults who wants to continually learn and improve in social dancing.

When our grandparents were young, dance parties were a common thing, but surprisingly, our parents weren’t familiar with this way of entertainment. Somehow it skipped the whole generation, people our age now find it very strange, so we often deal with the questions like: “Is it OK to go alone to a dance party?” or: “What if my partner gets jealous?” etc. For such and similar questions I strongly recommend the book “A beginner’s guide to Lindy Hop” by our local superhero Janakis Lindyhopoulos. Tips can be applied to any dance, not just Lindy Hop, but also it will give you a whole lotta stuff to think about, because you cannot overthink Janakis, and that will make you feel good

Back to the subject – beside the regular dance party, we wanted to add more content and make almost a one day festival out of it. At the same time, Back to Swing was preparing the final party for the end of the season, so together we decided to unite these two events into one.

This is the entrance to Pučko otvoreno učilište Zaprešić, that is also a former cinema.

Caffe bar SchlafRock has a very charming and cozy interior, with vintage records and books. In the other room they are often held evenings of poetry and small concerts.

The crew started gathering around 6’o clock, and like always, it started with a cup of coffee, small talk and big ideas.

We thought it would be nice to start the evening with a movie – we’re in cinema after all! So, we picked “Grease”, the one with Travolta and Newton-John that everybody watched a hundred times.

A lady’s corner. Dubravka took care of girl’s hairstyles, but also brought her hand-made hair accessory. What ladies want, ladies get!

This handsome guy is not really cleaning the floor, he’s actually going crazy with the baby powder to make it more slippery.

Fine tuning of the band.

While the people were slowly warming up for the upcoming workshop, we took a few dancers with us and went to another event near by – Banovanje. It’s a kind of small summer festival that was held in Zaprešić for the first time this year, so we took the opportunity to promote our swing dance party that was just around the corner. Some of the random passengers even joined the workshop, and yes, we can say it was successful.

Dancing in the street.

Andrea and Mario held a very nice swing dance workshop for the absolute beginners. Actually, the workshop was based on musicality, so the band also joined, and it was definitely something new.

And now let me introduce you the band – Django Jet is an acoustic gypsy swing quartet, and together with the vocalist Melita Lovričević they make Mel & Django Jet. We had a great pleasure to have them with us!

When you get tired of dancing you can always move to the bar. From what we heard, people really appreciate when they can relocate to some place with another type of music, to have a chat or a drink with their friends.

Lindyhopoulos organized a game where you could vote for the best social dancer of the evening, and the winner supposed to get his book.

Girls in the vintage hairstyle corner.

About midnight it was time for Showtime – Back to Swing dancers prepared some really neat choreographies – there were nine performances, one better than the other. We had a chance to see some lindy, balboa, solo jazz, boogie woogie, shag, and even some salsa.

It was classy…

And it was fun. After the couple performances, we enjoyed the Back to Shag choreography!

The party lasted till the wee hours, when we finally threw ourselves out and went home. We should do it again sometimes. Once again, many thanks to POU Zaprešić for their help and support!
Thanks Biba (Studio Studio) for the performance photos.

If you like what you see, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram