Twinwood Festival Part 3: Vintage Dancing

It's time for my final post about Twinwood Vintage Music and Dance festival and it's all about my most favourite aspect - the Dancing! 

Just as the days drew to a close, out of the dark all sorts of intimate bars and clubs sprung up, from electro swing in the woodland Glade to atmospheric jazz in the Cafe de Bois de Jumeau. 

By far the largest venue was the Dance Marquee where hundreds strutted their stuff to the sounds of Strollin' Steve. It was a great just to watch, with acrobatic tricks and full circle skirts twirling. 

It was amazing to see a whole dancefloor brought to life, especially when they played a 'stroll', an original 50s couple dance (check out the rather amusing video to the right!) which has now been modernised into a line dance format that gets everyone dancing. It's quite amazing to see such a large number of people all dancing to the same steps, like a flash mob suddenly appearing. 

My absolute favourite dance was the Charleston, full of energy and cheeky choreography. I am now on a mission to learn it properly before hitting the Twinwood dancefloor again next year. Here is a clip of jazz dance masters Al and Leon showing off their Charleston skills. 

If you fancy trying out some vintage dance, then check out these links on the Twinwood website. I can personally recommend local teachers C&BLE and Paul and Debbie from Get in the Swing.  

Happy Dancing! 

p.s. Just in case you missed them here are Twinwood Festival Part 1: Retrovert's Vintage Stall and Twinwood Festival Part 2: The Twinwood Museums.