We were lucky enough that Ahmad Siddiqi offered to help us with a movement break — sitting and critiquing for a long time gets wearying. Ahmad (who is also a novelist and I’ll likely be telling you more about his epic fantasy trilogy soon) teaches social dance in Lahore with his wife — mostly salsa, but various kinds, and for us, he taught swing.
The idea here is that while it’s partner dance, you get assigned randomly to a partner — one of you is lead, and one is follow, gender-irrelevant. And at the end of every song, you switch partners, so by the end of a night of this, you’d have danced with lots of different people — they might’ve all been strangers at first, but it’s so much fun, you’re well on your way to friendship by the end.
(I’ve done English country dance, contra dance, and square dance, which function similarly. My healing ankle only let me do a tiny bit of swing, alas, but it was still fun watching!)
LUMS, Lahore, Pakistan.
