Leadership:  Having Swing Dance as one of my leadership during my second-year is what I consider one of my best choices of the year. This is the case because I did what I like and I never thought I would get to the level I got in these two years. We changed the Exed time into every Friday to increase the attendance of the Exed this year. At the beginning of the year, we were focusing more on teaching the East Coast Swing in which we learned the basics of Swing Dance. The process went smooth and I had a lot of fun and got to know a lot of my first-year peers better while we danced. 

Our performances this year started with at the beginning of the year as an initiative from one of our peers to attract more people to the Exed and possibly light them first sparks towards Swing Dance. This actually worked because we started this year’s Exed with 31 people which exceeded our expectations. Of all of them, more than half remained in the Exed until the end of the year!

Our next performance was in the North American Cultural day Show, which happened in September in the very beginning of the year. It was a little bit tiring to rehearse almost every night during that week and only rehearsing with a live band two nights before the actual performance. At the end of the day, we rehearsed more than the other dances in the show, but it paid off. Despite our ups and downs in these rehearsals, I was extremely honored to participate in that show.

Another performance we did was for Yule Ball and this was the first time we danced Slow Lindy Hop at the sound of Goody Goody. This is a style that most of the dancers were not comfortable with and it was challenging for them to learn the dance.

    Finally, our last performance was for the Spring Dance Concert and we did something more modern at the sound Runaway Baby by Bruno Mars. This was the only dance that didn’t have any faculty intervenience and it was really fun to do it. However, the day before performance one of the members of our group got sick and it was hard to rehearse without him especially because we exchanged partners in the middle of the dance and so we had two followers that at some point of the dance didn’t have a partner. In the end, the member performed and it was such a relief to have everyone who put an effort into this dance to be able to perform.