New in Town
Shim-sham-shimmy at the Lindy Exchange
By Katherine L. Sontag
A Lindy Exchange, in which swing dancers travel to another city for a weekend of dance events, is about more than just jiving in another area code; it’s about building an international swing community. “It’s funny because you will go someplace like France and you do this amazing dance with someone, but you can’t have a conversation afterwards.” That’s Adam Curry, cochair of the first Cincinnati Lindy Exchange, which takes place August 6–8 and features a public dance to live big band music on the Purple People Bridge. Curry and cochair Ryan Quatman hope to make this an annual event and are already expecting around 140 dancers. “Swing dancing is such a jovial dance—after a while you get addicted to it,” Curry says. So why here? Why now? Curry recalls a Lindy Exchange in Boston in 2006, where he met a dancer from Ireland who invited him to visit. “We stayed in her house in Galway for a week, and danced there and in Dublin,” he says. Works for us.
Originally published in the August 2010 issue.