Dancing for unity

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Courtesy of Andrew Kuczmarski/THE REVIEW
The swing club dances to distract from Milo’s talk. Pictured above is the swing club dancing this past spring

BY GRACE MCKENNA
SENIOR REPORTER

As the songs begin, dancers crowd around a couple who are skipping, jumping, spinning and clapping. The dance circle claps in time with the speed of the music to encourage more people to hop in the middle and show off their moves. Splits, spins, kicks and other wild movements of the swing dancers are responded with shouts and whistles by the ever-growing crowd.

Senior Keenan Faison has been a part of Swing Club for the past four years. He has been to almost all of their practices and workshops but never to something like Monday night’s event at Unity Fair, the workshop designed for people to come and celebrate their differences.

“I’m at this event so I would not protest Milo Yiannopoulos,” Faison says. “I’m taking the high road this way, because he can say and do all the hateful things but he will know that we will respond by joining together for a safe and inclusive community.”

Swing Club hosted a workshop to teach newcomers how to dance swing style and promote the openness of an inclusive community at the university. They encouraged people to dance in the traditional ’50s style to songs like “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

They hosted this dance to encourage students to come and dance out their emotions while also looking around at the booths that Unity Fair had to offer. Julianne Ferrill, the president of the Swing Club, says the event was a good place for students to come have a positive outlook on the night’s events.

“This is a safe place for people to feel included and at home,” Ferrill says. “Here, they are able to be themselves instead of honing frustration and being angry about what’s taking place tonight.”

Ferrill says the fair was a great way to encourage students to remain happy and calm. Rather than spending the night protesting dangerously in the dark, they came and learned from many RSOs and departments on campus.

Another student attending the event with the Swing Club was Margaret McClosky. She says she felt that many of the students and faculty present at the fair were allies to the cause of a safe space, just as the Swing Club was.

“The idea of the swing club being here is that we don’t want anybody to feel uncomfortable on campus,” McClosky says.

Both Ferrill and McClosky were true to their words throughout the night. Encouraging people to dance with strangers and meet somebody new, they also allowed people to dance alone and stay within their comfort zones. In one corner, Ferrill was teaching a lesson to newcomers about the basics of swing dancing. In another, McClosky and Swing Club Vice President Kyle Seymour were dancing so fast they looked like a blur.

Students wandered around from booth to booth, all stopping by the dancing in the back of the room to get a feel for the event. When the police officers showed up, instead of trying to calm the chaos of the dancers, the swing group danced away as if nothing was happening.

“This event is affecting everybody who attends the university and all the people who are here tonight,” Ferrill says. “ We have created this community to provide a safe space and an area for everybody to potentially meet somebody who thinks similarly to them.”

If there was music, there was dancing, that was all — no hesitation in the differences among people, no exclusions. McClosky agrees with Ferrill in thinking that the people dancing had higher spirits and were happier than people not attending the event. It was a community built on promoting happiness and safety.

“There are people out there who feel alone and when they come to events like this that are a safe place against what’s happening elsewhere, they don’t have to feel alone anymore,” McClosky says.