The UConn Swing and Blues club performing a flash mob in Edwina Whitney Dining Hall on Monday night. (photo courtesy of Abishek arokiadoss/UConn Swing and Blues)
The UConn Swing and Blues club performed a flash mob in Edwina Whitney Dining Hall on Monday night.
A group of approximately 10 students in Swing and Blues shirts broke out into free-style partner swing dancing in Whitney Dining Hall shortly after 6 p.m.
“It was really great, people were clapping at the end, people seemed to enjoy it,” Erika Cavanaugh, the club’s marketing chair and sixth-semester nutritional science major, said
Cavanaugh said the event was a way to get the word out about Swing and Blues to the student body.
“A lot of people either have misconceptions about what swing and blues dancing is, or do not even know about it,” Cavanaugh said. “This way, they can see that we are a fun, inclusive club that is great for anyone that wants to learn.”
Abishek Arokiadoss, the club’s outreach coordinator and fourth-semester physiology and neurobiology major, said the flash mobs are a way for the club to show off what they do at their weekly dances.
“Not as many people come to the club as we’d like,” Arokiadoss said. “[The flash mobs] are a fun way to show UConn what swing and blues dancing is.”
Cavanaugh said the club has done “Lindy Bombs” since the club started three years ago. Lindy Bombs are flash mobs with “lindy hop” style swing dancing.
“These flash mobs, or as we call them, ‘lindy bombs’ are a lot of fun,” Swing and Blues president Hannah Nuzzo-Hawthorn, an eighth-semester psychology major said. “It changes the scenery of where we usually dance, which our members love. It usually has a great turn out, and we always get positive feedback from them.”
Arokiadoss said he first joined the club after seeing one of the Lindy Bombs.
“I first saw them [UConn Swing and Blues] in a Lindy Bomb and I thought that looked like a fun style of dancing and I was looking for a club to join my first semester anyway,” Arokiadoss said.
Arokiadoss said this is one of the most effective ways to recruit new members.
“This is definitely one of the most successful ways to get people to come to our weekly dances,” Arokiadoss said.
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“[The flash mobs] are a fun way to show UConn what swing and blues dancing is.”
Cavanaugh said this is the first time the club has organized a flash mob in a dining hall.
“We chose a dining hall because right now, it’s too cold to dance outside, and everyone needs to eat at some point, so there will be a lot of eyes on us,” Nuzzo-Hawthorne said.
Many students took photos and videos of the dancers.
“It was great, I loved it,” Tiany Zhang, a second-semester micro and cellular biology major who was in the dining hall during the flash mob, said.
Zhang said the event peaked his interested in swing dancing.
“I’ve never taken a dance class and it made me really interested in it, so it was nice,” Zhang said.
Kay Wilcox, a fourth-semester international relations and human rights double major, said she hopes people feel welcomed at the club.
“UConn Swing and Blues is really excited to create a safe space to dance,” Wilcox said. “We want people to feel welcomed, it’s so much fun.”
UConn Swing and Blues holds free weekly dances on Tuesdays from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Storrs Congressional Church.
Anna Zarra Aldrich is a staff writer for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at anna.aldrich@uconn.edu. She tweets @ZarraAnna.