How To Do The Swing Dance Trick Called The Window Shade

Yesterday I wrote about social dancing and Dancing with the Stars, and I told the story of a fellow I knew years ago who taught me how to do a swing dance trick called the Window Shade. When I looked for a video of it to link to, I couldn’t actually find one on YouTube. I linked to a five-minute video of a couple dancing country swing, but there’s lots of other dancing on there besides that one move. It’s great, and you can see the move if you know where it is and what it looks like, but it’s not just the move by itself, or a break down of how to do it.

I’ve wanted to do more video production and was thinking of starting to make a few teaching videos. I used to teach and perform dance for a living, and I wish I thought about using YouTube for that years ago. I did make a DVD about early twentieth-century social dance (including swing) in 2005, which is more about the history than a break down of the steps, but I may try to put some of those up online if I can. Now YouTube is riddled with dance videos, so why not mine?

I don’t dance as much as I used to, so I’m a little out of practice (and out of shape), but I thought that making some videos might be a good way to get back into practice (and into shape). NaBloPoMo is also about daring myself to try new things and take risks. Since I couldn’t find the Window Shade online, I figured what better reason to start making my own videos?

So here you have it: A teaching video of the cool swing move called The Window Shade! Hope you enjoy it and learn from it.