Boston Swing Central @ The Crosby Whistle Stop

24 Roland St, Charlestown MA

How to get there…

Via Car:

From South/West of Boston: Take 93N to exit 28 toward MA-99/Sullivan Square/Somerville, turn left @ Cambridge St, left @ Carter St, left @ Roland St.
From North of Boston: Take 93S to exit 28 toward Sullivan Square/Charlestown , continue straight & take the ramp to Sullivan Square/Charlestown, Merge onto Maffa Way, turn right @ Cambridge St, left @ Carter St, left @ Roland St.

PARKING: Here is a MAP of where it is permissible to park. Areas in red park at your own risk. We’re still talking to other owners and will update this. One option if everything looks full is Patriot parking by the Sullivan T. It’s a 7 minute walk and it’s free when there’s no events at Fenway or the Garden (they should have these posted).

Via the T:

Take the Orange Line to the Sullivan Square T Station - Trains run roughly every 13 mins.
(Connect via Green Line @ North Station, Connect via Red Line @ Downtown Crossing)
(Last train leaves Sullivan Sq station at 12:26am)

Walking from the T station:

Looking out from the front door of the station, turn right, that street is Cambridge St, take a right, go under the freeway, turn left at the liquor store onto Carter St, Tavern at the End of the World will be on your right, go to the end of the block and turn left at Roland St, the Whistle Stop is the brick building on your right at the end of the street.

Via the Bus:

Davis Square - 89 leaves @ 6:38pm/ 7:08/ 7:55/ 8:40 | 90 leaves @ 6:45pm/ 7:30/ 8:30

Porter Square - No direct bus, but the 90 stops at Highland & Cedar St. (from Davis)

Harvard Square - 86 leaves @ 6:38pm/ 6:55/ 7:08/ 7:22/ 7:42/ 8:02/ 8:27/ 8:52

Central Square - 91 leaves @ 6:50pm/ 7:45/ 8:45

Union Square - 91 leaves @ 7:00pm / 7:52 / 8:52 | CT2 leaves @ 6:46pm/ 7:19

Kendall Square - CT2 leaves @ 6:38pm/ 7:11

Powderhouse/Teale/Tufts - 89 leaves @ 6:52pm/ 7:22

Chestnut Hill (Reservoir) - 86 leaves @ 6:22pm/ 6:39/ 6:55/ 7:10/ 7:30/ 7:50/ 8:15/ 8:40

Fenway- CT2 leaves @ 6:24pm/ 6:59

Organization Description and Mission

Boston Swing Central is an organization dedicated to promoting and ensuring the continued existence of the Lindy Hop and related dances through learning and teaching. The Lindy Hop is an American form of swing dancing that originated in the ballrooms of Harlem during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Supporting the continued existence of this American art form includes supporting a network of teachers, jazz bands, and dancers in the Boston area. It is a volunteer run organization for swing dancers, by swing dancers. It supports a core group of several hundred regular dancers as well as the public at large that is interested in learning this form of dancing.

In order to preserve and forward Lindy Hop, this business provides a combination of both lessons and community dances to practice and reinforce the skills learned in formal lessons. In order to truly learn how to dance, it is important to practice what is learned on a frequent basis by listening and dancing to music .

The demographics of attendees reach across all races and ages that populate Boston and the surrounding communities. Attendees are anywhere from 18 to 85, and it is a true melting pot that brings disparate members of the community together. Attendees have been dancing from one year to 50 years, and many have been dancing three or more years.

Board Members/owners have been dancing from 2 to 13 years, and have experience running several other dances or teaching in the community throughout this time.

Current Operations

For the past two years, Boston Swing Central has been running a Friday night community dance in the basements of churches, community centers such as the YMCA, and Dance Studios in Cambridge and Medford. This dance includes an hour long beginning lesson, followed by 3 hours of dancing with DJ’d or live jazz musicians that are regional to national. During the Friday night dance, coaches (called Angels) are available for 1.5 hours, and teachers remain available for further instruction throughout the evening to provide assistance as requested by attendees. This is run with two board members/owners present who organize a group of 5 to 10 volunteers to run the operations.

Other community events and lessons offered for free by the organization include:

· Lessons that are held regularly several times (4 to 6 times per year) throughout the community by members of the organization at no charge. These are held at community centers or college campuses, and are considered to be community outreach activities. Students receive formal instruction for 1 to 2 hour hours once a week for a 4 week period, followed by a practice session with music.

· Community dances upon request, and has held a swing dance at the Community Boat House for the past two years in the summer, raising over $2,500 towards the youth boating program. Over 300 people participated.

· Free outdoor dances and lessons in the summer at various locations throughout Boston. This is a one hour lesson followed by 2 hours of open dancing. Permits are acquired from the Department of Parks and Recreation.

At no time during its 2 year history have any incidents occurred at any Boston Swing Central event that required intervention by Boston, Cambridge, or Medford police or other emergency service personnel. Nor have there been any incidents requiring intervention from independent security personnel, or venue staff. There is no alcohol served or permitted at any of these events.

Additional Future Operations

The Organization is in the process of acquiring its non-profit status in 2010 and is currently working on submission of its non-profit application.

After two years of operation, Boston Swing Central is also seeking a permanent space within the city of Boston at 24 Roland Street in Charlestown, MA to hold workshops and additional lessons during the week. Specifically, we plan to offer the following in the near future:

· Tuesday night lessons from 7pm-9pm, which include 1 hour of beginning instruction followed by 1 hour of intermediate instruction. Lessons would be followed by a two hour community dance to practice skills learned in the lesson. Teachers will be available for assistance during open dancing.

· Wednesday night dance team practice session and lessons for advanced dancers for 2 hours (7pm to 9pm)

· Use by local and international instructors for private dance instruction on other nights during the week.

· Monthly workshops held on the weekends. These would be intensive sessions lasting from 4 hours to 2 or 3 days, focusing on a series of lessons. These would be lead by Boston Swing Central Instructors, outside local instructors, or international instructors.

Intermediate Classes - Starting April 10th!!!

Boston Swing Central is excited to announce we will be offering a new intermediate lesson series beginning this Friday, April 10^th from 8-9PM! This series is designed for dancers that have taken a minimum of 4 beginning lessons through Boston Swing Central or another studio.

Our first series will be offered for free as a pilot. If classes are well attended, we will continue our intermediate lesson with a charge of $5 per lesson to cover the instructor fees. Please give us your feedback as we look to make this a regular offering at our Friday night dances.

Class Series Description

This series is geared toward beginning/intermediate dancers who are learning or improving their Lindy Basics.

April 10^th, Class 1: Breaking Down the Basics. Nina and Dan always get to the beginning, even when we start from the middle. This class will take the basics of Lindy Hop and break them down into their fundamentals: rhythm and connection. Expect individual pointers and get ready to work your basics.

April 17^th, Class 2: The Swing Out. This class will take the rhythm and connection from week one and work them into your social dancing. We’ll also cover Dan’s version of “Everything you need to know about social dancing.”

April 24^th, Class 3: Jazz Steps are Awesome. How awesome? SO awesome. Learn to incorporate these classic influences into your dancing. We may even cover other influences, from Fred and Ginger to Argentine Tango.

May 1^st, Class 4: Musicality. It’s never too soon to start dancing to the music. Learn to dance to the phrases, breaks and syncopation within a song. Hear some of our favorite music and learn to dance to yours.

About our Teachers

Dan Pederson hails from California, most recently from LA. He has a smooth style to his dancing and favors a strong connection on the dance floor. Dan also loves to pull out his John Travolta Saturday Night Fever arm-raise whenever possible.

Nina Current is a Minnesota native, but has been in Boston for the past 5 years. She’s got a funky groove to her dancing and enjoys the connection and conversation between partners. And Nina’s got a mild obsession with hip swivels and camel walks.

Dan and Nina have a lively and fun presence as teachers, and have been teaching together in Boston for a little over a year and a half. Their classes focus on connection, musicality and creative improvisation. During lessons, you’ll likely find Dan saying incredibly goofy things and Nina using Dan as a microphone to get the class’s attention. They will keep you moving and keep you laughing as they teach you the tools you need to develop your Lindy skills. They also suggest that you watch out for poles.

The following instructors have taught or will teach at the Boston Swing Central dance.

Grand Opening at the Crosby Whistle Stop
May 14, 2010
Photos by Zac Wine

BSC Dance at Extreme Dancesport - February 2010

The Crosby Whistle Stop - our new Venue! March 2010

The following bands have played or will be playing at the Boston Swing Central dance.

Space Update 6/13/2010

We’ve been having some amazing dances since we’ve opened on May 14, 2010! Thanks to all of you that have come out once or regularly to support us. You’ll all be happy to know that we passed our zoning hearing on June 8th! But we could still use some more letters in support of our license hearing on June 21st. See below for instructions.

SAMPLE LICENSING LETTER AND INSTRUCTIONS

Below is a sample letter, but please feel free to alter and make this your own voice!

Letters can be brought to our dance, or mailed to:

Patricia A Malone, Director

Major’s Office of Consumer Affairs and licensing

Room 817,

Boston City Hall,

Boston, MA 02201

SAMPLE LETTER

Betty Draper

1234 Dreamy 60s House

Suburban NY, NY 01234

June 10, 2010

Patricia A Malone, Director

Major’s Office of Consumer Affairs and licensing

Room 817,

Boston City Hall,

Boston, MA 02201

Dear Director Malone:

I am a resident of <insert city> and a regular attendee at Boston Swing Central, a small business that runs community swing dances and lessons. Boston Swing Central is in the process of relocating their business to 24 Roland Street in Charlestown, MA. They applied to use this space as a studio/dance hall. This was approved as a use by the Inspectional Services Department through a hearing on June 8th, 2010. A request for a 7 day license was submitted to your office in early May to continue their operations running evening community dances, which often feature live and/or DJ’d music.

This organization is important to me because…..<describe why this dance is important to you>.

Please grant their application for the appropriate licenses to operate their dances with the live entertainment that is so vital to their business. It is in an industrial area far away from any residential areas, so there would be no impact to any noise from music in the evenings. Granting their license would mean a lot to the community and myself.

Sincerely,

Boston Swing Central is a volunteer-run organization run by dancers for dancers. In addition to the Board Members, BSC has the help of Volunteers, Angels, Instructors, Bands, and DJs.

The BSC Board members are:

Boston Swing Dance Studios:

New School Swing (formerly It’s All Swing) - Every Tuesday and Wednesday at the Crosby Whistle Stop!
Hop to the Beat
Independently Blue Studios

Boston Swing and Related Dances

Blues Cafe - Monthly Saturday dance.
Uptown Swing - Monthly Saturday dance.
Boston Swing Dance Network - Monthly Saturday dance.
Blues Union - Weekly Thursday blues dance
Five Guys Named Mike - Every Monday night.
MIT Lindy Hop Society - Every Wednesday night.
DanceNet - General Boston partner dance information.

Swing Discussion Boards

Miscellaneous

Zac Wine - An excellent photographer who regularly takes beautiful pictures at our dances.
Lisa Polucci - A photographer who provided a lot of the photographs for this website. Thanks Lisa!
Dancing Feats - A good venue to learn west coast dancing.

Get into the dance for free!

Want to get into the dance for free and help us ensure that our dances run smoothly? Then give us an hour of your time as a volunteer! Email volunteer@bostonswingcentral.org for more info and to sign up. Please note that you will have to correspond with our volunteer coordinator before the date of the dance to work out your spot on the schedule!

Get into the dance for 1/2 off!

We have spent many long hours brainstorming how to create the kind of atmosphere that we want our swing dances to be, which is to say, the kind of dance that WE would want to go to, and our Angel Crew is one of the entities that emerged from the storm. We realized that one of the toughest parts about getting into a new swing dance scene is just getting up the courage to ask new people to dance! So we created the Angel Crew to help ease that experience.

The BSC Angels are a crew of volunteers who spend at least a half hour at a BSC dance wandering around looking for new faces - including newer dancers, people who just moved to town, or dancers that have been here for a while that they just haven’t met yet - then they ask them to dance! Being an Angel doesn’t have so much to do with dance ability (the minimum requirement is that they are able to keep themselves and their partner safe on the dance floor), instead it’s all about being welcoming and friendly and being able to engage and encourage people who have that unsure look about them. Ultimately it’s really about having FUN!

Another goal of the Angel Crew is to be a resource for new dancers – you should feel free to grab them and ask them about a particular move, dance etiquette, or dance shoes, etc.

Angels will be wearing a light blue or white bandana, so look for one at your next BSC event and ask them to dance!