A free room, a live band, and someone willing to teach you the first six counts.
The Swing Arts Foundation exists so that the cost of a class, the lack of a partner, or the fear of looking foolish never keeps someone off the dance floor.
Grants and donations fund our events with live music and free lessons, open to anyone. We pay the musicians and the instructors so the dancers do not have to. Our dances and lessons are free at the door.
We also fund scholarships and class fee support for dancers who want to keep going, put on free public programs, and support projects, performances, and spaces that keep swing a living art form rather than a museum piece.
Swing dance came from Black American communities, and it survived because people taught each other in rooms that were open to them. We try to run rooms like that: easy to walk into, easy to learn in, and worth coming back to.
What we hold to
Free at the door
Grants and donations pay the band, the floor, and the teachers. Nobody is asked for money to dance, and nobody is asked to explain why they cannot pay.
Anyone can lead, anyone can follow
We teach leads and follows, not men's parts and women's parts. You can learn either one, switch whenever you like, and dance with whoever you want.
Come alone
No partner needed. We rotate during lessons, and there are always people at our events whose job is to ask new dancers to dance.
Say the practical things out loud
Every event listing tells you the cost, the floor, the restrooms, the transit, and the parking before you leave the house.
Jennifer Lee
Founder
Jennifer discovered swing dancing during medical school and found far more than a hobby in it: community, connection, and belonging.
She started the Swing Arts Foundation to create meaningful, collaborative opportunities that uplift and center BIPOC, queer, and underrepresented dancers, especially those facing financial or accessibility barriers.
The Foundation exists to amplify voices that have historically been excluded from the dance community. It does that with events that are free at the door, lessons that require no partner, scholarships for people who want to keep learning, and rooms that are easy to walk into.
Jennifer runs the programming and books the bands. She is the person who answers the email.
Accessibility and access
What access means at our events
This is what we publish for every event, and how to ask for something we have not thought of.
Getting in and moving around
Every listing states whether there are accessible restrooms, what the floor is made of, and how to reach it by transit or car. Where a venue falls short, we say so in the listing rather than leaving it out.
Asking for something
Seating, a quieter space, an ASL interpreter, a description of the route from the parking garage: email Jennlee@swingartsfoundation.org. Jennifer Lee answers that address. Give us two weeks where you can, and ask anyway when you cannot.
Funded by grants and donations, so the door stays open
Grants and donations pay the musicians, the instructors, the venue, and the sound. That is the whole model: money arrives before the event, so nothing has to be collected at the door.
With support from
City of SeaTac
Bellevue Community Programming Fund
City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture
Come to one
You do not need a partner, a lesson behind you, or anything but shoes you can turn in.