About Us

Welcome to the Queen's Swing Club! We officially started in 1999 and launched our first membership drive in September of that year. Now we are in our fifth year of operation, and our club is well known for keeping swinging jazz music and dancing alive at Queen's and in the great city of Kingston, averaging well over 100 members each year.

During the school year, we hold weekly dances on campus as well as organizing special events such as live band nights and road trips to other cities where swing dancing is popular. We also do performances for various Queen's community events and we dance wherever we can find great jazz music in town.

Here you'll find out about our club executive, how the club formed, and what we want to accomplish. You'll also see how the dances operate and what you'll learn if you are new to dancing.

To see what a club membership has to offer, go to "join" on the left-hand menu.

Swing music and swing dancing became a popular phenomenon over the past couple of years and its popularity surfaced around 1998. Not everyone knew what "swing" was really about, but it seemed like many people at least took an interest to the new swing-influenced music heard on the radio and numerous TV ads. Many people found out that there was dancing involved and wanted to dance as well. Fortunately in Kingston, there was enough interest in swing that there were jazz bands, dance instructors, and average people who wanted to get involved.

The first executive members of the club met at the Cocamo, through learning how to dance from Fred Ngo, a new Lindy Hop instructor. He wanted to teach us where swing music came from and how people danced to it in the Lindy Hop style of the 1930s and 40s. He had the idea of getting the interest of Queen's students by forming an AMS club made up of Queen's students. We have received much guidance from Fred and others to form this club with the right intentions. We officially became an AMS club in April of 1999.