30/05/2015
Location: 'Forever Dance' (Fridays - Fortnightly)
1/432 Church St, Richmond
'Fun Pit' is a great social dancing event that I can highly recommend, especially when you’re new in town.
I’m talking from experience here ;-) because the very first time I made it to a dance floor in Melbourne was on a Fun Pit Friday in Richmond. I had missed finding a class or social dance on my actual birthday, which was only a few days after I’d arrived in Aussie so my first time social dancing was supposed to make up for that … and it certainly did!
Back in England I had tried to prepare by practicing asking strangers to dance. Most of the time it hadn’t worked out too well as I already knew most of the people around me but I did try it at the Swing Patrol Christmas Ball in London (and almost cancelled my flight afterwards because of it)!
However, at the Swing Festival in Edinburgh, it worked out a lot better and on the last night I even found myself with really good stranger dancers on the dance floor :-). It’s still not an easy exercise for me and being all alone doesn’t quite help.
The reason I mention this is because I left the Fun Pit that night feeling extremely happy and had to laugh at myself at how unnecessary it had been to worry about such a silly thing at all.
This is no joke but I didn’t even have time to break the barrier and approach somebody because not a single song was played without somebody walking up to me to ask for a dance. It wasn’t even only one dance! Every single time I was offered a second one, as apparently it was fun :-). I heard that was tradition in some countries. I have to say I like Australia :-).
Everyone was super friendly and danced at a really good level. I was also impressed at how many people turned up. That was definitely one of the moments I realised how much bigger Melbourne is in comparison to Brighton. Back home that amount of dancers would show up for a special event but not for a bit of social dancing after a couple of classes!
Talking of classes, at my second time at the Fun Pit, I tried a level 1 class with Tanya and Joel, who are really cool teachers I must say. I liked the way they broke down the basic steps for beginners plus the nice little move we learnt where everyone had to ‘shake’ at the end. Again I managed not to leave without the interviews.
'Fun Pit' is a great social dancing event that I can highly recommend, especially when you’re new in town.
I’m talking from experience here ;-) because the very first time I made it to a dance floor in Melbourne was on a Fun Pit Friday in Richmond. I had missed finding a class or social dance on my actual birthday, which was only a few days after I’d arrived in Aussie so my first time social dancing was supposed to make up for that … and it certainly did!
Back in England I had tried to prepare by practicing asking strangers to dance. Most of the time it hadn’t worked out too well as I already knew most of the people around me but I did try it at the Swing Patrol Christmas Ball in London (and almost cancelled my flight afterwards because of it)! However, at the Swing Festival in Edinburgh, it worked out a lot better and on the last night I even found myself with really good stranger dancers on the dance floor :-). It’s still not an easy exercise for me and being all alone doesn’t quite help.
The reason I mention this is because I left the Fun Pit that night feeling extremely happy and had to laugh at myself at how unnecessary it had been to worry about such a silly thing at all.
This is no joke but I didn’t even have time to break the barrier and approach somebody because not a single song was played without somebody walking up to me to ask for a dance. It wasn’t even only one dance! Every single time I was offered a second one, as apparently it was fun :-). I heard that was tradition in some countries. I have to say I like Australia :-).
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| He didn't want to dance! |
Talking of classes, at my second time at the Fun Pit, I tried a level 1 class with Tanya and Joel, who are really cool teachers I must say. I liked the way they broke down the basic steps for beginners plus the nice little move we learnt where everyone had to ‘shake’ at the end. Again I managed not to leave without the interviews.
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