DUSS’s first ever brunch and flashmob went down well with a large audience watching our strolls and social dancing in the sunshine of market square. Our final event of Epiphany term was re-cake with cake, which included lovely social dancing with way too much cake, a blindfolded dancing competition won by James and Cathryn and a game of Lindy Hop Against Humanity with extra DUSS cards.
So up next is a trip to Swing Revolution and lots of Summer Swing organising for me to do. Good luck to the new exec; I’m sure Susanne and James will be as awesome at being President as I was!
DUSS enjoys Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Hop
Jack, Luna and James represented DUSS at Edinburgh’s University of Swing, James even returned with 3rd place in newbie Jack and Jill!
A group of 14 Durhamites invaded York’s Whip- Ma- Whop- Ma- Hop for what would be many people's first swing festival. Once Andrew and Owen realised that dancing with non-DUSSers was not really all that scary everyone was having a ball! It was noted that DUSS leads lead the same moves, but that’s only because everyone loves the super special special slingshot trebuchet (named by Jack at recap with Jack). The highly famous Scott Cupit was there and Charlotte danced with him!... not that I’m at all jealous. Obviously we couldn’t go to a swing festival without a traditional DUSS meal out together, so we went to our fav York pub! Yum yum.
DUSS enjoying the luxuries of the castle left to right top row: James, Noa, Tom, Hugo, Owen, Andrew, Mike, bottom row: Marisa, Me, Alex, Charlotte, Bryony, Eleanor, Amber.
A few DUSS members attended DJam and our very own teaching coordinator Greg was a finalist in Balboa and Lindy Jack and Jills.
14 DUSSers went to Castle Big Band’s Moonlight Serenade in the castle great hall! All the fun was had dancing to Glenn Miller and we gave the band a surprise when they played ‘The Woodchoppers ball’. Spontaneous after party at empty shop exposed Owen’s talents in swing DJing and Alex’s hot solo Jazz moves and keen beans discovered the importance of ‘no leading and drinking’.
DUSS chilling outside the hostel before taking the coach back to Durham
2015 - 2016: The Golden Year
by E. Clennett
After an intensive freshers week recruitment schedule, including a day of dancing in the rain… DUSS gained a total of 110 members including many new DUSS-lings that would later go on to become ‘keen beans’. ‘Recap with Jack’ was born, in which every Thursday we would practice social dancing and Jack would go through what we learnt in Sunday class. Fortnightly live musics became monthly as the new exec decided ‘quality over quantity’ and the bar had a re-vamp increasing their other events. My favourite was the halloween live music due to the joy obtained from dancing with terrifying looking people. Again Jack’s costume went down in history and even won the ‘best costume prize’ in York at Jorvik Swing.
The Weekend away returned as DUSS travelled out of Durham to Kettlewell. Lots of fun was had playing games, dancing and murdering fellow swingers (mass murderer of the weekend being Tom who killed 6 people!). We went on a ‘walk’ and did the jitterbug up a hill in a gale force wind blowing storm. Again pancakes for breakfast and Lewis’ vegan chilli exceeded all expectations of vegan food. The keen beans kept me up till early hours in the morning teaching them tandem charleston, this lead to me accidentally sleeping through DUSS’s sunday class the next day...
DUSS enjoying pub dinner before Jorvik swing social :D
Susanne, Cathryn, Naomi and I trying not to get blown off a cliff
