About Us
We teach and perform a unique style of partner dancing which looks like a blend of swing, ballroom, salsa, and tango, but is based on improvisation and musical interpretation. Like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, we also like to partner with props. Our dance partners have included poi, flags, umbrellas, and hoops.
Purpose
- make dance and partner dancing more accessible to all people
- build stronger communities through dance
- help others achieve greater freedom through movement
We met one night in 2002 while swing dancing in Vancouver. Our connection was so strong that we continued dancing until the break of day. When we discovered a mutual enthusiasm for all forms of movement, we began mixing them into our partner dancing. In 2005, three years after we first met, we got married. Since then we have been teaching, performing, and practicing our unique style of dance throughout Vancouver.
Learn More
To understand what we mean by partner dancing, and why it's so great, read Why Partner Dancing?
We have called our signature style Creative Partner Dancing and Nouveau Blues, and the difference is really only in the music. Still, it's worth reading both of these articles for more insight about our constantly evolving dance form.
Of course, the ultimate way to learn more is to take a lesson or class with us and discover the joy of partner dancing yourself!
Bios
Diane Garceau - Co-Director
Diane has performed a variety of styles ranging from swing, salsa, and Latin American folk dance to vaudeville, modern, clowning, and circus arts. She has performed in such diverse venues as a public monument in Montreal, the Scotia Bank Dance Centre, the Planetarium, the PNE, Virgin Records, a BC Hydro building during a rock video, an ice rink during half-time, the set of Andromeda, and a barge off Canada Place. She has danced for the International Dance Festival, Kathryn Ricketts, Firebelly Productions, Public Dreams, The Secret Lantern Society, Cirque Phoenix, The Jitterbug Junkies, Jungle Swing Productions, YouthCo, Grupo America, and the Vaudeville Varieties, and many others. As a circus performer, she has spun fire, and performed flips, tumbles and contortions on aerial silks and hoops. She also co-choreographed and performed a sexy, clowny hoop duet for Cirques Des Clounes de Sexe.
David Yates - Co-Director
David began swing dancing in the spring of 1998 and couldn't focus on anything else. His dance education soon branched out into Butoh, jazz, modern, and West African dance, and he started The Evergreen State College's first swing club so he could spread his joy of dancing to the rest of the community. During his senior year, David won a grant to create a solo thesis Butoh/modern dance performance. Later on, he trained and performed Butoh with Joan Laage in Seattle; lindy hop with Zah-Zu-Zay, a Seattle-based swing troube, and Latin folkloric dance with Grupo America in Vancouver. He attended training for creative movement instructors in Seattle, and has used a concept-based approach in his teaching ever since. For the past three years he has been performing fire and stilt walking acround BC with Firebelly Performance Society, teaching poi, club dancing, swing, ballroom dance, and dancing for weddings, performing with his wife in original partner dancing routines, and occasionally taking classes in hip hop. Recently he joined the community tap-based theatre group Kol Halev. He also dabbles in basic web design, which is how this website came to be.
