Every Friday evening, jazz music echoes through campus as students flood the Old Snack Bar or gather outside Christ Chapel for a night of music, camaraderie, and dancing with the Hillsdale Swing Club.
Though the swing dance club has been at Hillsdale College since the 1940s, it came back to life over the past three years. When junior and club president Jacob More arrived on campus in 2020, there were only 10 or 15 students in the club. But thanks to the efforts of More and the current junior class, swing has grown to become one of the largest clubs on campus with a total of 411 members on the weekly email list.
“Our class brought the swing club back,” More said. “We came in ready to dance and ready to meet new people.”
According to More, the growth of the swing club started at a speakeasy event in 2020 when the annual 1920s themed dance brought in more than 70 students.
“Live jazz, mocktails, lights, and decorations, everything was there, you name it,” More said. “That was the first time we thought this was something that could keep growing, that could be very good, and that could be something more than just fun and could be something moral on campus.”
Since then, More and the other club officers have focused on advertising swing to as many current and prospective students as possible. Beyond teaching students to dance, they hope to make the club a welcoming and fun environment that supports the mission of the college as a whole.
“When we became officers, we wanted to change the mission of the club. Instead of just dancing, we wanted it to be an atmosphere students could go to rather than late and loud frat parties or just getting stuck studying in their dorm all night,” More said. “No one is required to dance at swing. The mission now is to provide the kind of strong community of mutual respect which the students were told they would have when they got to Hillsdale. Swing takes the mission of the college and communicates it through dance.”
Senior and swing club treasurer Lewis Degoffau said the growth the swing club has seen in the past few years is a natural result of the community it fosters.
“We haven’t done a lot of specific things to grow it,” Degoffau said. “The majority of the work has been done by the students themselves and people inviting their friends and others to join them.”
Freshman and recently elected swing club officer Erik Teder recalls experiencing this welcoming environment at his first swing night on his scholars weekend.
“All the prospective students showed up at the old snack bar at 10 p.m. I had never been much of a dancer, and I expected to stand there and watch people have fun and for it to be awkward,” Teder said. “But Jacob and Lilliana and all the other officers at the time gave us a quick lesson, and from that point onward, I was just hooked with the whole idea of swing dancing for lots and lots of reasons. I had never been at an event before where someone who was a complete outsider was welcomed into a social group with such open arms.”
For sophomore and swing club officer Harrison Layman, swing provides the kind of recreation and community necessary to Hillsdale’s mission as a college.
“It is this multifaceted thing where not only is it exercise, not only is it camaraderie, but it’s also this really nice recharge because you come and you break from your academics,” Laymann said. “I think that Hillsdale has to have things like that. We’re not going to create the kind of people we want to create if all we’re doing is sitting in towers and reading books all the time.”
Junior and swing club officer Lilliana More said she loves seeing students at swing coming out of their shell and form friendships while learning a new and fun artistic skill.
“It’s a great talent to have under your belt, and it looks really cool. My favorite thing about swing is how diverse it has grown. It attracts everyone from football players to anyone who would be quiet on a normal basis but at swing totally comes out of their shell,” More said. “It’s the person that doesn’t raise their hand in class for a whole semester that comes to swing and gets flipped into the air.”
The universal appeal of swing club allows it to grow beyond the weekly Friday Old Snack Bar swing nights. On Sept. 21 this year, More recalled, a flash mob of swing club members came pouring out of the library and their dorms to dance to “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire in front of the chapel at 9:21 pm.
Earlier this month, the swing club earned recognition from Harry James Orchestra leader Fred Radke when they took the dance floor by storm during the big band’s concert. Radke told the students at the concert that he was glad young people were learning to dance and finding joy in carrying on the rich culture of swing and jazz music.
Layman commented on how the swing club hopes to carry the great tradition of American jazz music into the future while allowing students to experience swing as a fun social outlet.
“We want to strike that balance of not only being respectful to the past but also fearlessly evaluating the new ideas in the future,” Layman said.
The officers of the swing club hope to keep promoting the club and host more events including a Christmas dance, an electro dance, and a WWII V.E. day themed dance later this year. They will also run a YouTube channel, where new and old members can watch the week’s lesson taught by a club officer. Ultimately, Teder said, the club wants to establish a tradition and culture at Hillsdale that will outlast the current members and officers and continue to bring in new students each year.
“We’re setting up something for the future,” said Teder. “We’re not just looking at how to make swing fun this Friday, but we want to create a club and an enduring tradition that will exist for as long as Hillsdale does.”