Die Idee(n)

We love being creative. That’s why we all came to love the Lindy Hop. This exciting and appealing way of moving to Jazz, which was – and still is – one of the most inventive and ground-breaking forms of music, just had to be explored.

We soon realised that what made the original Authentic Jazz Dance so interesting was that it broke with all kinds of dance stereotypes, be it gender-roles, essentialised concepts of ethnicity or social etiquette. We also realised that this critical spirit seemed to partly get lost over time. Questioning norms often appeared to turn into establishing and maintaining norms.

As much as we enjoyed ourselves dancing, it was difficult to ignore the many preconceptions that came along with it, especially in partnered dance. Gender-bias, exclusive language, uncritical transfer of (supposed) tradition didn’t fit our idea of a contemporary approach to this extremely rich and interesting field for creative artistic and cultural exchange, both on and off the dance-floor.

So one of our main goals since the earliest days of the IG HOP has been to offer an attractive and progressive environment in our classes and events for people to dance and, thus, be creative together.