Hi, my name is Greg Dyke. I started dancing and playing music back in 2006 (Irish music, Breton and other bal folk dancing), after over 20 years of not being musical or comfortable with the idea of dancing. Since then, I’ve come a long way (I mean, considering I started from rock bottom) and acquired and refined a bunch of opinions (among them, if I can do what I do, anyone can). I started Lindy Hop and Contradance in 2010, Blues in 2011, Balboa and Tango in 2012. I also, with quite a lot of help, overcame my tone deafness and got into singing as well as playing music for bal folk. I’ve also been teaching the skills I have a reasonable degree of competence in (Folk, Blues, Lindy Hop, movement), and recently started training to be a teacher of the Alexander Technique.

I think a bunch of commonly accepted ideas about music and dancing (and teaching them) have limitations and this blog, along with my teaching, are an effort to set my ideas straight and help them spread (fortunately, my ideas have often already occured to others and I’m just trying to connect everything together).

I value using social music and dance as a means to give people a voice with which to express themselves artistically within a community (and because of the importance of “community”, we must be especially careful about dances that are practiced outside of their community of origin). I believe that social dance is fundamentally about expression in partnership between two (or more) dancers and the music and I think that from day one, dancers should be encouraged to use their developing skills to do just that.

Oh yeah: Movement creates connection! We don’t connect first and then move. We move and that creates connection (in dance and in life).