In it’s 19th year, Capital Swing Dancers, a nonprofit dance club, hosted its annual Presidents Day Weekend Convention. The event has grown steadily, bringing in competitors nationally and worldwide.

Bruno Silva, 24, is a visiting student from Fortaleza, Brazil. He participated in the West Coast Swing 101 Jack & Jill designed for newcomers.

He wanted to experience a World Swing Dance Council sanctioned event in the United States before going home from his university break. He was visiting Tennessee on work exchange with Hard Rock Cafe. Unlike the United States, Brazil’s winter break runs from December to the end of February.

Though he has only been dancing West Coast swing for one and a half years, his prior dance experience includes salsa, zouk, cha-cha, samba and forro. These disciplines helped him to pick up the second-place medal for his moves.

“There is not as much rules compared to other types of dance like salsa, which is symmetric,” he said. “The breaks are synchronized to the down-beat of contemporary music like Akon. We call it the freedom dance because dancers are not confined to a box, the dance (slot) keeps going.”

He credits learning about West Coast swing through a dance academy in Brazil informally called “Diego’s House.” Competition videos of dance students and Silva at the dance academy can be found at suncityswing.blogspot.com.

Many U.S. Open Swing Dance Champions regularly come to Sacramento to teach at local Cap Swing monthly events. These are the same instructors Silva credits for learning his basics from in Brazil. These traveling instructors include Michael Kielbasa, and U.S. Open Swing Dance Classic Champions, Jordan Frisbee and Tatiana Mollman.

Besides the convention, Capitol Swing dancers hosts weekly dance and beginner lessons at 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday at The Station in Roseville. There is also a monthly dance at 7:30 p.m. on the third Saturday of the month at the Fair Oaks Clubhouse. The monthly dance offers free beginner lessons at 5:30 p.m. More details can be found at capitalswingdancers.org.

Kevin Wallace, 34, a local resident who placed first in the competition, added, “I’ve been dancing for more than six years. Though, (I’ve) never competed, (I’ve) taken more than a dozen private lessons and attended many conferences. This is the first time I competed (WCS 101), but maybe not the last,” he said, already missing the scene in Sacramento. “That is, until I move to Germany, who knows, I may end up teaching West Coast there.”  

*Amabelle Ocampo is a "westie" who regularly dances at Capital Swing.  She is also a writer with Sacramento Press.