By Menachem Wecker
After graduating from GW in 2003, Jayna Morgan moved to New Orleans and opened NOLA (New Orleans, La.) Swing with her dance partner Michael Norris. In August 2005, Katrina changed everything, and it looked as if the dance jig was up.
“We weren’t sure what was going to happen to the swing dance community,” Ms. Morgan remembers, “but after two months, I started receiving e-mails and phone calls from folks who wanted to dance.”
Many of the musicians had returned after the hurricane and were ready to perform with dancers. “It’s been going strong ever since,” Ms. Morgan says, “and every week, more and more people come to our lessons and dances.”
When she first arrived at GW, Ms. Morgan enrolled in the international affairs program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, but after one semester, she realized her passion really lay in music, so she changed her major.
During Ms. Morgan’s freshman year in 1998, swing was undergoing a major revival. Classmate Ann Amarga started the Jitterbugs Swing Club, and Ms. Morgan served as vice president. The group danced in local competitions and at local venues, including the Hippodrome and J Street with the campus band King James and the Serfs of Swing, which is still run by James Levy, adjunct professor of music.
The Jitterbugs realized students were the primary dancers in local venues, so they started the Inter-Collegiate Swing Dance Competition. “Man, those were the days, when swing was king!” recalls Ms. Morgan.
While studying at GW, Ms. Morgan interned in the special events department at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which exposed her to opera, jazz and musical theater. She liked it so much she stayed aboard three more years until graduation.
At GW, Ms. Morgan also discovered Lindy Hopping, an African American dance named for Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 trans-Atlantic flight. In New Orleans, Ms. Morgan goes to the Fleur de Lindy Exchange, a swing dance conference during which participants dance in the streets during the day and in private venues at night—all to “the finest jazz music in the world,” Ms. Morgan says.
Ms. Morgan also attends the annual Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown, which she calls “one of the top competitions in the world,” adding, “If you look up Lindy Hop on YouTube, no doubt the majority of the footage is from Showdown!”
For GW community members interested in trying swing dancing, she recommends the Chevy Chase Ballroom and the Glen Echo Ballroom.
Her advice to current students—dancers or not—is this: “Pursue what you love. Learn from the best that GW has to offer. Then get out there and do it!”