The WCS Community Had a Specific Reaction to COVID-19 That No Other Dance Community Had. It Involved a Spreadsheet, 40 Countries, and One Shared Google Doc.
2026/08/12
Report
ADVERTISEMENT
The WCS Community Had a Specific Reaction to COVID-19 That No Other Dance Community Had. It Involved a Spreadsheet, 40 Countries, and One Shared Google Doc.
When the global pandemic cancelled every West Coast Swing event on the 2020 calendar — beginning in March, extending through the spring, and eventually consuming the entire year — the WCS community did something that its distributed, international structure had prepared it to do without quite knowing it.
ADVERTISEMENT
It organized online within seventy-two hours.
The first response was practical: instructors who had been earning income through in-person teaching needed a way to continue teaching. The WCS community's existing relationship with video — the culture of recording and sharing competition footage had made the community unusually comfortable with video as a medium — meant that the infrastructure for online classes was already partially in place.
The article is not finished. Click on the next page to continue.
ADVERTISEMENT
The article is not finished. Click on the next page to continue.
Next page
SwingDiego 2018. Glenn Ball. Deborah Szekely. A combined 50+ years of WCS competition experience between two dancers who had never been drawn together before. When the draw was announced, the room's reaction was audible. When the performance ended, the room's reaction was something else entirely. 😶 #WestCoastSwing #GlennBall #DeborahSzekely #SwingDiego2018 #SwingDance
2026/08/12
35 years of dance training. Over 60 styles. Ballroom, Latin, swing, hip hop, country, international forms most WCS dancers have never heard of. Myles Munroe was asked, in a 2021 interview, which one surprised him most — which dance form showed him something he hadn't expected from movement. His answer was not West Coast Swing. It was something he studied long before WCS became his primary focus. 🤔 #WestCoastSwing #MylesMunroe #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #DancePhilosophy
2026/08/06
Six UCWDC World Championship titles. 35 years of training in over 60 different dance styles. CrossFit instructor. One of the most respected chief judges in WCS. And on his body: a tattoo that reads "Technique prevents the body from limiting the soul's expression." He got it because he kept trying to explain his teaching philosophy in words — and that sentence was the only one that got it right. 🎨 #WestCoastSwing #MylesMunroe #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #Philosophy
2026/08/05
Bachelor of Kinesiology from UBC. National Coaching Certification. An Olympic-track competitive swimming coaching career that was already underway. And simultaneously: Premier League soccer referee, part of an elite program training officials for the FIFA Women's World Cup. Then she found West Coast Swing — and went back to school to get a second degree. She has since used both of them to build something that has changed how WCS is taught worldwide. 😮 #WestCoastSwing #TessaCunningham #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #Origin
2026/08/05
West Coast Swing Was Danced in Hollywood Films Decades Before Anyone Called It "West Coast Swing." Dean Collins Brought It From Harlem. Nobody Gave Him Credit Until Decades Later.
2026/08/05
The WCS Competitive Circuit Has Only One Rule That Has Never Changed in 45 Years. Every Other Rule Has Been Revised, Debated, or Abandoned. This One Has Not.
2026/08/05
2am. Myles Munroe and Tessa Cunningham are at a WCS event across the country from their student — in bed, in pajamas, at a dance weekend that ran late. Their student called because they had a teaching challenge the next morning and didn't know how to solve it. Myles and Tessa answered. They stayed on the call until the student had what they needed. This is apparently not unusual for them. 🥹 #WestCoastSwing #MylesMunroe #TessaCunningham #SwingLiteracy #Teaching
2026/08/05
40+ weekends a year, for over 20 consecutive years. That's the competitive calendar Myles Munroe and Tessa Cunningham Munroe have maintained since 2002. Their daughter grew up on airplanes, in hotel ballrooms, in the specific permanent-temporary community of the WCS circuit. She has been to more countries than most adults. She did not choose this life. She was born into it. 🌍 #WestCoastSwing #MylesTessa #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #DanceFamily
2026/08/05
Partners since 2002. Married. Canadian Champions. Ranked #1 in Canada and 2nd in the world. 40+ events per year for over 20 years. And then: a teaching methodology so comprehensive that students fly from other countries to take it. One student wrote: "I have been honored with their full-service mentorship. I cannot imagine this level of dedication is common." It is apparently not common at all. 🥹 #WestCoastSwing #MylesTessa #SwingLiteracy #SwingDance #Teaching
2026/08/05
The WCS Community Has a Word for the Feeling You Get When a Dance Goes Perfectly. The Word Doesn't Exist in English. It Was Created by a WCS Dancer Who Couldn't Find Another Way to Describe It.
2026/08/05
Laureen Baldovi won eight US Open titles with Robert Royston. Then she stepped away from competitive WCS for nearly two decades — injury, life changes, the distance that accumulates between a person and something they used to be. When she came back to compete again in 2010, the room watched with the specific attention that only comes from watching someone return to something they had once been the best in the world at. 🥲 #WestCoastSwing #LaureenBaldovi #RobertRoyston #SwingDance #ReturnStory
2026/07/20
Every week, Robert Royston teaches a beginner group class. Every week, he says the exact same sentence to explain what dancing is. He has been saying it for 32 years. Most beginners nod and don't understand it yet. The ones who eventually become champions all say the same thing: the sentence didn't make sense until years later — and then suddenly it made sense about everything. 🤯 #WestCoastSwing #RobertRoyston #SwingDance #DancePhilosophy #Teaching
2026/07/20
1999–2001: Robert Royston is a principal dancer in "Swing!" on Broadway, performing 461 shows. During the same period, he is competing and winning at the championship level of West Coast Swing. He didn't tell his Broadway castmates he was a multiple US Open champion. He didn't announce the Broadway show to the WCS community. Both worlds ran in parallel. Neither knew about the other until later. 🎭🏆 #WestCoastSwing #RobertRoyston #Broadway #SwingDance #DoubleLIfe
2026/07/20
1995. The US Open Classic Division. Robert Royston & Laureen Baldovi. This performance has been broken down in WCS workshops more times than any other single routine in the history of the dance form. 30 years later, instructors are still finding things in it. Watch it once and you'll see why. Watch it twice and you'll see something you missed the first time. 🎬 #WestCoastSwing #RobertRoyston #LaureenBaldovi #USOpen1995 #SwingDance
2026/07/20
They came together 14 years ago with one goal: create a routine for one night. One hour of choreography. No intention of forming a lasting partnership. The next night they placed 2nd in Classic. They kept going. Then they got married. They are still competing. The "one night" plan is now a 14-year marriage. 💍 #WestCoastSwing #BAMEO #BenCameoMcHenry #SwingDance #PartnershipStory
2026/07/16
Michael Cross: California Swing Dance Hall of Fame. Amber Cross: California Swing Dance Hall of Fame. Cameo Cross McHenry: California Swing Dance Hall of Fame. The only family in the history of the honor to hold it across three members. Her parents pioneered the dance. She inherited it, left it for ballet, came back to it, and built something that earned her the same recognition they had. 🏅 #WestCoastSwing #CameoCross #SwingDance #LegacyFamily #HallOfFame
2026/07/16
"Hit the Road Jack" — Ray Charles, 1961. An uptempo, familiar, apparently uncomplicated song. Ben Morris and Cameo McHenry used it to win the 2022 US Open Classic Division in a performance that judges and observers described as "the most joyful 4 minutes in recent WCS competition memory." Joy is harder to score than precision. The judges scored it first. 😄 #WestCoastSwing #BenMorris #CameoCross #USOpen2022 #SwingDance
2026/07/16
Ben Morris discovered swing dancing at 12. The first form he learned was Lindy Hop — the older, more historically rooted style that preceded WCS by decades. He could have stayed a Lindy Hop dancer. He is, in fact, a Champion Lindy Hop dancer. But he stayed in WCS. In 27 years of interviews, he has never fully explained what WCS gave him that Lindy Hop didn't. 🤔 #WestCoastSwing #BenMorris #LindyHop #SwingDance #Origin
2026/07/16
In June 2018, Cameo McHenry won a local Northern California Emmy Award — for her work in a dance film called "BaseBallet II: Into the Game." She mentioned it in a workshop several months later. The people in the room had no idea she had an Emmy. Neither did most of the WCS community. She had not announced it. 🏆 #WestCoastSwing #CameoCross #Emmy #SwingDance #DancerLife
2026/07/16
Maxime Zzaoui and Torri Smith met at SwingDiego 2013. They were both in other relationships. They danced all night. They went home. He called his dad. His dad said "GO FOR IT." She called her mom. Her mom said nothing useful. They got together anyway. In 2016, they got married on a French hillside. In 2018, they made a video to "Nice 'N' Easy" by Frank Sinatra that has since been watched more than any other WCS video in history. 🥂 #WestCoastSwing #MaximeAndTorri #ZzaouiCouple #SwingDance #LoveStory
2026/07/03
