Teachers


Collegiate Shag
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Catarina Pinto & Filip Górski (Portugal/Poland)

Catarina Pinto is a full time job dancer, teacher and choreographer, since 2012 building the swing community in Berlin, with all her passion. Originally from Lisbon, she moved to Germany to learn fast and share her knowledge for a wide audience of 8 different swing dancing styles! She was born to perform and entertain big crowds with her playful and endless positive energy. She creates a warm environment in her classes with an intuitive method of learning technique, developed in many years of experience and many different partners.

Filip Górski is one of the most famous international shag teachers of Europe. He has been dancing and teaching on daily basis both Lindy Hop and Collegiate Shag, in his hometown Warsaw. He is also a musician and one of the founders of The Cajun Spices Jazz Band. His passion reflects the way he dances and makes it a fine form of expression. During classes he always seeks for a balance between fun, dance technique and musicality.

With clear and humorous instruction, these 2 creative and versatile souls will entertain and help you to become the best shagger you can be!

“With true spirit the individual dancer can become truly great”

Collegiate Shag

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Svenja Noack & Fotis-Julius Megas (Germany/Greece)

Svenja Noack’s passion for dance began in childhood, often being pulled from the dance floor at family gatherings. Her career started in Dresden with Lindy Hop, and continued with Shag Pile in London, before teaching with Let It Swing in Berlin. Svenja loves expressing herself freely through a mix of dance styles and energies, including intuitive dances like Shag, Balboa, Blues and Brazilian dances.

Fotis-Julius Megas is a swing dancer and Bass player from Thessaloniki, Greece. He has been teaching and performing Collegiate Shag, Lindy Hop & Charleston in Berlin since 2017. As an authentic performer, he effortlessly shines on stage and in any social setting. Fotis’s flexible and creative style of dancing shag is contagious.

Despite their different backgrounds, Svenja and Fotis-Julius bring their unique expertise, talents, and enthusiasm to their partnership. They are active on the local shag scene in Berlin and inspire many shag dancers with their smooth and unique style.

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul”

Balboa

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Selena Kruse and Lars Estermann (Germany/United States)

Selena has been a Balboa fanatic since 2008. She started her journey in Southern California where the dance was born, and where she met some of the original dance masters at her first Balboa event, Balboa Rendezvous. Drawing inspiration from both modern swing dancers and OG’s, she loves to discover and explore new ways to express her musical interpretations within the partnership, and make her partner laugh.

Lars started Swing dancing 2015 when he moved from south Germany to Rostock. Never really interested in dancing before, Swing became his passion. After a while just dancing in Rostock he took a time out and travelled to numerous international Lind Hop and Balboa events. Since 2017 he is one of the main organizers of Swing Connection Rostock e.V. He runs a big summer festival every year: The Baltic Swing Festival 🙂 He teaches Lindy Hop and Balboa every week and occasionally Blues and Slow Bal too!

They have been social dancing or training together as much as they can, for the pure joy of loving Balboa!

“Dance is the joy of movement and the heart of life!”

Balboa

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Pavlina Grombirikova & Jonathan Ng (Czech Republic/United States)

Pavli is a swing and blues music geek lover and collect millions of vintage vinyls. She loves to dance to all tempos of swing, both solo and in couple. In her classes she is known to encourage follows to explore different ways how to influence the dance and likes focus on self-expression of dancers. 10 years ago she created her Dance School in Brno, called Swing Wings and became an important person in developing of the swing scene in Czech Republic. She also believes dancing and building this community is one of the most beautiful and positive forms of activism.

Jonathan Ng is an avid teacher and competitor in balboa, lindy hop, and solo jazz based in New York City. He strives to give students the tools to develop their own unique voice in the dance by sharing the values of conversation, musicality, and play in each class he teaches. With a background as a jazz violinist, Jonathan approaches swing dancing with the same core philosophy as he would playing on the bandstand: the best ideas are born out of a combination of great technique and the willingness to explore beyond it.

Happy birds deserve to fly and anything goes as long as it swings, like floating on the dance floor and time is unlimited.

“Dancers don’t need wings to fly!”


Solo Shag Taster Class + Party

Don’t miss the Solo Shag Taster Class at 20:00 right before the Party starts (around 20:45), and learn impressive Shag footwork with a fun dance routine that you can integrate in your partner dance!

Click here to go to the detailed schedule.

Berlin Band


Time Rag Department

The Time Rag Department’s secret mission is to build a time machine and bring back the authentic music of the Early Jazz era.
This is, of course, a metaphor, because they are the time machine, their instruments are the buttons, screws and gears – and they already brought back the hottest Ragtime and Swing music Berlin has to offer.

With their variety of music in different styles and tempos, their sets promise a lot of fun:
https://timerag.de/new-orleans-jazz-band-berlin/

“We swing and stomp like a steam engine, then the rhythm floats along again lightly and elegantly”

Choose your level


We introduce you to the happy world of Collegiate Shag, teaching you the basics and waking up your Shag Finger, which will never sleep again. In this level, you learn how to shag dance for the dance floor, changing from closed to side by side and to open positions.
You will make your partner smile, jumping around together and enjoy the classic fancy shag-breaks.

Your legs are alive and kicking, probably you have the Shag Fever! How about to challenge them a little bit more? For intermediate dancers, we prepared lots of cool different footworks and combinations of exciting moves, like shag pushes, shag saws and sliding doors.
Lets warm up your body and soul, speeding up those muscles, because shag is made for fast and energetic dancers.

Welcome to the Ferrari world! If this is your level, after taking theses classes, you will be like a race car on the dancefloor. We will teach you how to control your body, transferring your inner energy on the right time to your partner. We want you to shape complex moves with confidence and sharpness. Lets make your connection cleaner and clear, when you throw to your partner explosive moves like Titanic, camel hops and cannonballs.
Are you ready for this exciting shag ride?


Did you fall in love watching dancers shuffling on the dance floor? This is the right dance for you, and we teach you in this level the basics of this smooth and elegant dance!
We also teach you properly how to change directions, the important numbers of this dance are 3 and 7, where you stretch a strong connection to redirect your partner by releasing that powerful energy you both created together.

Let’s dive deeper into Balboa world and make your vocabulary look fantastic! Together in this level we improve your basics and give you the technics for amazing figures and exciting footwork.
Try with us cool transitions of toss outs, beach pushes, lollies and swivels. After this level your elegant shoes will be able to express challenging rythm variations with graceful new moves.

You have a lot of experience dancing Balboa, and you love to combine Pure-Bal with Bal-Swing. Are you ready to dive deep into these two worlds confidently improvising even more?
This last level requires a solid technique, and being ready to process fast new input. We will challenge you with complex moves and variations in million ways, for your dance performance to become more charming and syncopated!

Tickets


Weekend Schedule


Workshop


Saturday (01/04)
Balboa Studio


11:00 - Balboa (int)
Selena & Lars

13:00 - Break

13:30 - Balboa (adv)
Pavlina & Jonathan

until 15:30


   
 

Register now

Workshop


Saturday (01/04)
Shag Studio


11:00 - Shag (beg)
Cat & Julius

13:00 - Break


13:30 - Shag (int)
Svenja & Filip

15:30 - Break


16:00 - Shag (adv)
Cat & Filip

Register now

Workshop


Sunday (02/04)
Balboa Studio


11:00 - Balboa (int)
Pavlina & Jonathan

13:00 - Break


13:30 - Balboa (adv)
Selena & Lars

until 15:30

   
 

Register now

Workshop


Sunday (02/04)
Shag Studio


11:00 - Shag (beg)
Svenja & Julius

13:00 - Break

13:30 - Shag (int)
Cat & Julius

15:30 - Break

16:00 - Shag (adv)
Cat & Filip

Register now

Party


Sat Night (01/04)
Price: 15€


20:00 - Solo Shag Taster

20:45 - DJ Set

22:00 - Live Band

22:45 - Show Case & Competition

23:00 - Live Band

Register now

Find us on the Map (Berlin)



Location for the Workshop during the day
Tanzschule und Ballhaus Walzerlinksgestrickt,
Am Tempelhofer Berg 7D, 10965 Berlin

Location for the Party during the night
Mala Junta,
Kolonnenstraße 29, 10829 Berlin

Shag'n'Bal Berlin - Event on facebook