Marie N’diaye on Swing Dancing and Black Culture in Europe

Marie and Anders

Lindy hop instructor, performer, choreographer and organizer Marie N’diaye of France has been doing incredible work over the past months on raising awareness of issues of inclusion and diversity in the lindy hop scenes in Europe. Check out N’diaye’s informative article on “Swing Dancing and Black Culture in Europe,” published in Zazoo magazine in 2019.

A couple of our favorite bits:

The task of ending [Black] erasure is something that every person who makes money from Black culture must take on, without exception. Dance instructors, performers, event organisers, and DJs have an ethical duty to educate themselves and share their knowledge through diverse media.

…The essence of swing dancing doesn’t fit in the mostly white european culture and that is why it is changing. It has been stripped of its soul and dissected into digestible bits to feed the European dancers. A parody of authenticity. And this is what you are trying to sell back to Black and other minority people, strange they don’t want to buy it!

…I can’t say why there are so few Black or POC dancers in our dance community despite having diverse cities and countries. I can only extrapolate from my own experience. I typically want to quit lindy hop / jazz scene at least once every year, mainly because it is exhausting to exist in mostly white space.

Read the whole dang thing here.