About

Sweet, Hot and Blue is a concept. It’s a loose association of people, ideas, events, and shared information. Like this website, it has been designed to grow.

The name “sweet, hot and blue” came from three elements of swing jazz. The sweet sounds of Ella swinging Bli Blip. The hot strains of Satchmo hitting a high C in Tiger Rag. The languid blue of Billie Holiday crooning Solitude. If you’re looking for a metaphor, it represents the parts coming together to make a whole, and that’s the idea of SHB. It looks at the swing scene in Australia, New Zealand, and the rest of the world as a whole. It celebrates the diversity of people, styles, and opinions in the swing world. It’s there to help them cooperate.

Reasons for being

The aims of SHB are to:

  1. foster the growth of swing music and dancing in Australia and New Zealand, in our region, and everywhere;
  2. support the swing dance community by providing up to date information to as many people as we can;
  3. provide a website where swing dancers and others interested in swing can meet and swap ideas.

In addition, SHB hosts Australia’s only national swing discussion board, SwingTalk. The aims of SwingTalk are very much in keeping with the SHB idea.

Where we’ve come from

The concept of Sweet, Hot & Blue was born of the collective interest by a group of Lindy Hop dancers in Melbourne, Australia, keen on actively fostering and promoting swing. Having worked together with such success to bring Australia it’s first lindy exchange, the MLX, the group decided that so much fun should know no ends, and thus, Sweet, Hot & Blue was formed.

An initial thought that was jotted down on paper read something along the lines of, ‘dancers working to create and shape their scene’, and this is essentially the focus that SHB has kept true to. Our main aim, above all, is to encourage and help the growth of social lindy hop in Melbourne added with that splash of flair and fun that we hope will in time be recognisable as the essence of SHB.

But while it started in Melbourne, we’re hoping that the vision of Sweet, Hot & Blue will be picked up by scenes around Australia, and indeed, around the world. With this mind, this site is not only the home of SHB, but also houses Australia’s national discussion board, SwingTalk, a Webchat and, over the coming weeks and months, articles, events and up-to-date swing news occuring in the Australasian region.

So, log in, feel welcomed, look around out of curiosity and stay for the fun.