Dancing across the floor through socials and events, members of Aggie Westies find themselves in a judgment-free environment, switching between partners and advancing in lessons with one goal in mind:: mastering West Coast swing.
While the club offers lessons ranging from beginner level to advanced, no previous dance experience is actually needed to join, biology sophomore Audrey Rupley said.
“It’s pretty easy to pick up,” Rupley said. “Even though it sounds hard and the videos make it look really scary, you can come in not knowing your left foot from your right foot, and we’ll teach you.”
Aggie Westies often partake in Jack and Jill competitions where they partner with someone at random. They mainly compete in major cities like Dallas, San Antonio and Austin.
“You don’t need your own partner,” Rupley said. “You don’t know the song. You don’t know the person. You have to just use the skills they taught you and apply it on the fly.”
Kinesiology senior Dylan Dang, an instructor, said members are categorized into three lesson levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. Instructors teach different skills depending on lesson level.
“I think we’d like to hone down the basics more in all of our dancers,” Dang said. “Just so the general skill level of our community is elevated. … We want to drill down the fundamentals of the dance a lot more.”
Aggie Westies does not limit how many members can join, and membership is a simple process — requiring just an email or message, Dang said.
“We run our lessons in cycles of six weeks, and we accept new members on the first two weeks of those cycles,” Dang said.
Kendall Byers, Class of 2019, returned to Aggie Westies as a community member after graduating with a bachelor’s in meteorology.
“It’s an A&M-affiliated organization,” Byers said. “In order to do MSC Open House and stuff like that, you have to be a student-run organization, but in order to come in and dance, you don’t have to be a student. Anyone in the community can come in and learn how to do West Coast swing.”
Once members loosen up, they find it easy to get hooked on dancing, Byers said — something she experienced herself after joining as a freshman. Aggie Westies allows members to open up and express themselves through dance.
“The hardest part of West Coast swing is you get the dance bug,” Byers said. “When you get hooked on it, you get hooked on it pretty bad. When I first started, I was finding ways to dance almost every single day. You can ask anyone here in the club. Once you get addicted to it, you want to go to all the socials in different cities. You want to go to all the competitions. It kind of consumes your life.”
The opportunities are endless in Aggie Westies, Byers said. They offer more than just dance lessons. With enough experience, members can become instructors or DJs.
“Aggie Westies is really great about promoting diversity throughout those programs,” Byers said. “If someone comes in and they want to be part of a different element of the community, like DJing, there’s resources out there.”
The reason for Byers’ return to College Station? Aggie Westies, she said.
“I absolutely adore this community,” Byers said. “ … Aggie Westies is one of the main drivers of why we wanted to come back here because it is such a welcoming community.”
