The main event at Dayton is the team competition, held on Saturday evening. This year, 13 teams performed choreographed performances. My team, Traffic Jam Swing, went first. It felt like we were setting the tone for the night, which I think we did well, since the rest of the groups were tremendous. The audience was frenetic and super supportive. It felt to me a bit like it did when I played high school soccer, but with the excess competitiveness of sports refocused into creativity and community building.

Here is a video of our performance, danced to a live recording of Earl Hine’s “Up Jumped the Devil”:

Traffic Jam Swing video

Our team leaders and choreographers, Kerry Kapaku and Cole Crutcher, emphasized formations in the routine. There are plenty of interesting formations, but the big ones were:

  • the Yeet and Meet (01:33), where we launch each other towards center stage to meet with a partner and swing back from where we came.
  • Swing Out City (02:03), where we form a V and use swingout combination to pass the follows down the line.
  • The Binwheel (02:37), where we form a star and rotate while executing Susie Q’s. We then continue rotating in a linked Trucking formation. (Note, the Binwheel would have been named the Pinwheel, but Cole’s computer lost its p-key).

If you aren’t familiar with Lindy Hop, swingouts, the dance’s most iconic move, appear frequently in our routine. We perform our first swingouts right after the walk up (00:50), then pepper them in throughout.

Two other Chicago teams competed as well: Second City Swing and The Windy City Lindy Hoppers. The Second City Swing routine was super fun and incorporated a bunch of complex sequences which the dancers pulled of expertly. The Windy City Lindy Hoppers routine was next level and included a series of impressive aerials. They took first place for the second year in a row. Here are links to both team’s performances:

Second City Swing
Windy City Lindy Hoppers

The Fellowship of the Swing, from St. Louis, took 2nd:
Fellowship of the Swing

Gem City Swing, the hometown team, took 3rd place, with an incredible sports-themed number.
Gem City Swing

For posterity, here is a link to our 2nd place routine from last year:
Traffic Jam Swing 2024

The Smackdown is such a great experience. Highly recommend you try out next year if you are a Chicago-area Lindy Hopper.