Hudson Hall's Midsummer Swing with Eight to the Bar

July 25, 6:30pm | Hudson, NY

Hudson Hall clears the floor for Midsummer Swing on July 25, an evening of dancing and live music built around Eight to the Bar, the Connecticut swing band that has been a fixture of the Northeast scene for fifty years. Doors open at 6pm and a beginner Lindy Hop lesson runs from 6:30 to 7pm, with live music from Eight to the Bar filling the room from 7 to 10pm. Got2Lindy Dance Studios dancers will take the floor for a performance at 8pm. No partner needed; no experience required.

Eight to the Bar was founded in New Haven in 1975 by Cynthia Lyon out of her Chapel Street apartment, starting as an eight-piece Western swing band before evolving into the blend of swing, boogie-woogie, blues, and Motown it plays today. The current lineup—Lyon on vocals and keyboards alongside saxophonist and flutist Collin Tilton, who played the flute solo on Van Morrison's Moondance—has performed opening sets for the Manhattan Transfer, Robert Cray, Roy Orbison, and Ray Charles, toured Europe and the Caribbean, and played a State Department-sponsored tour of the Republic of Georgia. They are, by any measure, a road-tested band that knows how to fill a dance floor.

Lindy Hop, the dance the lesson is built around, originated at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in the late 1920s and became the defining partner dance of the swing era. Got2Lindy, the Hudson Valley-based dance studio led by Chester and Linda, teaches it with particular attention to the social and historical context from which it emerged, including its roots as a dance that brought people of all backgrounds together on the Savoy's floor.

Hudson Hall, 327 Warren St., Hudson, NY. Tickets $37 at hudsonhall.org.