We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Adolfo & Cat a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Adolfo & Cat, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

Yes and no. I think all artists, dancers, creatives, etc. go through this. Especially now with social media, sometimes as dancers it feels we are in a fish bowl. As everyone sees you, it brings about criticism. But we think that’s where the beauty lies in art, it truly needs to be subjective. I think social media has positive and negative outcomes around art remaining subjective.

What makes us happy is that pure joy of feeling like we can float across the dance floor with each other and students laughing and smiling as they dance. At the end of it all, it’s really about how did you make someone feel. All of us have the opportunity to make an impact and help others feel creative, too.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We are hobby turned passion husband and wife dance duo, Adolfo and Cat. We’ve been avidly dancing since 2013. We met in high school and never considered ourselves dancers. Growing up playing various sports, we never paid attention to the dance floor. But in late 2012 we saw couples dancing Lindy Hop at Disneyland and immediately wanted to learn how their feet moved like that. Since that day we began practicing from videos off the internet everyday in Cat’s garage after school for hours. We were hungry college students, we didn’t have a lot to spend on dance lessons. So a huge shoutout to Frankie Manning, Erin Stevens, and Shauna Marble from Lindy Ladder. We played their videos over and over, until we felt confident in our movements. Soon we began going to various dance studios (yay for paychecks) learning and advancing our knowledge of other dance styles.

Never did we think we would turn our hobby into now a business as time2swing. We started teaching Swing dance styles in late 2013, as we were kind of thrown into it. At first we really were not sure about teaching, but as time went on, we realized how much we enjoyed it. We have to admit, that we fell in love with the HISTORY of Lindy Hop or the era of Swing dancing first. As we went down the rabbit hole, it traveled to our feet. And we have not looked back since.

This genre is rich with American history, specifically African American history. And that is where this dance is deeply rooted from.

Since putting ourselves on social media platforms, we now travel all over Southern California (even out of state) to spread the love and history of ALL things Swing dance. We teach group lessons, private lessons, events, and even DJ.

We are most proud to see the smiles on students faces as they continue to learn and create lasting relationships with others, and this dance. Ultimately, we want to keep these dances from the 1920s-60s alive.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

We were so new to the dance world, coming into it “late” or later in our lives. We felt behind, as we entered into the dance scene in our early 20s. Many around us had been dancing out of the womb, or so it seemed. And we felt intimidated, and stayed away from many events and outings for our first year. Well, as the years have gone by we no longer believe the fallacy that to be good at something or succeed, you have to have started your art or craft very early. We think it is never too late to learn something new. Practice makes progress.

We’ve had a lot of challenges within our own scene, and as dancers it is always competitive. We have learned to stay in our own lane and embrace our style and not try to look like everyone else. We always remember, it is about keeping this real and true OG history of these dances alive that matter and should be preserved.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is a trip! So our advice to others would be, don’t sweat the small stuff. Sounds cliche, but when we began to grow we got addicted to seeing those numbers rise. And that isn’t what it’s about, at least not for us anymore. If we can engage a core group of people who truly want to listen, engage, and learn, that is better than 200k followers who may not care after 6 months.

Find what type of content your audience likes from you, embrace it, cultivate it, and create a community online.

Contact Info:

• Website: t2swing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/time2swing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063259896605
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@time.2swing?si=8skhgvLR2nrqNGVv

Image Credits
Mark Solomon Mike Diaz