West coast swing is a social dance from California that has grown in popularity across Europe in the last 10 Years. Every weekend, hundreds of dancers from almost every country in Europe descend on conventions held in hotels around the continent.
Budapest hosts one of the largest conventions with around 900 dancers from across the globe attending. Dancers usually, take classes, compete and then stay up social dancing till dawn and beyond 3-4 nights over the weekend.
One Budapest Monday morning January 2013, at 8am, we were still dancing but realised the heavy snow was creating a problem. Taxis could not reach our somewhat isolated hillside hotel.
We left the dance floor and dragged our suitcases across fields of snow for a few km until we could reach a road and meet a taxi. We were exhausted, and when we got to the airport our Israeli friends had already missed their flight. Many other flights were now being delayed and some of us couldn't even check in. Several dancers from France, Switzerland, Russia and ourselves from UK realised the only thing to do was "keep dancing" so we opened a laptop for some music and started social dancing.
Sadly, the police broke up the party after a while. This was a shame. With so much dance floor harmony across the globe every weekend, we think west coast swing could be the answer for world peace.