About Us
Jeannie Elliott
MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!!!!
Jeannie has been teaching Lindy Hop and Hip Hop in Austin for six years. She has taught in cities such as New Orleans, Milwaukee and San Antonio. She feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from the very best, including Steven and Virginie and Paul and Sharon. She was told by a student recently that people in her classes can tell she loves what she does, and that her enthusiasm and passion makes all the difference in the experience of the class.
Jeannie has a full schedule teaching eight classes per week. She is also a choreographer and dancer for UpRise!, a performing arts group that combines dance, spoken word, stage combat and capoeira. Her dancing and choreography has been featured at “Best of the Fest” in Frontera Fest, First Night Austin, MLK Celebration, Zell Miller III's play “B-Boy Bluez,” and the National Slam Poetry Championship. Jeannie also performs samba with Academico da Opera.
Although Jeannie's first love is lindy hop, she is also trained in hip hop, West African dance, Brazilian samba and is currently obsessed with dancehall. She was in the newspaper in Jamaica this year doing a dance for which her parents threatened to throw her in a convent. This should not have come as a surprise to them since she had the slit in her prom dress altered to allow her to “dance better.”
Jeannie says her favorite count is the one between 4.25 and 5.25.
That count's got it all, you often start in your partners arms and then get set free.
Jeannie's first memory of dancing was on her dad's feet on Saturday nights to golden oldies on the radio. Watch out, fellas, if you value your shoes. Her father's have never been the same since. Her first dance with a boy was at the age of 12 on Catalina Island after sailing there with her uncle and cousin.
Jeannie's two favorite jazz albums are Oscar Peterson Night Train and Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie - Ella and Basie! Two of her favorite non-jazz albums are Richie Spice Spice in Your Life and Macaco Entre Raices y Antenas. If a song were named after Jeannie's dancing it would be "Shake Watcha Mama Gave Ya" or "Delaveraveraboom."