About Us
Mike Roberts
FFFFFFFFFFFWHAM!
Mike Roberts has been teaching since 2001 and has been dancing Lindy Hop and associated dances including Balboa, Charleston, Shag, and East Coast Swing since 2000. He began his dancing career at Trinity University from a club of unaffiliated and enthusiastic students, the Swing Bums, who are still bringing Lindy Hop to poor college students today. (Poor as in ramen noodles, not poor as in pitiful.)
Mike has studied under several world-renowned dance instructors including Frankie Manning, Dawn Hampton, Steven Mitchell and Virginie Jensen, Paul Overton and Sharon Ashe, Sylvia Sykes, Bill Borgida, Kevin St. Laurent and Carla Heiney. He has traveled the United States and Europe for dance workshops, exchanges, and other events and encourages his students to do so as well.
A great deal of Mike's success can be attributed to his vivid imagination. He admits to pretending he's a superhero like Colossus or Spiderman before he lifts weights (or his partner). It really helps your ability to keep up with a 250 bpm song if you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Mike also DJs - you'll find him perched behind his laptop at dances. But if he asks to borrow your computer, be warned it may not come back to you in the same condition. In elementary school Mike stole the keys off a keyboard and removed balls from several unfortunate couple computer mice.
Although Laura Glaess is his fiancé, his first love is count number 8.
Its the culmination of the building of everything. The eight is where it all finishes. The eight builds that one. It's where we start jazz steps. Eight is really where the swingout begins.
His three favorite jazz albums are Ellington at Newport '56, Lou Rawls - LIVE!, and The Fabulous Sidney Bechet. Mike's also a huge Beatle's fan with the White Album and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in his top two. Although, if a song were named after Mike's dancing, he claims it would be “Code Monkey Stomp!”
He believes that the most important thing in dancing is listening to your partner and having fun. No matter how much technique you have, if you're not having fun with it, there's no point.