North End Swing plans New Year's Eve celebration

One group of Kalispell gentlemen hope you’ll save the last dance of the year for them. And the first one next year.

North End Swing, a swing-style dance group in Kalispell, will ring in the New Year with a Great Gatsby-themed dance, complete with lessons and classic swing music.

“We’ll dress to the nines, have some sort of special count down to midnight, decorate in the style,” said Pete Milne, one of the group’s founders. “And, of course, we’re going to dance all night.”

Swing in the New Year will take place in the Sassafras Ballroom from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. on New Year’s Eve as part of First Night Flathead. Participants with a First Night badge receive free entry, and can continually come and go as they please. However, the group promises that once you start dancing, you won’t want to stop.

The event will start with an hour-long lesson on how to dance in the vintage swing style, for those who are shy or have never danced. However, according to Milne, the group won’t accept any excuses for wallflowers.

“Whatever people say, whether it’s that they’ve never danced before, or they have two left feet, we’ve heard that too many times before,” he said with a laugh. “No matter if you’ve never danced or you’ve been doing this forever, everyone will have the same amount of fun.”

Milne, along with fellow swing enthusiasts Joe Juneman and Levi Hoch, founded North End Swing as a way to exercise their talent and love for swing dancing, and get others involved in the style. New Year’s Eve marks the group’s fourth anniversary.

THE GROUP originally met through their love for big band-style jazz music and swing dance.

“It’s not often you met a someone, let alone a guy, who just wants to dance,” Milne said. “I think that’s what drew us all together.”

After the three met, they began traveling to Seattle, Portland and Spokane to participate in different dance workshops, and learn more about the various styles. Eventually, they attended a conference where they learned from Peter Flahiff and Ben White, professional dancers and instructors, who taught them about vintage swing dance. The group attended several more conferences to learn from the two professionals, and eventually used the knowledge to spearhead their own swing dance movement in the Flathead Valley.

Each year, they attended four or five different workshops across the country and internationally, and yearned for a place to dance when they were back in Montana.

“We realized if anyone was going to do anything here, it would be us,” Milne said. “We might as well teach.”

So four years ago, the three founders rented out a ballroom in Kalispell, and charged attendees $5 for a swing lesson and dance. The group easily made back the rent for the ballroom, and began to gain a following throughout the valley. Through the success of their first dance, North End Swing was born.

The group now regularly puts on lessons and dances at least once a month, sometimes more, and even instated themed dances, from blacklight techno-swing to an annual cruise dance on Flathead Lake.

ONE OF the biggest challenges for the group is getting people away from unnecessary technology, and getting them to communicate with one another, according to Milne. Many people get sucked into using social media or watching television instead of getting out in the world to experience it. Instead, the men at North End are trying preserve dancing events as social gatherings, which were started as as a way to see old friends, meet new people and learn new skills.

“Dancing is the one universal language we all share,” Milne said. “I could be dancing with someone from Russia, and we won’t understand a single word the other says, but when we start dancing, we both know what to do.”

There will be a $10 cover for Swing in the New Year for those without a First Night Flathead button. For more information, visit www.northendswing.com, or find North End Swing on Facebook.

Reporter Brianna Loper can be reached at 758-4441 or bloper@dailyinterlake.com.