Dancing shoes… check.
A lindy workshop featuring jelly, ice cream AND pass the parcel… check!
A tea dance with Louis Louis Louis, birthday cake and ALL the fun? CHECK, CHECK and CHECK.

By golly, it must be the Teapots and Twirls Second Birthday Party.  

Yep, somehow two years has passed since we started these swing-tastic tea dance thingies, so we thought it only right and proper to mark the occasion with an awesome workshop and birthday party. OH YEAH.

We kicked things off bright and early with tea, coffee and pastries, before the always-amazing Benjamin Cook began his three-hour workshop. He covered a whole array of stuff, including a great sequence featuring a Frankie Manning-style ‘peck’, jam circle ‘steals’ and a flippin’ awesome dance to Van McCoy’s The Hustle called… The Hustle. Ben’s tuition style is ace: a fantastic combination of serious technical know-how and laid-back Aussie fun, and we heart him lots and lots.

A commanding Aussies presence in the middle of the Leeds lindy lot

Lunch was provided by The Real Junk Food Project: an Armley-based social enterprise that intercepts (perfectly fine) surplus food from supermarkets before it goes to landfill and serves it up in delicious dishes. We also made jelly and ice cream (with sprinkles) and had a game of pass the parcel in the break, because, well, it was a birthday party after all.

This would all have ended up in landfill, y’know.

Scoffin’ and troffin’ lunch

JELLY AND ICE CREAM!

Passin’ that parcel, swing-style.

With our workshop-goers fully warmed-up, rosy-cheeked and pumped full of sugar, we began the tea dance with a whole load more cake and music from Teapots and Twirls favourites Louis Louis Louis. Free gifts were given out (hand-printed, limited edition T&T tea towels), much tea was drunk and the wondrous High Spirits Choir serenaded us with swing favourites ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’ and ‘I Like Pie’. Ben even insisted that we danced a duel birthday jam, which was a whole lot of fun, if slightly exhausting.

Those four cheeky chappies swinging their thing…

Hang about… weren’t they all playing different instruments a second ago?

Exhibit A: the VERY limited edition (because screen printing 60 by hand was quite enough, ta) Teapots and Twirls tea towel!

High Spirits: lifting spirits with their high, dulcet tones

And so, feeling alarmingly hyperactive due to an overload of sugar, tea and dancing, we put the urn away and headed home. We had an awesome time and raised a fantastic £97 to go towards helping The Real Junk Food Project buy their premises.

Great work, folks – you are AMAZING!

Take a look at the gallery below to view more of the fun and frolics…