ARTISTS 2018 – SWING'N'MILAN

Nils and Bianca

Nils and Bianca are full time swing dance teachers, performers, choreographers and members of the Swedish national team in Boogie Woogie and Lindy Hop. Together they won several Swedish competitions including the Swedish championships.

Both Bianca and Nils got stuck in swing dancing and music, their biggest passion at a very young age. Their paths crossed when Bianca moved to Sweden at the age of sixteen and that’s when they started performing and competing together.

They love swing dancing because it brings people together and spreads joy between them, but also because it is more than just a dance. It has a powerful meaning and history. The dance challenges them in keeping practicing, creating and expressing.

Bianca and Nils’ goal is to help you become the best dancer you can be if you are a student and to be entertained if you are a spectator at one of their shows.

Vincenzo and Moe

Vincenzo Fesi is a worldwide recognised dancer, teacher and choreographer. As a real globetrotter, he teaches and perform at the most prestigious swing dance events around the world.

He has a specific teaching method. When he teaches and when he performs, Vincenzo gives off a contagious energy that drives his audience crazy.

Moe Sakan is an active social and competition dancer, she is proud to have won numerous competition titles internationally.

In 2017, she had the honour of being inducted into the Camp Hollywood Hall Of Fame.

Moe travels the world sharing her passion extensively both for performing and teaching Lindy Hop, Balboa and Shag.

Fredrik Dahlberg

Fredrik Dahlberg was born and raised in the upper class neighbourhoods of Eastern Stockholm. Never had he a thought of becoming a dancer. Instead he spent his days listening to Hip-Hop and playing basketball. As a true rebel of his safe upbringing he moved to the south side and started to show interest in vintage jazz music. One of his friends took him to a lindy hop class and at first he didn’t show much of talent, struggling with what was left and right and up and down. Soon after he joined the famous swing dance company The Hot Shots. How is this even possible? With a mind set on nothing else (that is not entirely true) and some luck some might say. With a big portion of individual style and new ideas he brings something refreshing to the scene.
Fredrik wants his floors dark and slippery and the music swingin’ like Basie. People often say – “I wonder, does this man have any bones in his body?”
He has been teaching in several international events and festivals such as Frankie 100, Herräng Dance Camp, Camp Jitterbug and traveled to perform around the globe.

Patrik Pettersson

Patrik is a performer and instructor, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Besides teaching he is also a member of the famous swing dance company The Hot Shots.

The genuine spirit of the swing era, and in particular the dancing that came from the Savoy Ballroom and the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, have always been his main focus and inspiration. This style is what he bring to his performances, classes as well as social dancing.

Alise Hofmane

Alise is a tap dance instructor, choreographer and performer. She is part of Soul Tap – the leading tap dance group and studio in the Baltics, based in Riga, Latvia. In addition to numerous performances in the Baltics, she has performed with jazz musicians and singers, and participated in jazz jams and cutting contests. For the past three years she has been organizing and leading monthly tap jam sessions for the Latvian tap dance community. Last year she was part of the Cabaret show ‘’’Absinthe”, which took place in Riga.

Hornsgatan Ramblers

Hornsgatan Ramblers is a jazz octet from Stockholm Sweden. Their emphasis is on thirties and forties swing, striving after the sound of the small bands of giants, such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman. This paired with the bands’ own adaptations and arrangements of big band originals has given the Ramblers a sound of their own.

By now their music has brought them to countries such as Korea, China, Greece, Italy, Germany, Finland, Turkey, Denmark, Lithuania, UK, Belgium, Netherlands and beyond. And of course all over Sweden.

The band was started in the autumn of 2009, when a couple of swing dancers in Stockholm decided to form a band and to start playing the music that they loved to dance to. The band name comes from a street in the neighbourhood in Stockholm where the world famous Chicago Swing Dance Studio is located – and in which the very first rehearsals took place.

Several of the band members also dance in the renowned swing dance company The Hot Shots, teach swing dancing, and have won and judged numerous dance contests all over the world.

Hot Gravel Eskimos

“Hot Gravel Eskimos”, the top-class eight-piece band from Milan lead by one of the most representative “hot jazz” specialist in Italy, multiinstrumentalist Mauro L. Porro, relives the pleasure of Classic Jazz tradition through exhilarating live performances of a musical repertoire focused on the original “Swing” music from the 1930’s and the beginning of the 1940’s.

For this to happen, the band performs with vintage musical instruments and bandstand instrumentation, with ad-hoc orchestrations based on precise musical transcriptions from its members’ own shellac libraries, as well as an immaculate stage presence recalling the thrill of the splendid “Swing Era”.

Monday Orchestra

Directed by Luca Missiti, the Monday Orchestra consists of 18 musicians with many years of experience in consolidated ensembles.

The project was born with the aim of bringing together the best musicians and revisiting the classics of swing and jazz standards, but also pop or funky songs.