Online Socials

Postponed until further notice

Apologies everyone! After winding down our online socials in August, we are no longer hosting our weekly online social. If the dancing bug has bit you, please check out our online and in-person classes. We will resume in-person socials when physical distancing restrictions are lifted.

Saturday Night Dances

We have moved our dance socials online! Using video conferencing app called Zoom, up to 100 people can join the live video stream. We’ll be deejaying tunes for you to enjoy for listening and dancing. There’s a chat you may join to interact with others. Newcomers and out-of-town guests are always welcome! You’re encouraged to have your video feed on, though optional, but we ask to keep your audio on mute except before/after the time. We also take song requests!

Every Saturday, 8:00pm – 11:00pm
Hosted by Birkley Wisniewski, Director of Sugar Swing

Alternatively for donating, you can send an eTransfer or Paypal to dance@sugarswing.com

Access

Here’s the link to the online hangout. For better audio, choose to turn on Original Sound in the top left corner of your Zoom window. You may have to go to Settings->Audio->Advanced to enable this option first.

Zoom Access

Audio Stream

>>> Unfortunately this isn’t working consistently at the moment!
For excellent audio quality (better than Zoom), please go to this link! We setup an audio stream, an internet radio station to better serve listeners. There is a necessary 2s to 7s delay to ensure buffering (ie, better quality). Note that this is brand-new, still being tested!

Audio Stream Access

To use alongside Zoom, mute Zoom’s audio (input and output) while accessing this URL from your browser, VLC, and other music players. This will enable you to use Zoom for chat & video, but the stream for audio.

Media Players

No media player is necessary, as it will open/run from any web browser. though I would recommend using VLC. You can literally cut and paste the link into VLC, and it will open up the stream to play!

http://sugarswing.com:8000/stream

Donations

If you enjoyed an online dance, we hope you could donate to us. For context, we are facing a difficult financial situation due to Covid-19. At the same time, we are doing this to help our dance community. Whatever your financial situation can afford, no obligation! If you are a regular, consider an amount equal or less than what you’d normally pay for admission. If you’re just checking it out or otherwise, even a small tip would help. Thank you!!

Further Details

We’ll be deejaying tunes, and announcing some songs as they come up. Occasionally there will be breaks for announcements, birthday jams, and interaction. It’s a casual hang-out; a chance to get together, interact, stay active, do something new, and have a bit of fun!

Ways to enjoy

  • Sit back, relax, watch/listen with a drink
  • Dance solo (tap, jazz, whatever!)
  • Dance with your fam and SO!
  • Join the chatroom! Talk with everyone, or directly with some individuals

Hopes & dreams

  • Online drop-in lessons in solo jazz & swing (for partners)
  • Guest deejays
  • Guest instructors

Enjoy!

Birkley
Director of Sugar Swing Ballroom

Updates

April 11, 2020

We had some issues with the online radio station last week cutting out after just 20-30 minutes. We have tried to fix the issue, but are unsure if it’s resolved yet

Zoom has made several improvements relating to privacy and security, which is good news. Though, it looks like hackers still seem to be able to exploit other issues that haven’t been fixed yet. The issue concerns us, though we’ve not yet found a reliable alternative for our online socials

April 4, 2020

Online radio station (audio stream) now available! http://sugarswing.com:8000/stream . Warning – it will be in testing mode the next few weeks

We are aware of recent privacy issues regarding Zoom that have come up this week. Regarding “zoom bombing”, we are configuring our meeting settings to make it extremely difficult for such to happen, and will be swiftly kicking people out if necessary. Regarding reported end-to-end encryption issues, the issue appears to be minimal in respect to how we’re conducting meetings. Zoom appears to be working on it, and the feed is, reportedly, mostly encrypted. Second, few people have the skills to take advantage of this issue, and even if they did, it shouldn’t be a huge issue so long as participants aren’t unnecessarily exposing themselves (sharing secrets, confidential information/videos/pictures/etc). Nonetheless, we will look into Zoom alternatives and consider switching to another platform in the coming weeks! In the mean time, if you are concerned, please let us know by messaging dance@sugarswing.com