Loosen your clothing and clear the area - 1930s Swing dancing is back in town!

If you're bored of dancing alone in a club or at home, now's your chance to find a partner and join a new wave of old-style dancing in a craze which is currently sweeping Bradford.

Paving the way for this summer's revival is the new film Swing, which sees pop singer Lisa Stansfield in a jive band. Couple this with the energetic jiving seen on adverts for clothes store Gap and it's clear that Swing is here to stay.

It's alive and kicking in Bingley where dozens of expectant groovers turned up for the opening night of Maureen Carter's Swing dance class at RM's dance Studio.

And Maureen wasn't worried when I told her I had two left feet.

"If people didn't have two left feet I'd be out of business.

"All you need for this is a sense of humour."

She was right.

Maureen started off by taking us through the basic steps of the Lindy Hop, one of those dances from old movies where the woman is thrown over the head of her partner and dragged through his legs - in true 50s style.

Luckily, we didn't actually get to this stage.

The basic step is a sort of a jive with lots of steps forwards and backwards and a slow-slow, quick-quick-quick, slow routine.

Remember to smile a lot as if it's easy.

My 55-year-old partner, Stan Trudgill, of Baildon, was indeed smiling a lot, but eventually I think it was more a grimace of pain from the amount of times I stood on his toes during the whole episode.

As I'm not particularly good at telling my left from my right, I admit to having difficulty getting the basics off the ground, but after an hour's practice, Stan and I were jiving away with the rest of them.

"What's nice about swing is that it can be as fast as you want it to be," said Maureen.

"But the best thing is that it gets people dancing back together again, which is what it's all about."

"I've really enjoyed it, I'll definitely come again," said 70-year-old Pat Robinson, of Cullingworth at the dance night.

"I'm signing up for the whole course now. It's been that good," added 26-year-old Iain Anderson, of Keighley. "It's good to go and do something a bit different."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.