Swing Camp (Cape Town) 2024

PLEASE NOTE: The April event has been cancelled and rescheduled to November 2024. 

This event is a community-focused weekender with themed workshops taught by local teachers. It’s one of the absolute highlights of the year for our community:

– A weekend at the gorgeous Fynbos Estate olive farm in lovely cottages, the old farmhouse and garden camping;
– Daytime topical workshops for Novice-Intermediate and up;
– Good food, fully catered;
– Chilling with new & old friends;
– Social dancing in the evenings with live and DJ’d music – and late-night farmhouse parties 

REGISTER

and then bookmark the Google Doc All the Things which we’ll keep updated with event info as we go along.

Jump to:

• Weekend Schedule
• Tickets & Registration
• Accommodation
• Classes
• Cancellation Policy

Please note that there will be NO beginner-friendly workshops at Swing Camp, so all participants should have completed our 3.5-month Novice/Beginner course at least once, AND be somewhat comfortable social dancing the content that is taught in the course.

Weekend Schedule:

Mornings will start gently with a healthy breakfast served in the farmhouse kitchen and some light stretching on the lawn, before we move into two hours of classes. Lunch will be served in De Perdestal, where you can catch up with friends. After lunch, we’ll have another two classes. There’ll be a couple hours’ break in the afternoon for chill out time, pool dips and naps. Get a quick shower and change into something nice for the evening parties before heading to dinner, which will be served in De Perdestal. We’ll head straight to the dance floor after dinner!

Tickets & Registration:

Ticket prices range from R2,330-R4,090, depending on your choice of accommodation and whether you’re joining for two nights, or three. This price includes accommodation, three catered meals per day (R350 pp/day, plant-based), all workshops, parties, showcases etc.

CTS Members get 10% off their Swing Camp tickets.

Please note:

• The 3-night option will be available first, before 2-night tickets are released.
  • At least 8 beds need to be filled in the Farmhouse in order for us to go ahead with the 3-night option, and before other accommodation options are made available.
  • Cottages for the 3-night option must have their house minimum filled in order to be booked.
• The 2-night ticket option will be opened on Monday 4 March. In the meantime, you are welcome to register. If your preferred accommodation option is available, we’ll do our best to sort you out.

If you would like to arrange payment in instalments, please contact us, and we’ll gladly make a plan!

Accommodation:

There are several different accommodation options to choose from, depending on your budget, comfort and privacy needs etc. Scroll down for the specific layout (subject to change).

• Farmhouse: The hub of Swing Camp. An authentic Cape Dutch-Victorian country farmhouse (circa 1880), with high ceilings, old farm-style kitchen and a deep wrap-around veranda. Each room sleeps 3-5 people, everyone will be in and out of the kitchen for coffee and snacks, and the lounge is where we host the late-night parties
•  There will be single beds and shared (double/queen/king-size) beds, and we will leave it up to you to figure out where you want to sleep: the sleeping plans will be made available.
• Caracal Cottage: About 300 meters from the farmhouse, next to the Pavillion.
• Honey Badger House: About 5 minutes’ walk from the Farmhouse, this farm-style accommodation has a double volume open plan living area, wide verandas front and back and two mezzanine loft spaces.
• Black Eagle House: A little further from the Farmhouse, about 7 minutes’ walk. Black Eagle offers spacious accommodation with private and en-suite bathrooms and a large double-volume living area.
• Sonkop Eco Cottage: Ideal for nature lovers craving some solitude, this cottage is about a kilometer from the farmstead (a short drive), inside the nature reserve. With spectacular mountain views, Sonkop is entirely off the grid, running on solar energy.
• Camping: Camping is available in the large garden in front of the Farmhouse, and in the garden at Black Eagle House. Campers are welcome to use the amenities in the Farmhouse and Black Eagle House. Needless to say, you’ll have to bring all your own gear (tent, mattress, sleeping bag etc.).
• Old Cellar: A 1-minute walk from the Farmhouse, the Old Cellar was part of the original 1850s wine cellar, converted to dormitory-style accommodation with mattresses on the floor (bedding is not provided). It has a kitchen, and a bathroom with two showers. It also has a tiled courtyard, a small front garden and a large back garden with beautiful views.

The full accommodation layout (including Farmhouse, Cottages, and Camping) is shown below, and availability is updated weekly as bookings come in. You can view and comment on the online spreadsheet here.

Food:

All provided food will be plant-based (ya know, sustainability etc., but it’s also the biggest common denominator). There will be breakfast (muesli/oats, plant milk, fruit), lunch and dinner each day (legumes, rice, veg orientated), with fruit available for snacking. Coffee (decent-quality instant), tea and oat milk will be provided as well.

Meals will be prepped and served in De Perdestal, a lovingly renovated old stable offering an industrial kitchen and dining spaces indoor & outdoor.

ALLERGIES & INTOLERANCES: We will not be catering for preferences and mild intolerances. But if you have a serious food allergy, talk to us before Monday, 18 March for us to do our very best to accommodate you. Please be mindful of the work involved in ca(te)ring for 70 people . There is a large kitchen in the farmhouse which is free to use should you want to make yourself some additional snacks or meals.

Classes:

Classes will take place in the Pavillion and in the Farmhouse lounge. Each class will be for either Novice-Intermediate, Intermediate-Advanced, or All Levels. Most classes will take place in parallel, so you’ll need to choose… There’s one bigger and one smaller venue, so we need to know more or less who will take which classes in order to allocate class to venue… 

Improver: You’ve completed one of our 4-month Beginner courses and are somewhat comfortable with the fundamentals of lindy hop: including swing outs and 8-count vocab, tuck-turns and other 6-count basics, charleston, and solo jazz.

Intermediate: You’ve been taking Intermediate classes for a while, love social dancing, are comfortable and get creative with swing outs and variations, charleston, and different rhythm-basics. You can have a fun solo jazz jam by yourself to swing music.

Advanced: You’re super comfortable social dancing all of the vocab that’s taught at Intermediate level, and are ready for challenges that go above and beyond.

All Levels: these classes will likely focus on solo jazz, or introduce you to other Swing Era dance styles 

Cancellation Policy:

Depending on when a booking (or the event itself) is cancelled, some of our event organisation costs may be sunk and impossible to get back. Hence our timeline-based cancellation policy.

If you have paid for your ticket but can no longer make it to Swing Camp, here is what we can offer, depending on whether you can find a replacement, and depending on how close we are to the event date.

Scenario 1: Find someone to buy your ticket (same dance role, same level). In this case, you can sort out the payment with them and we will transfer the ticket. They will have to take the same accommodation that you booked.

Scenario 2: We try to find a replacement: if we manage to find someone, you get a full refund minus 15% admin fee (i.e. 85% refund). If we don’t manage to find someone, you forfeit the ticket.

If the event is cancelled as a result of government directions, the following partial refunds will apply:

– Up to 72hrs prior to check-in: 60% refund
– Up to 24hrs prior to check-in: 30% refund