Kelly Buckwalter Casanova West Coast Swing

Kelly is a truly excellent teacher. She has thought so carefully not only about how to dance specific steps but how to EXPLAIN them so that dancers of every level can understand and actually learn. She is very articulate. She’s also a genuinely nice person and cares deeply about enriching the WCS community. Take a class from her if you can, you won’t regret it.

I first took dance lessons from Kelly when I was in high school. My girlfriends and I wanted a place to go and dance that was safe and fun and we could get in! Kelly, about five years older and at that time a college student at UC Berkeley, offered to teach my friends and me a little bit of East Coast, West Coast Swing, and Lindy. After a quick instruction, she introduced us to the Avenue Ballroom, which used to be in SF… Lots of long time West Coast Swing dancers will recall the venue fondly. In any case, now some 17 years later, my love of West Coast Swing has not diminished and I owe my enthusiasm for the dance in part to Ms. Kelly (Buckwalter) Casanova. After all of these years, she consistently leads in recruiting new people to the dance, which has helped West Coast Swing grow from a few hundred local dancers to many thousands. If you are wondering if you’d like to give West Coast Swing a try, you can ALWAYS find great lessons at
. If you have been away from the dance for a while or you are in search of some excellent private instruction, Kelly is great for that too! If you just want to learn more about the dance, the history of the dance, etc., you can always check out Kelly’s website for information. She is a great resource for anything West Coast Swing and she is always gracious, generous, and especially compassionate when it comes to beginner and intermediate dancers. I highly recommend anyone wanting to learn or improve their West Coast Swing dancing to check her out!