History

We started our group in the late Spring of 2000.  We decided to start our swing dancing group because we enjoyed dancing and there wasn’t a place to swing dance in the Rockford area.  

We contacted the Rockford Brewery (now Lots-A-Pasta which is also out of business), and they hosted our Thursday night dances. We were at the brewery for 3 months and we had to move again.   Two weeks after we left the brewery, we found the Legion Hall in downtown Cherry Valley and hosted our swing dancing there for 6 years before the building went through renovations.  We moved in 2007 to St. Edward Church Community Center and we had to move again in 2009 because of the Community Center renovations.  Currently we are at our new perminant location Mt. Olive Lutheran Church located on 2001 N. Alpine Road, Rockford, IL.

We started with 15-20 people while we were at Cherry Valley and now our average attendance is 80-90 people during the school year and 90-200+ in the summer.  In 2002 we finalized our group and made it official. We named ourselves “Forest City Swing”. We host our dances every Thursday night with exception of Thanksgiving.  

Forest City Swing’s goal was to provide a fun place for people of all ages to go and dance, however FCS became more than that.  In 2003 we started our Annual Swing Out Rockford Event.  This was a great opportunity to bring in a live swing band and have a big swing party.  More importantly, we decided that since we are a nonprofit group, we would donate the net proceeds of the Swing-Out Rockford Event and the Net proceeds of the money collected at our Thursday night swing dancing to local charities around the Rockford Area.  To date we have donated over $30,000 to charity since 2003.