West coast swing DJ’s

Rich Kopels

Rich began his DJ career in 1997 and has been spinning tunes at American Legion for the past 11 years. Growing up in the Bronx, he found his love for dance as a teenager, starting with Jitterbug and Cha Cha, mastering many dance styles along the way. Rich met his wife, Blanca, of 52 years on the dance floor during a blind date at a Salsa event in New York. They have been dancing ever since. His favorites are Salsa, Merengue, Cha Cha, WCS and Hustle.  As an ambassador of swing, Rich supports and attends many local and national dance events. While attending an event in Nashville, he was asked to fill in for a DJ and his impromptu set was a hit. This positive feedback prompted many more invitations to come and we love that he is in our backdoor and willing to share great tunes with us on a monthly basis. In October 2015, he and his wife were inducted into the National Living Legends of Dance in Virginia Beach. Thank you, Rich, for your dedication and support of the American Legion and Swing Invasion. It’s always a blast dancing the night away to your awesome music selection!

Harry Groom

Long ago and far away in San Antonio, lived a young boy named Harry, who loved music and singing along to radio tunes in his parent’s car. Once he lived on his own, he began a record collection and started acquiring turntables, tape decks, mixers and other stereo equipment. He later converted a bedroom to a studio for creating mix tapes to play at various restaurants he worked at over the years. Harry's home was always the place to hang out, play pool, and listen to multiple genres of music. There was a point he purged the equipment and record collection when his priority shifted to his five children, but he never stopped loving music. Four years ago, his friends introduced him to the Legion where he not only met his lovely fiancé, Suzy, but also found a good reason to start putting a music collection together again. Harry has recently been doing a few DJ sets for Swing Invasion, showcasing his contemporary style, with a few blues and oldies mixed in. When not listening to music, he enjoys playing tennis, spending time with family and sharing his love for God. Thank you, DJ Harry G, for blessing us with your tunes, as well as your quick wit at the Legion. You always make us smile and laugh!

Chris Powderly

A self taught guitarist, Chris’s love for music began as a teen. After formal university, the music bug eventually led him back to music and guitar studies at the Atlanta Institute of Music. This paved his way to the DJ booth. Once his friends introduced him to West Coast Swing, it only made sense for him to share his musical talents in a different way. He began DJ’ing for events at Wicked Westie, Atlanta Swing Dancers Club and Swing Invasion and loves the unique energy each crowd brings. A fun fact you may not know about Chris is he has done stand up comedy. He is a man of many talents so we are grateful he shares his awesome tunes and dance moves with us here at Swing Invasion. Thank you, Chris, for bringing positive vibes to us on the dance floor!

Virgil Breeden

Music has been a constant in Virgil’s life as long as he can remember. After being surrounded by country dancers at a wedding in May 2011, he got inspired to start dance lessons a few months later and the rest is history. Not only did he find his love for partner dancing, he pursued his passion for music in a different way and embarked on a new journey DJ’ing for WCS in 2016. Virgil keeps a busy schedule working as a research scientist at Georgia Tech, studying Music Tech in his grad school program, while also doing outside research on music perception and cognition in partner dancers. Since 2019, he coupled his own research with the work of others in the music perception space and began teaching a Fundamentals of Musical Movement workshop at dance events. Bonnie Cannon has been co-instructing the workshop with him since 2021 and they most recently shared their wisdom with the WCS dance community at Atlanta Swing Classic. Thanks for contributing new insights to dancers’ music knowledge and providing great beats for us to move and groove to all night long on the dance floor!