SWING DANCE ~
LINDY HOP ~ HUSTLE ~ Alaska
Archive 10
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(Text is adapted from “The Swing Book”):
“THE REBIRTH OF SWING”!!!! !!
The
origins of the swing revival date back over two decades. It has slowly and
steadily grown and, although it waxes and wanes a bit here and there, it’s
still coming along. The music and style
of the original era first sprang up scattered in cities all across the
world. Dancers from Stockholm and
London to New York and Los Angeles began learning the real Savoy-style Lindy
Hop, the crazed jitterbugging and dangerous aerials that once gave social
critics heart attacks.
FRANKIE
MANNING ~ AERIAL INVENTOR SOME NEW
KIDS FLYIN’ IN STYLE!
Who
are the people who brought back swing??
They’re a mixed crew of jazz aficionados, former punk rockers, rockabilly
and ska fanatics, hard-edged greasers, squeaky clean nostalgics, street-kid
dancers, ballroom refugees, history buffs, and best of all, some of the era’s
original musicians and Lindy Hoppers.
What they had in common was a desire to go back to the roots of swing,
and what they found was it had the same freshness and power it originally did.
Then!! Now!!
Swing
had never really died out. For years it
was kept alive by society dance bands across the country playing songs like “In
The Mood” at weddings, charity benefits, and anniversary parties. But swing dancing was in even worse
shape. Ballroom studios around the
country, while still teaching swing, taught a watered-down lifeless version of
the dance that was short on improvisation and big on routine.
Over
the years a number of singers from Bette Midler to Harry Connick Jr. have
helped popularize the swing era’s standards.
And lately, there have been more and more movies popularizing the era
even more – like Russell Crow’s “Cinderella Man,” and Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The
Aviator.”
What
made the swing scene take off as a certified cultural movement, however, was
when musicians started playing swing’s hardest-driving music again. In London in the early 1980’s swing, or more
correctly, swingin’ jump blues made its modern day come back (click on Archive
8 above to read about the original masters of jump swing). London’s scene was a harbinger of the swing
revival of the 1990’s in the United States.
There were swing dance nights and a lot of bands playing the music over
in England and they used to wear zoot suits and two-toned shoes. The musicians like to think they made it
popular and new again, while dancers believe that they get ignored by the music
side which wouldn’t have become big without them. But two people stand out as the greatest popularizers of
swing. One of them, the Royal Crown
Review’s Eddie Nichols is from the music world, while the other, Frankie
Manning (an original Lindy Hopper and going strong at 91 in 2005), is from the
dance side.
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