~ ALASKA SWING DANCE ~

WELCOME TO ~ NELLEE’S   LINDY HOP SHOP

SWING HISTORY

CHAPTER 15

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(Text is adapted from “The Swing Book”):

“EVEN MORE OFTHE REBIRTH OF SWING”!!!! !!

NEO SWING DANCERS BEGIN THE BEGUINE AGAIN!!

WELL AFTER ALL THAT MUSIC HISTORY, WE’RE FINALLY GETTING TO THE DANCERS!  In the early eighties the original spirit of the Savoy Ballroom was a distant memory. 

                          

The dance that had swept the country in the 1930’s with its originality and exuberance had by the 1950’s become a white-bread mishmash of Lindy moves called the “jitterbug.” 

                 

              Dancing on American Bandstand 1950s

“The Lindy Hop was an extinct word.  Nobody said that word,” according to Erin Stevens of the Pasadena Ballroom Dance Association. 

 

                              

Erin Stevens & Frankie Manning

By the latter part of the 20th century, that American Bandstand-style swing was diluted even more – the dance taught in most of the ballrooms was a pale shadow of the original Lindy Hop.  “There was no kind of understanding that black people had any involvement in it,” says Ryan Francois, a champion dancer and teacher who began Lindy Hopping in London in the early 1980’s.  “Media culture had taught me that all this stuff happened in the fifties with white bobby-soxers and in the forties with the GIs.” 

 

             

                   Ryan Francois & Jenny Thomas

Francois, like many who rediscovered the Lindy, first saw the dance’s African-American origins watching old movies like Hellzapoppin’ and A Day at the Races, which had scenes of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers in action.  “I remember thinking not only did black people do this stuff, I had never seen it done that well,” Francois adds.

 

                    

Another now world-famous teacher, Jonathan Bixby, remembers staying up late on the phone with his partner Sylvia Sykes to watch the movie Buck Privates, an Abbott and Costello movie with one dance scene in it.  “This was before VCRs and we’d be up at three in the morning to catch this one snippet of dancing.  It was brilliant.  And I’d be like, ‘Okay, you watch their feet.  I’ll watch the top.  Okay.  Bye,” Bixby says.  But ultimately, watching flicks wasn’t enough.  “After a while,” say Bixby, “we knew we had to find some people.”

 

                  

 

             

              Jonathan Bixby & Sylvia Sykes

And just as the musicians would soon do themselves, a handful of dancers from a score of different cities searched for the roots of swing.  Their quest led them all back to the original city where the dance was created – New York.  While swing music had been recorded on thousands of vinyl records, the Savoy-style Lindy was preserved in only a handful of old movies.  Yet it still lived in a far more vibrant, if less accessible way.  A loose network of former Savoy dancers, including some members of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, was spread across New York, and these new swing enthusiasts were about to find them!

             

a scene from Hellzapoppin' featuring Whitey's Lindy Hoppers

                             Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers

NEXT TIME:

 “EVEN MORE OF THE REBIRTH OF SWING”:

NEO SWING DANCERS MEET THE ORIGINAL SWING DANCERS!!!!! 

 

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