Lindy Hop
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Wikipedia-Article "Lindy Hop"
Lindy Hop is a street jazz dance that evolved in Harlem, Manhattan, New York in the late 1920s and early 1930s that emerged with swing jazz.
Lindy Hop is a fusion of many dances from all over the United States from the early 1900s, but is mainly based on the Charleston. Lindy Hop combines the movements and improvisation of African dances with the formal 8-count structure of European dances. African dances usually separate the men from the women. Europeans invented partner dancing.
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Social and performance dancing
Lindy Hop is a partner jazz dance popular in the United States and much of Europe (Including Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and other Eastern European countries). Large communities of dancers also exist in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Practitioners congregate to dance socially, in performances, or in competitions.
While Lindy Hop is mainly practiced a partnered dance, it does contain many elements of jazz dance and early african-american dance forms such as jazz dance, tap, minstrel dancing, cakewalk, Black Bottom, Rumba and recently hip hop. Certain dancers would choose to include many elements of jazz dance in their partnered dancing sequences.
Lindy Hop can also be danced without a partner, and many Lindy Hop routines are in fact concert dance choreographies, such as the following jazz era originals: Shim Sham, Big Apple, Tranky Doo, and the more recent Jitterbug Stroll. Other forms of solo Lindy Hop usually take the form of improvisation based on Charleston moves, Traditional Jazz moves (such as boogie steps, shorty george, Suzie Q, etc.) and contemporary jazz and modern dance movement. Solo Lindy Hop is sometimes executed as part of a partner dance when one or both of the partner initiates a "breakaway" causing the partners to separate their connection and dance solo with each other using (if at all) visual lead and follow cues.
See links to various lindy hop jazz routines at the bottom of the article.
Social dancing
The purpose of social dancing is to have fun, socialize, and celebrate a shared love of movement and music. It is traditional for the man to ask the woman to dance, but at contemporary swing dances, both men and women ask each other. As with other partnered dances, most partnerships are with a male lead and a female follower, but other combinations do occur.
More important than moves is connection (in simple form, any point of body contact between partners is connection), which allows both partners to communicate. Social dancers are generally concerned about connection, whether their partner "feels good," rather than whether their partner is capable of doing a number of moves in succession. This connection also allows both partners to style with each other and the music, resulting in a totally improvised, musical dance.
Dancers at social events usually have a wide range of skill levels, so cooperating with one's partner matters as much as dancing skill. Dancing with a new partner is a study in flexibility and calibration. What can the new partner do? What are his or her limitations? What does he or she like to do? Dancing with a regular partner is an opportunity to play and practice difficult moves, such as aerials (which are dangerous without regular practice).
Most social lindy hoppers dress casually, preferring loose pants and breathable materials. However, some dancers do dress in vintage clothing from the 1920s, 1930s, or 1940s, and some dancers dress in their best formal clothing (though that is a rarity among younger crowds).
Lindy Hop is typically done at social events, bars, clubs, dance studios, college student organizations, or private parties. Many venues also provide lessons, either as a drop-in before the scheduled dance, private instruction, or class or progressive lessons. And occasionally, one will find workshops.
Sometimes clubs and events have jam circles, where one person or a small group of people dance, alternating partners. Others join by "stealing" in. Jam circles often recognize birthdays and special occasions. When an especially fast-tempo song is played a jam circle will occasionally form in which various couples take turns showing off their skills.
Social events have DJs or live jazz or blues bands. It is possible to dance Lindy Hop to even rock music, so DJs play a spectrum of music from the 1920s to today, tending to concentrate on big band music from the 1930s and 1940s. Bands can play a wide variety of music from big band standards to blues to original compositions.
Performance dancing
Lindy Hop is fun to watch. Choreographed routines are performed at clubs, at private parties, on stage, and in movies. Performances are opportunities for dancers to show off their best moves and aerials.
Performance groups that had an impact on the development of Lindy Hop include the following:
- Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, New York City, founded in 1935
- Big Apple Lindy Hoppers, New York City
- Rhythm Hot Shots, from Sweden, founded in 1985, now called the Harlem Hot Shots. The Rhythm Hot Shots have been a major driving force in the worldwide revival of Lindy Hop from the 1980s onward.
- Loose Change, San Francisco, California. Blends Lindy Hop with hip hop and African-modern dance. Their influence on the future of Lindy Hop and its ties with hip hop remains to be seen.
A professional Lindy Hop performance group is not different from other dance companies from different genres (Such as a jazz dance company). Some difference do exist due the nature of Lindy Hop as a social dance, its roots as a self-learned street dance, and the comparative lack of experts, schools, resources, and public demand that other genres may have (such as ballet or modern dance). Other dance forms also enjoy the advantage of having a tradition of starting a dance training at an early age.
Essentially the main reason to be in a performance group is the love of dancing. The more a dancer loves to dance, the more they want to push on and achieve greater things.
Reasons to form or be in such a company vary, but usually belong to one or more of the following categories:
- Artistic reasons (pursuing the art of dancing, and the continuous artistic expression through jazz dance and Lindy Hop),
- Commercial reasons (to perform at paid "gigs" - essentially continuing the tradition of Vaudeville and supplying entertainment for those who pay for it),
- Competition (to compete with a selected team, set choreographies and test one's skills versus other dance teams)
- Practice (to enhance the dancers of the participating dancers, work on new materials or engage in dance movement that is not possible on the social dance floor - such as aerials or other moves that require pre-arranged agreement between the dancers/partners)
Competition dancing
The two main forms of competition are Jack and Jill competitions and Showcase competitions.
Jack and Jill: Jack and Jill competitions imitate social dancing. Dancers perform up to five different songs. The songs are often one to two minute clips with different speeds and textures. The songs are usually not announced ahead of time. Sometimes, dancers will have the same partner for all songs, and other times, dancers have a different partner for each dance. Sometimes dancers choose their partners, and other times, dancers are paired randomly. Some clubs hold Jack and Jill competitions about once a month.
Showcase: Showcase competitions are for choreographed performance routines. Showcase competitions are usually done at regional and national events. Showcases can be for pairs or groups.
Some of the major Lindy Hop competitions, many of which have both Jack and Jill and Showcase divisions, include the following:
- Ultimate Lindy Hop Show Down
- American Lindy Hop Championship
- Australian Jitterbug Championships
- Canadian Swing Championships
- Harvest Moon Ball
- National Jitterbug Championship
- World Jitterbug Championship
History
Lindy Hop is a fusion of American dances that emerged in the late 1920s, and continues evolving today.
In the 1920s and 1930s, ballrooms across the United States sponsored dance contests, where dancers invented, tried, and competed with new moves. In the 1910s and 1920s, at the circuit of Vaudeville halls across the U.S., professionals honed their skills in tap and other dances of the era.
In the 1910s through the 1950s, Harlem was an entertainment district, where people from all walks of life, all races, and all classes came together. The Cotton Club featured black performers and catered to the rich, glamorous, and white clientele, while the Savoy Ballroom catered to average, working, and mostly black clientele. So of course, Swing jazz and Lindy Hop evolved at the Savoy.
Electric lighting and air conditioning made evening social entertainment available to everybody. This was a new era of dance halls and live music.
Pre-Lindy era (1920 to 1927)
Lindy Hop primarily evolved out of Breakaway, with influences from Charleston, tap, and many other dances. This era ended when the Black Bottom dance craze took hold of the country in 1926, sweeping away interest in the Charleston.
Tap Dance (Jazz) (1900 to 1955)
Tap dance was invented in the mid-1800s, possibly in New York City, where Irish, Scottish, African immigrants competed with each other in dance contests. The fusion of foot dances from many sources created tap.
From 1900 to 1955, tap dance was the dominant performance dance form in the U.S. The Vaudeville and T.O.B.A. (black Vaudeville) circuits hired many professional tap dancers. There were skilled tap dancers in every city in the U.S. Vaudeville performers toured in circuits, performing in cities across the U.S. Travelling performers were exposed to dances all over the country, which laid the ground work for the fusion called Lindy Hop.
In the early 1900s, tap dance was called jazz dance. Flying swing outs and flying circles are Lindy Hop moves with tap footwork.
Charleston (1922 to 1926)
The Charleston was invented by 1903, but it may have developed from a much older dance called the Branle. The Charleston was danced to ragtime jazz. Females who danced the Charleston were called flappers.
The Charleston was featured in Harlem stage productions in 1913. On Broadway in 1922, the Charleston was featured in the Zeigfeld Follies. The next year, both the play Liza and the Aubrey Lyles show Runnin' Wild featured the Charleston on Broadway. A nationwide craze for the Charleston began in 1922 as a result of these shows.
External link: http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3chrlst.htm
Black Bottom (1926 to 1927)
Black Bottom was a dance from New Orleans, Louisiana around 1900. In 1924, the stage play Dinah introduced the Black Bottom to the New York public. In 1926 and 1927, the George White Scandals featured Black Bottom at the Apollo Theatre. Black Bottom swept the country in 1926 and 1927 and replaced Charleston as the most popular social dance.
Other dances
The influences of other dances can be seen through the specific moves that remain in Lindy Hop, like shag basics, the Texas Tommy, and the Apache swing out.
Apache: This dance was danced in closed position, except for the move where the follow moved out in an apache spin.
Texas Tommy: This dance is remembered for the Texas Tommy spin.
Tap Charleston (1925 to 1926): Leonard Reed was said to have invented Tap Charleston after he learned tap in 1925. Tap Charleston was the Charleston with breaks into open position to do tap steps. The connection between Breakaway and Tap Charleston is murky. It could be the same thing attributed to Leonard Reed or something else.
Other: Other dances that influenced Lindy Hop include Collegiate Shag.
Classic era (1927 to 1935)
This era was inspired by ragtime jazz. Lindy Hop evolved from the combination of Breakaway and Charleston. Dancers, like George Snowden (Shorty George) opened up Breakaway and Charleston. The partners moved closer together and further apart while spinning to make the moves more interesting, eventually creating the swing out.
According to legend, George Snowden renamed the dance from Breakaway to Lindy Hop at dance contests at the Harvest Moon Ball in Central Park in September 1927 or at the Savoy Ballroom in 1928 (the story varies). Lindy Hop was named in honor of Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic airplane flight in 1927. In slang of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a lindy was a young woman; it was also the popular nickname of aviator Lindbergh, often called "Lucky Lindy" (although he personally disliked the nickname).
Many dance events at the turn of the century were called "lindy dances" or "lindy hops", so the transatlantic flight may not have been the origin of the name, but it did sanction and popularized the name. It gave a white identity to a black dance, making it possible for the whole country to enjoy.
Lindy Hop dancers were originally banned from the Savoy Ballroom, because they took more space than other dancers and often kicked other dancers. The "Cat's Corner" began when Lindy Hop dancers gathered in one corner of the Savoy ballroom to dance. As Lindy Hop became popular, the Savoy relented and welcomed Lindy Hop dancers. (Reference: Frankie Manning's Northern California Lindy Society workshop interview, January 2002)
The most notable dance troupe of the classic era was the Shorty George Trio, which inspired many other dancers and troupes to take up Lindy Hop.
Prohibition ended in 1933, and Cab Calloway moved from the Savoy to the Cotton Club in 1934. These and other events sparked a change in generation of musicians and dancers.
Aerials era (1935 to 1941)
Lindy Hop exploded in 1935 with a new generation of musicians and dancers. Swing music became popular nationwide, thanks to the Benny Goodman Orchestra. The Savoy was the hottest dance club in New York City, which meant it was the hottest club in the world. Chick Webb was the leader of the house band at the Savoy. His vocalist was the teenage Ella Fitzgerald. Frankie Manning turned 21, invented aerials in Lindy Hop, and challenged George Snowden as the leading dancer at the Savoy.
Whitey's Lindy Hoppers formed before aerials. Whitey was the head bouncer at the Savoy, and he arranged for dancers to perform at parties. George Snowden had been away, performing professionally, so a new generation of dancers became active. A rivalry and a challenge sprang up over whether Shorty George and his crowd or Frankie Manning and his crowd were the better dancers.
Shorty George and his partner Big Bea often finished dances with a move where Big Bea picked Shorty George up on her back and carried him off the floor while he kicked his feet. Frankie Manning wanted to outdo Shorty George, so he convinced his partner Freda Washington to do a back-to-back flip. This became the first Lindy Hop aerial and won the contest. When Shorty George asked Frankie Manning where he got the move, he said, "From you." Frankie Manning then had to explain.
The most notable dance troupe of the aerials era was Whitey's Lindy Maniacs, also known as Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, the Congeroos, and other names, which was led by Hubert White and starred Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, among others. The troupe performed around the world from 1935 to 1941. They performed at private parties and on Broadway. They danced in many movies, including Hellzapoppin' and the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races. They also performed for the King and Queen of the United Kingdom.
This era ended when World War II began and the country became preoccupied with other things.
World War II era (1941 to 1945)
During the war, many top performers were drafted into military service. Lindy Hop became a wartime recreation. It was imported (in a bastardised form) into Europe by American soldiers.
In 1943, Life magazine featured Lindy Hop on its cover and called it America's National Folk Dance.
Post-war era (1945 to 1984)
After the war, music changed. Jazz musicians wanted patrons to pay attention and listen, not to dance. Jazz became more complex and not danceable.
Lindy Hop spawned both East Coast Swing and West Coast Swing and influenced many other dances, like Carolina Shag, which thrived.
Lindy Hop appeared in movies throughout the 1940s. Frankie Manning eventually could not keep steady work as a dancer after the war, so he joined the post office. Lindy Hop appeared infrequently in movies ever since then.
During this era, East Coast Swing was adopted as a part of the ballroom repertoire. It was codified and simplified. It adopted the ballroom concept of frame.
Music changed from swing to rock. One particular factor was economics. It was much cheaper for music venues and clubs to employ music groups of only three to six people, as opposed to the larger big band orchestras that Lindy Hop dancers typically enjoyed. Television also gave people more distractions than ever before. Lindy Hop slowly faded away to memory.
Revival era (1984 to present)
Lindy Hop never really died out, as it continued to be occasionally danced by older couples who had learned the dance as teenagers in the 1940s and by a few small groups of new young dancers. But it was no longer a well-known fad.
Lindy Hop revived when a group of Swedish dancers (later The Rhythm Hot Shots) travelled to Harlem New York City seeking any original Lindy Hoppers who were still living. They had seen the old movies with Lindy Hop and wanted to know more from the original dancers. They found Al Minns, one of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.
Californian dancers Steven Mitchell and Erin Stevens also visited Frankie Manning in 1984 on a similar mission. These two groups, American and Swedish, sought out the historical underpinnings of the Lindy Hop dance through independent means. They originally had no connection to each other, and to this day it is unknown as to why isolated populations sought to revive Lindy Hop dance at approximately the same time.
Within a year, these dancers sparked a Lindy Hop revival that continues today. Al Minns, Frankie Manning and Norma Miller came out of retirement and toured the world teaching Lindy Hop.
There was a globalization of Lindy Hop as well as swing music and culture. Each major city and Lindy Hop/swing community has the basic 8-count step, although they each display their own local accent or flavor. Modern globalization of Lindy Hop was assisted by the concept of the Lindy Exchange.
Other events that sparked the revival include the following:
- The Rhythm Hot Shots from Sweden performed all over the world.
- The 1993 movie Swing Kids, about Lindy Hop dancers in pre-war Germany, was a hit.
- The 1996 movie Swingers has a climactic swing dance scene.
- The 1998 Gap commercial "Khaki Swing" caused a boom that lasted for several years in the U.S.
The major styles of Lindy Hop danced today are Savoy-Style Lindy Hop, which keeps the original New York City style, and Hollywood-Style Lindy Hop, which resembles West Coast Swing.
Today, Some Lindy Hop dancers continue evolving the dance with influences from Hip Hop (styling and music), West Coast Swing and Salsa while others explore Jazz, Tap and other Traditional Jazz and Afro-American dances as resources to expand and enrich Lindy Hop.
Dance movement, moves and patterns
Lindy Hop is based on jazz dance and tap dance body movement. Modern Lindy Hop sometimes incoperates movement principles from other schools of dance such as hip hop.
Lindy Hop, being a jazz dance, does not have a single "basic move" as compared to other partner dance forms. (See Lindy Basic.) It relies on the artistic expression of the dancers involved, whether dancing in a pair, solo or as a part of a routine. There are, however, a number of popular patterns. Some of them are important because they embed key principles of Lindy Hop motion and offer a skeleton on which a dance can be built.
The two key dance patterns of Lindy Hop are the swingout, an 8-count move that usually starts and ends in open position, and the Charleston, an 8-count move that usually starts and ends in closed position. Both moves have many variations. Lindy Hop dancers often use these two dance patterns as a skeleton on which to create their dance choreography - an instant choreography improvised by the dancers on the dance floor at the time of social dancing. Most social Lindy Hop dances are built around variations of the swingout pattern with expansions many improvisational moves.
Lindy Hop uses 8-count steps extensively, reflecting the structure of swing music, as well as other counts. The traditional movement is clockwise, which is the opposite of ballroom.
See Lindy Hop moves for a list of Lindy Hop dance moves.
Musicality
Musicality is the skill allowing the dancer to create and execute choreography (either prepared in advance or improvised on the spot on the dance floor) to match - and, more significately, represent the music - including the melody and the rhythm.
A perfect musicality would mean that the dances create pure dance movements that contains the entire elements of the music, or those elements that the dancers choose to accentrate in order to create their dance or artistic statement. In a perfect world, a viewer shoule be able to "see" the song in the dancers' movements, so even without music, the song would still be recongnizable through the dance itself. In jazz music, there are many elements in a song that could trigger musicality. It can be the melody, or the counter-melody, the phrases and breaks in the melody, the beat, the back beat, the drums, the bass, the keys of the piano or any other musical or rhytmic element of the song.
The development of musicality progresses from new dancers who focus on moves independent of the music to advanced dancers focusing on musicality which fits the moves to the music. Musicality requires knowing the moves cold and knowing the structure of the music.
Partnering technique
Partnering technique is the element of Lindy Hop which controls the communication of the dancers engaged in the dance - the dance partners. Partnering technique allows both dancers to lead and follow dance movement, move together, and/or communicate dance ideas to each other either in an open conversation or a call and response structure.
See also: Connection
Music
Music to dance to
Lindy Hop, as a Jazz dance, is most suited to the music from which it originated - Jazz with a swinging rhythm - including swing jazz, Dixieland, traditional jazz, Hot Jazz and most rhytmic forms of jazz from the jazz era (1920s to 1940s). After the end of the jazz era, Lindy Hop continued to be danced to the various musical forms that evolved, as long as they had a clear swinging rhythm. Such forms include blues, rhythm and blues, jump blues, jazz, groove, and soul.
Nowdays, Lindy Hop is danced to a vareity of music, and most times, the choice of musical style depends on the venue and dance scene. While some clubs prefer dancing to swing jazz music, some clubs play other types of music, or modern music.
The topic of which music is Lindy Hop's music is hotly debated in the swing community, and it is the cause of much artistic discussion as to the definition of the dance.
In an interview at a Northern California Lindy Society workshop, Frankie Manning has said the following: "Lindy is most interesting when danced to live bands. Traditionally, Lindy Hop is danced to swing jazz, but dancers also enjoy ragtime jazz, bebop, blues, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, and rock and roll, and rap, that has a moderate speed. With live bands, dancers cannot predict the songs so easily, so they must pay closer attention which helps them improvize. Originally, musicians would imitate the dancers." (Reference: Frankie Manning, Northern California Lindy Society workshop interview, 2002)
Musical styling
The artistic Development of the dance is well connected and shaped to the type of music used for the pursuit of dancing. While there is no definite "black and white" division between various schools of Lindy Hop and their music, we can define three main groups of Lindy Hop music and musical styling:
- Schools of Lindy Hop which pursue swing jazz and authentic jazz music generally display a style of dancing borrowing and expanding the original Lindy Hop of the 1930s, complete with high energy, bouncey steps, aerial steps, Charleston steps, tap steps, complex rhythmic patterns, and jazz movement.
- Schools of Lindy Hop which pursue more bluesy or modern jazz music display a style which is slower, smoother, "groovier", borrows movement from hip hop or Blues, fluid and relaxed body movements and isolations, and usage of simpler rhythmic patterns.
- Lindy Hop styles based on other types of music such as rock and roll, rockabilly or jump blues are generally a minority niche and less of an influence on the development of the dance form.
Scenes
Lindy Hop tends to be concentrated in small local scenes, although regional, national, and international dance events bring dancers from many of these scenes together. Many Internet forums have emerged in these dance scenes. These message boards serve to provide information to dancers about Lindy Hop and dance events in the geographic area. Yehoodi has become the largest of these and now caters to a national audience, although many smaller local forums (such as Swingmonkey) also exist.
The small village of Herräng in Sweden (north of Stockholm) has unofficially become the international Mecca of Lindy Hop due to the annual Herräng Dance Camp.
See also
Choreographed Lindy Hop / Jazz Routines
These routines are part of the lindy hop jazz dance vocabulary:
Related Swing Dances
These dances are either practiced together with Lindy Hop or strongly related or derived from Lindy Hop: