the origins of Lindy Hop

the Lindy hop family tree

In one of my first posts I briefly touched on lindy hop genealogy and how it subsequently spawned a huge variety of new styles but I think it's important to mention just exactly how Lindy hop came to exist in the first place.

I'm not going to ramble ad nauseam about everything there is to know - for that there is wikipedia and the joys that an afternoon of clicking on blue links can bring - but on the off-chance your next pub quiz features a round on Lindy hop then hopefully this will have you covered. That said, if anyone wants to see an incredibly thorough family tree of the extended swing family then LindyPenguin offers an fantastic flowchart showing just that.

It's also again worth highlighting that west coast swing owes as much to lindy hop as east coast swing so hopefully no one of a westie persuasion will be put off from reading on!

The two oldest styles perched at the top of the Lindy hop tree, Jazz and Two Step, were popular at the turn of the 20th Century and came from quite different backgrounds and cultures. Jazz drew heavily from African American roots whilst Two Step was more popular within white communities but the evolution of the Charleston was notable for its more mainstream popularity as it was danced in all corners of the USA.

With the advent of the 1920s a style of dancing called the Breakaway had developed in Harlem, New York which combined aspects of Jazz, Two Step, Charleston and other Ragtime dances to create a partner dance that, revolutionary at the time, incorporated the eponymous 'breakaway'. Up to this point, solo dances were... well... solo, and partner dances involved a two-handed connection between lead and follow at all times but in the breakaway partners would switch between the two-handed 'closed' position and a novel one-handed 'open' position.

Then, by the late 1920s and with influences from the Breakaway and original aspects from the Charleston and solo Jazz, Lindy hop got its major breakthrough with Harlem once again front and centre with the jewel of its crown, the Savoy Ballroom, considered its rightful home.

The Savoy hosted regular dance contests and socials and legend has it that it was at one of these events in 1928 that a newspaper reporter happened to ask one of the guys dancing for the name of dance style he was so impressively performing and was given the response: "It's the Lindy hop!"

The dancer in question was George "Shorty" Snowden (nicknamed for his diminutive stature and also for whom the "shorty George" jazz step was named) and he is widely recognised as being one of the originators of the dance as well as one of its greatest proponents - both in terms of his reputation as one of the finest dancers to ever grace the Savoy and his establishment of the first professional Lindy hop troupe: the Shorty Snowden Dancers.

Shorty's inspiration for the name "Lindy hop" came from the (then) recently occurred first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris by Charles Lindbergh. Several newspapers, including the Chicago Daily Tribune*, reported the momentous event with the headline "Lindy hops..." and on Shorty's appropriation it became associated with the new dance style he and others were popularising. [*link to archived copy of that newspaper edition detailing a subsequent trip by Lindbergh to St Louis]

However, Shorty and the rest of the Savoy originators of Lindy hop danced a style that would be almost unrecognisable to many of today's enthusiasts as it showcased obvious ballroom influences through an upright dancing posture and it wasn't until the arrival of a new kid on the block, a certain Frankie Manning, that the now ubiquitous Lindy shape began to proliferate.

Combined with Frankie's obvious talent for dancing, the striking visual effect, according to observers, of a style and stance that made him look like he was 'flying' meant that his new posture was soon the one being replicated throughout the Savoy and his invitation to join "Kat's Korner" - an area of the Savoy dancefloor inhabited by the best of the best - further cemented Frankie's growing reputation.

But what truly launched Frankie into the Lindy hop pantheon was arguably his greatest contribution to this dance style: Frankie's creation of aerial moves or "airsteps" in 1935.

Inspired by the way Shorty often finished dances with his dance partner, Beatrice "Big Bea" Gay (who towered over Shorty by a considerable margin), comically carrying him off on her back, Frankie and his partner Frieda Washington spent several weeks in his mother's apartment with a mattress on the floor (initially raising the suspicions of his mother) devising a way to go one better and safely throw Frieda over his shoulder in time to the music.

A dance contest hosted in the Savoy provided the perfect opportunity for Frankie and Frieda to introduce their genius to the masses and when it culminated in a dance-off with Shorty and Big Bea competing against Frankie and Frieda the stage was set.

Shorty and Big Bea opted to go first but after two neck-and-neck rounds it came to Frankie and Frieda to offer their third and final response and they flawlessly executed the "over-the-back" to send 2,000 Savoy spectators into euphoria.

Frankie also introduced ensemble routines, breaks and a host of other moves to the Lindy hop lexicon that are now commonplace but it was his tireless promotional work in his later life along with other original Lindy luminaries such as Norma Miller - pushing Lindy into new corners of the world and fanning the flames of its popularity - that led to the swing revival of the 1980s that spawned the substantial global swing community that exists today and that makes people like me very happy indeed.