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              Lindy Hop






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First Generation:
Shorty George
Leroy Stretch Jones
Twistmouth George

The Golden Age:
Whitey's Lindy Hprs.
Sandra Gibson
George Grenidge
Leon James

Ann Johnson
Dorothy  Johnson
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 After Seben
The Big Apple
Call Of The Jitterbug
Can't Top the LHop
Cootie Williams
Cottontail
Day At The Races 
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All That Jazz
Frankie Manning
 Instructional Videos 



The Big Apple
 1938
  from KEEP PUNCHING

   (also known as Jittering Jitterbugs) 






A film clip featuring Whitey's Lindy Hoppers. It was originally part of the black-cast film Keep Punchin' and was also released as the short "Jittering Jitterbugs" in1943. Whitey's Lindy Hoppers perform a Big Apple routine which was choreographed by Frankie Manning. They also do the Lindy Hop in a fictional jitterbug contest. The short "Jittering Jitterbugs" is included in the DVD compilation Jammin' with the Greats available at SavoyStyle.

                                         
                             


The Big Apple, a circle dance of traditional jazz steps done to swing music in response to a caller was very popular in the late 1930s, sweeping dance halls across the United States. In practise, in social dance settings, The Big Apple was never done the same way twice because it was called spontaneously by the caller in response to the music.  Listen carefully to the filmclip and you can hear Frankie Manning calling out the steps. 

The Big Apple routine in this film clip, however, was originally choreographed by Manning in 1937, during the height of the Big Apple dance craze. The documentary Dancing the Big Apple 1937 tells the story of the dance craze and of Manning's choreography, which was based on an airmail description of the called dance!

     The Big Apple routine was performed by Whitey's Lindy Hoppers on a 1938-39 tour of Australia and New Zealand as part of a traveling Broadway show called "Hollywood Hotel Review." The "Big Apple Dancers", as they were called in the playbill, were an enormous success in Australia and New Zealand, receiving great acclaim in the press and apparently winning the hearts of the Australian people. 
 

     

       
Dancers:                              
  Also on this film clip, the Lindy Hoppers appear in a staged dance contest and do incredible acrobatic routines on a crowded dance floor. Like many dance filmclips,(see Malcolm X for a recent example) this is pure fiction -- acrobatic steps were never done in a thick crowd like that!  However, it is loads of fun to see the contrast between the precise and energetic Lindy Hoppers and the ordinary social dancers on the floor.

Since this aspect of the film was completely unrehearsed, you have a good idea of the kind of dancing that was going on in the jams in the Cats Corner at the Savoy Ballroom that night!
 

 

           




Written and researched by Judy Pritchett with Frankie Manning (C)1995,1996,2002. May be reproduced only with explicit written permission. Last updated:16 January 2006. Send your suggestions, corrections or comments to judyp@mcn.org