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Jazz dance is a performance dance and style that arose in the United States in the mid 20th century. Jazz dance may allude to vernacular jazz, Broadway or dramatic jazz. The two types expand on African American vernacular styles of dance that arose with jazz music. Vernacular jazz dance incorporates ragtime moves, Charleston, Lindy hop and mambo. Popular vernacular jazz dance performers include The Whitman Sisters, Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, Al Minns and Leon James, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Dawn Hampton, and Katherine Dunham. Dramatic jazz dance performed on the show stage was promoted by Jack Cole, Bob Fosse, Eugene Louis Faccuito, and Gus Giordano.
The Savoy Ballroom was a large ballroom for music and public dancing located at 596 Lenox Avenue, between 140th and 141st Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Lenox Avenue was the main thoroughfare through upper Harlem. Poet Langston Hughes calls it the "Heartbeat of Harlem" in Juke Box Love Song, and he set his work "Lenox Avenue: Midnight" on the legendary street. The Savoy was one of many Harlem hot spots along Lenox, but it was the one to be called the "World's Finest Ballroom". It was in operation from March 12, 1926, to July 10, 1958, and as Barbara Englebrecht writes in her article "Swinging at the Savoy", it was "a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the 'soul' of a neighborhood". It was opened and owned by white entrepreneur Jay Faggen and Jewish businessman Moe Gale. It was managed by African-American businessman and civic leader Charles Buchanan. Buchanan, who was born in the British West Indies, sought to run a "luxury ballroom to accommodate the many thousands who wished to dance in an atmosphere of tasteful refinement, rather than in the small stuffy halls and the foul smelling, smoke laden cellar nightclubs ..."
Henry Jackson Jr. was an American professional boxer and a world boxing champion who fought under the name Henry Armstrong.
An Aerial is a dance move in Lindy Hop or Boogie Woogie where one's feet leave the floor. As opposed to a lift, aerial is a step where a partner needs to be thrown into the air and then landed in time with the music. Each aerial consists of a preparation ('prep'), jump or trick itself and the landing.
Swing dance is a group of social dances that developed with the swing style of jazz music in the 1920s–1940s, with the origins of each dance predating the popular "swing era". Hundreds of styles of swing dancing were developed; those that have survived beyond that era include Charleston, Balboa, Lindy Hop, and Collegiate Shag. Today, the best-known of these dances is the Lindy Hop, which originated in Harlem in the early 1930s. While the majority of swing dances began in African-American communities as vernacular African-American dances, some influenced swing-era dances, like Balboa, developed outside of these communities.
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early '30s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era, when people were dancing the Lindy Hop. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, and Django Reinhardt.
The Big Apple is both a partner dance and a circle dance that originated in the Afro-American community of the United States in the beginning of the 20th century.
Some films feature recognizable dance forms, demonstrating them, shedding light on their origin, or being the base of a plot.
Jitterbug is a generalized term used to describe swing dancing. It is often synonymous with the lindy hop dance but might include elements of the jive, east coast swing, collegiate shag, charleston, balboa and other swing dances.
James John Corbett was an American professional boxer and a World Heavyweight Champion, best known as the only man who ever defeated John L. Sullivan. Despite a career spanning only 20 bouts, Corbett faced the best competition his era had to offer, squaring off with a total of nine fighters who would later be enshrined alongside him in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Frank Manning was an American dancer, instructor, and choreographer. Manning is considered one of the founders of Lindy Hop, an energetic form of the jazz dance style known as swing.
The Hot Shots is a collective name for two closely related Swedish dance companies based in Stockholm, Sweden: The Rhythm Hot Shots and the Harlem Hot Shots. The Hot Shots specialize in faithful reproductions of African-American dance scenes in American films from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Dances that they perform include Lindy Hop, Tap dance, Cakewalk, Charleston, and Black Bottom. The members of the Hot Shots are also respected dance instructors and accomplished social dancers. The goals of The Rhythm Hot Shots and the Harlem Hot Shots are the same.
Dean Collins was an American dancer, instructor, choreographer, and innovator of swing dance. He is often credited with bringing the Lindy Hop from New York to southern California. Collins worked in over thirty films and performed live and on television.
Whitey's Lindy Hoppers was a professional performing group of exceptional swing dancers that was first organized in the late 1920s by Herbert "Whitey" White in the Savoy Ballroom and disbanded in 1942 after its male members were drafted into World War II. The group took on many different forms and had several different names and sub-groups, including Whitey's Hopping Maniacs, Harlem Congeroo Dancers, and The Hot Chocolates. In addition to touring nationally and internationally, the group appeared in several films and Broadway theatre productions. Dorothy Dandridge and Sammy Davis Jr. were among the group's celebrity regulars.
Second Chorus is a 1940 Hollywood musical comedy film starring Paulette Goddard and Fred Astaire and featuring Artie Shaw, Burgess Meredith and Charles Butterworth, with music by Artie Shaw, Bernie Hanighen and Hal Borne, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The film was directed by H. C. Potter and produced independently for Paramount Pictures by Boris Morros, with associate producers Robert Stillman and (uncredited) Fred Astaire. The film's copyright expired in 1968 and it is now in the public domain.
The history of Lindy Hop begins in the African American communities of Harlem, New York during the late 1920s in conjunction with swing jazz. Lindy Hop is closely related to earlier African American vernacular dances but quickly gained its own fame through dancers in films, performances, competitions, and professional dance troupes. It became especially popular in the 1930s with the upsurge of aerials. The popularity of Lindy Hop declined after World War II, and it converted to other forms of dancing, but it never disappeared during the decades between the 1940s and the 1980s until European and American dancers revived it starting from the beginning of the 1980s.
Killer Diller is a 1948 American musical comedy race film directed by Josh Binney and released by All American. Academic and comedienne Eddie Tafoya wrote that "Killer Diller is really more concerned with showcasing black talent appearing at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater than it is with providing audiences with a satisfying story." The movie features The Clark Brothers, Nat King Cole, Moms Mabley, Dusty Fletcher, Butterfly McQueen, the Andy Kirk Orchestra and the Four Congaroos. René J. Hall was the film's arranger.
This article covers the boxer Muhammad Ali's appearances in media and popular culture.
Leon James was a prominent American Lindy Hop and jazz dancer. A performer during the 1930s and 1940s with the Harlem-based Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, he and his dance partner Willa Mae Ricker were featured in a photo essay in the August 23, 1943, issue of Life magazine, demonstrating air steps.
Jean Grinnell Veloz was an American lindy hop dancer and actress, best known for her roles in 1940s and 1950s musicals. She innovated a style of swing dance that was "silky smooth", now known as "Hollywood style" contrasting the more jitterbug style prevalent during the 1930s-1940s.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 "Keep Punching". AFI Catalog of Feature Films . American Film Institute . Retrieved February 25, 2018.
- ↑ "Negro and Yiddish Film Boom". Variety. January 3, 1940. p. 36.
- ↑ "Big Apple Keep Punching Version". Lindy Hop Moves.
- ↑ Reporter, Lindy Hop (July 3, 2019). "The Big Apple / Keep Punching (1939)".
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