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Rusty Frank | |
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 Rusty Frank | |
| Born | February 25 Hollywood |
| Occupation(s) | Lindy Hopper, Tap Dancer, choreographer, producer, teacher, author, and dance preservationist |
Rusty Frank is an American tap dancer, producer, writer, choreographer, lindy hopper, and dance preservationist.
Rusty Frank was born in Hollywood, California, and raised in Los Angeles. She began dancing at age six, inspired as a child by watching classic American films of the 1930s and '40s, especially those of Shirley Temple. [1] Frank attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she majored in Environmental Planning and Public Policy and graduated with double honors. She then attended the University of San Francisco, where she received her master's degree in Non-Profit Administration.
In 1998, Rusty Frank founded the largest swing dance program in Los Angeles consisting of Lindy by the Sea school and Rusty's Rhythm Club.
In 1989, Frank founded On Tap Dance Shop, through which she produces instructional-historical tap and swing dance videos. [2]
While attending college, Frank began dancing in stage productions, and her first show was "Minnie's Boys," followed by "Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America." In 1978, she moved to San Francisco, California and by the early 1980s was appearing regularly in musical shows, including: "Dames At Sea," "Babes In Arms," "42nd Street" with Diablo Civic Light Opera (DLOC), "5,6,7,8," and "Mack And Mabel."
She has tap danced professionally over the years with The San Francisco Tap Troupe, Six Feet a Tap Trio (Wayne Doba, Rodney Price), Pedal Extremities (Walter Freeman, Mark Mendonca, Michael Rainey), Tapology (Patti Meagher), The Rhythm Rascals (Walter Freeman), Mulligan and Whitmore "Tops in Taps" (Chester Whitmore), The Rhythm Pals (Alfred Desio), and with Greg Gast.
In 1989, 1990 and 1991, Frank produced, directed, and danced in an all-star tap revue Jazz Tap! featuring the Nicholas Brothers, Savion Glover, Arthur Duncan, Jeni LeGon [3] and Brenda Bufalino. The show was performed at Kimball's East and the Sun Valley Lodge (where the movie Sun Valley Serenade took place).
In 1996, she began learning the Lindy Hop after she saw the English dance group The Jiving Lindy Hoppers perform. She partnered with Simon Selmon and moved to the United Kingdom for two years. She and Selmon made many appearances on television, in movies, on the radio, at festivals and special events. The team's high point came when they toured fifty-one European cities as the dance act for the big band stage show In The Mood – A Tribute to Glenn Miller. [4]
In the US, Frank has performed at such prestigious venues as Broadway's 42nd Street, at the Hollywood Bowl, at Disneyland and at the world-famous Derby in Hollywood. [5]
Currently, she regularly performs her tap dance routines at downtown Los Angeles's 1920s-themed nightclub Maxwell DeMille's Cicada Club, [6] housed inside the historic 1928 art deco James Oviatt Building. She teaches private and group dance lessons in Los Angeles and at international dance camps, works on her tap documentary and produces instructional dance DVDs.
In 1990, Rusty's book TAP! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900–1955, was published in hardcover by William Morrow Press and in In March 1995, was reissued in soft cover by Da Capo Press. Actor and tap dancer Gregory Hines wrote the foreword to the book, for which she interviewed 30 tap-dance artists, including Ann Miller, Shirley Temple and Donald O'Connor. She has contributed to the Smithsonian Institution's Jazz Oral History project, along with the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Dance, The American National Biography, the Great Danish Encyclopedia, the jazz history Jazz: The First Century, published by William Morrow and Company, and Discover Jazz, published by Pearson.
Along with award-winning filmmaker Arthur Dong, Rusty is co-producing the documentary, TAP! Tempo of America. They were the recipients of a National Endowment for the Arts grant to aid in making this dance documentary.
She has also appeared in numerous dance documentaries, including the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers box set documentary for Warner Home Video, the BBC's Fascinating Rhythms – The Story of Tap, and This Joint is Jumpin' for Bravo. [1] Rusty Frank is featured in Alive and Kicking, a feature-length documentary that takes an inside look into the people and culture of the Lindy Hop resurgence.
East Coast Swing (ECS) is a form of social partner dance. It belongs to the group of swing dances. It is danced under fast swing music, including lindy hop, rock and roll and boogie-woogie.
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.
The Shim Sham Shimmy,Shim Sham or just Sham originally is a particular tap dance routine and is regarded as tap dance's national anthem. For today's swing dancers, it is a line dance.
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.
The United States of America is the home of the hip hop dance, salsa, swing, tap dance and its derivative Rock and Roll, and modern square dance and one of the major centers for modern dance. There is a variety of social dance and performance or concert dance forms with also a range of traditions of Native American dances.
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.
The Nicholas Brothers were an entertainment act composed of brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), who excelled in a variety of dance techniques, primarily between the 1930s and 1950s. Best known for their unique interpretation of a highly acrobatic technique known as "flash dancing", they were also considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day, if not all time. Their virtuoso performance in the musical number "Jumpin' Jive" featured in the 1943 movie Stormy Weather has been praised as one of the greatest dance routines ever captured on film.
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.
Jewel McGowan (1921-1962) is best known as a dancer of Lindy Hop, a form of swing dance, in the 1940s and 1950s. She also danced in other, non-swing films, and with modern jazz dance pioneer Jack Cole. She is known among dance aficionados as the frequent partner of dancer Dean Collins. McGowan was considered by her fellow Los Angeles dancers to be the best female swing dancer who ever lived. In addition to their social dancing, Collins and McGowan appeared together as dancers in films of the era. They were partners for 11 years. McGowan is especially known for her hip swivels.
Sylvia Sykes is an American swing dancer, instructor, judge, and choreographer. She is known for reviving the swing dance style balboa.
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.
Norma Adele Miller was an American Lindy hop dancer, choreographer, actress, author, and comedian known as the "Queen of Swing".
Francisco Aguabella was an Afro-Cuban percussionist whose career spanned folk, jazz, and dance bands. He was a prolific session musician and recorded seven albums as a leader.
Herräng Dance Camp is the largest annual dance camp that focuses on Lindy Hop, boogie woogie, tap dance, jazz dance, and balboa. It is held for 5 weeks annually from late June through July in Herräng, Sweden, and focuses both on instruction and dancing.
Chloe Arnold is an American dancer and Emmy-nominated choreographer, actress, director, and producer. She is best known internationally as a tap dancer, and was seen on Season 11 of FOX's So You Think You Can Dance with her company Chloe Arnold's Syncopated Ladies.
Jeni LeGon, also credited as Jeni Le Gon, was an American dancer, dance instructor, and actress. She was one of the first African-American women to establish a solo career in tap dance.
The Lindy Hop is an American dance which was born in the African-American communities of Harlem, New York City, in 1928 and has evolved since then. It was very popular during the swing era of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Lindy is a fusion of many dances that preceded it or were popular during its development but is mainly based on jazz, tap, breakaway, and Charleston. It is frequently described as a jazz dance and is a member of the swing dance family.
Dawn Hampton was an American cabaret and jazz singer, saxophonist, dancer, and songwriter. Hampton began her lifelong career as a musical entertainer touring the Midwest as a three-year-old member of the Hampton family's band The Hampton Sisters in the late 1930s. During World War II and into early 1950s, she performed as part of a quartet with her three sisters and in a jazz band with all nine of her surviving siblings. Hampton moved to New York City in 1958 to pursue a solo career as a cabaret singer. She became a singer/songwriter and dancer, which included off-Broadway theatre performances and swing dancing in Hollywood films. Along with other members of the musical Hamptons, she was a recipient of the State of Indiana's Governor Arts Award (1991) and honored at the Indy Jazz Fest (2000) in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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