 SAVOYSTYLESHOP Vintage Videos Instructional Videos BIOGRAPHIES
The
Golden Age:
MOVIES |
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.
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| 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!
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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 |
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