For those interested in historical texts related to the Big Apple, here’s one of two pamphlets that I know of about the dance. You’ll really need to zoom in to read.

Scribd

Jam Cellar has invited us back to Washington, D.C. for their Big, Big Event (BBE) to teach a little Peabody. We are absolutely thrilled, particularly because the dance is in June. When we traveled there to teach in March, last year, we drove in near blizzard conditions (4.5 hour drive=11 hour drive). It’s unlikely, though with global warming you never know, that we will have to deal with these conditions. (But now that I’ve opened my mouth, we’ll probably have a tropical storm, instead.) If you haven’t been to DC for dancing, then you are missing out. It is truly one of the top places in the country with a great community and one of the world’s best venues (Glen Echo). We were sad that we missed last year’s BBE, but we were already traveling in June to celebrate Indy’s 1st birthday. For us, personally, this year’s event will be a big, big event. It will likely mark Midori’s return to dancing following much needed bunion surgery in November. They say it’s 6-weeks to recover, but they mean bear weight on your foot. It’s really like 6 months to return to dancing. Yikes! She has recovered as well as we could have possibly hoped and now has a nice incentive on her calendar. I’ll post more details about the BBE when I have them.

Another piece of dance history will face the wrecking ball: Fazil’s has closed Thursday to make way for another luxury hotel in New York. (We really need another one?) I called to book the space for a private lesson and learned the terrible news. Personally, Midori and I have great memories of rehearsing at the dance studio over the years. Midori learned from tap legend Chuck Green at Fazil’s. We choreographed some of our best routine and had most of our tap rehearsals there. For those who are not familiar, Fazil’s was the unofficial home of tap and flamenco dancers. You would walk up several flights of stairs from its street access point on Eighth Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets and enter a home of happy feet. In some of its lower level rental studios, the ceiling would quake with the stomping of dancers above. The floor was not as polished as other rental studios. OK, the floor may have last been polished decades ago. But we never got tired on it. Perhaps I reasoned this was because the floor was hardwood layered over years of hardwood. But I also loved to tell folks that the ghosts of the studio’s past lightened the impact of its floor—a version of dancing on the shoulders of giants. While I knew the studio space as Fazil’s, the studio’s story merely ends there. The beginning dates back to the 1920s. A few years ago, the New York Times posted an article on the studio, which touched on this past. They have several other articles from 1989 to 2005. I guess that we drew inspiration from this rich dance history. We felt like rehearsing at Fazil’s carried a story forward that has started long before us. I couldn’t wait for us to start tapping for fun with our son, Indigo, at Fazil’s. Unfortunately, we won’t get the chance. Fazil’s may move on. The staff said they are working on finding a new space. But those ghosts will be lost, however. I’m still in shock. A piece of my neighborhood and my New York will just disappear. I guess that’s life in the Big Apple.

Looking to get your groove on? Join me for some swinging good and hot jazz music and more at Yehoodi’s Frim Fram. Thanks to the good folks at New York’s venerable swing dance webiste (David Jacoby in particular), I’ll be DJing on February 21! I’ll have a little something for everyone from Lindy of all tempos, Bal, Shag, even maybe a Peabody or two. So save the date and me a dance.

Thanks to the lovely Cara, I’ve found a great place in Brooklyn to screen rare dance film clips from old Hollywood movies, newsreels, and Vitaphone shorts spanning the Jazz Age through the Rock n’ Roll era. The place is Monkeytown. It’s located in Williamsburg. I plan on showing rare footage of Vernon and Irene Castle (the original stars of ballroom), the Harvest Moon Ball (the Madison Square Garden contest that captivated New York), Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers (the Savoy Ballroom troupe that brought big air to dancing), the 1939 World’s Fair, the Varsity Drag, and much more. The clips will cover our America’s dancing past, including the Lindy Hop, Charleston, Peabody, Balboa, Shag, Rock n’ Roll, as well as a few dancing oddities. Following the screening, I’ll be spinning swing tunes for social dancing.  

Please pass the word.

More than a year after the Savoy 80th anniversary celebration at the Alhambra Ballroom, I have finally managed to post (thanks to iMovie ‘08) the video tribute I put together as part of the festivities. The music video features Ella Fitzgerald (probably the Savoy’s most famous musical export) and Louis Armstrong singing Stompin’ at the Savoy. To their lively rendition, I’ve matched a number of clips showing many of the Savoy’s great dancers from Shorty George to Frankie Manning to Sugar Sullivan and more scorching the floor (and air). When I get a moment, I hope to draw up a list of folks. One notable missing from the final piece is Dawn Hampton. I deeply regret not including a clip of her, an oversight born largely because I turned this around in less than a week. One of the reasons I did not get around to posting this video after the event was my desire to correct the omission. But it proved hard to tinker with, especially the further I got away from the project. After 18 months on the shelf, I’ve decided to post it. I plan on adding a bonus clip of Dawn after the end. I will republish it then.

In April 1999, American Movie Classics (AMC) aired an hour long special featuring neo-swing music and Lindy Hop. The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies headlined the event, which was a concert given at the Supper Club in Midtown Manhattan. We were one of six couples invited to dance during the hour long concert. This clip is our jam during the concert. We are the second to last couple out. It’s the only one capturing us doing air steps, including one of our own. While we don’t claim that putting your partner over your head during front-to-back charlestons is earth shattering. It’s no snatch. At the same time, we came up with the air step ourselves, so it holds some significance for us. If you care for the backstory, read on.

We will never forget working on the move at Big Apple Lindy Hopper rehearsals. At that time, Frankie was still the group’s coach, when he was in town. We had the idea for doing this step, which friends would call the Chadori, but didn’t know how to get from the idea to reality. We tried different ideas for sets (a set is where you do most of an air step, but stop short, a dry run of sorts). I tried to lift her on my shoulders from a charleston position, but that proved dangerous.

Well, we were in the middle of figuring it out, when Frankie arrives for rehearsal. As he makes the rounds, he sees what we are up to. And, to make a long story short, tells us to “Just go for it.” The next thing I know, I lift her up from a front-to-back charleston. She tucks and goes over my head and right behind me.

We spent much of the rest of rehearsal working on the step. Though nothing extravagant, the move was something we came up with ourselves, so I was excited. And I asked Frankie if he had ever seen it before. Looking for reassurance that we had come up with something new. In Frankie’s reluctant way, he said that he actually had. For a minute, I felt deflated. The move wasn’t novel after all. But then I realized, it didn’t matter. In a way, it’s our connection to some dancers from the past. And that’s not a bad thing at all.

Finally, we got around to sprucing up our video section. While we have wanted to update the formats and sizes of our clips and add a few more, we just didn’t have the time. Luckily, Apple came out with iMovie ‘08, which made it substantially easier to pull together the raw footage and output to a larger format but manageable file size. So, the first step was re-publishing the videos. The second step is adding some new clips to the mix. First up, we’ve got the jam from AMC Swings: Live with the Cherry Poppin’ Daddiesan hour long concert with dancing that aired in April 1999.

Hard to believe that American Lindy Hop Championships (ALHC) will celebrate a decade of great dancing this year. Then again, it’s hard to believe our son Indy is 15 months old. That’s a lot of 5-6-7-8s. Anyway, we are thrilled to be back at ALHC this year and are excited to teach a Peabody workshop on Saturday from 5:45pm to 7:00pm. While we’ve got miles to go in our effort to introducing people to the fleet-footed bliss that is dancing Peabody, we are also amazed at how many people have gotten to know the dance over the past four years. Being invited to teach Peabody at ALHC represents a kind of milestone for us. We can’t wait!

One of our favorite bands, Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra will play for dancers, gawkers, and all other manner of New Yorkers at the Central Park bandshell on Sunday, September 30 from 3pm to 6:30pm. It might be our last chance to dance outdoors before Mother Nature kicks in. (Then again, with global warming, we might be dancing outdoors through December, though sadly.) The Naumberg Bandshell dates back to the 1920s and is frankly underused. Hopefully people dress the part this weekend as nothing looks more quintessentially New York than Central Park in Fall.