The NY Times recently posted The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century, and I'm curious to see what a Lindy Hop equivalent would look like. Who wants in?
Link to the Google form to vote for your Best Lindy Hop Videos of the 21st Century
Sing Lim, Mickey Davidson and Angela Andrew in a jam at ILHC 2019
One aspect that makes the NY Times poll interesting is how they got responses from people who are in the movie industry in some capacity. To put together a comparable list for lindy hop, I hope this reaches people who are or have been deeply involved in the community at a local, regional or international level.
I looked up what are the most popular videos tagged as lindy hop on Youtube currently, and it's pretty scary. None of the top 10 are of lindy hop. and the most popular video is one of those AI generated monstrosities. We are awash in misinformation and straight up lies, and it is only going to get worse as time goes on. I believe a list curated by knowledgeable people could be a great resource going forward. I expect this project to be controversial, but I also hope that it will lead people to some thoughtful discussions and some fond memories.
In addition to contributing videos, I am also asking you to forward this post to other people who you think would provide some interesting answers. They can be a newer dancer who has been binge watching everything they can find. Or it could be someone who was heavily involved at the dawn of the millennia, became inactive before YouTube became a thing, but can still name their favorite videos they downloaded off of GlitterLisa. I’m trying to get a wide variety of perspectives. Overall, I think this list would benefit from having contributions from people who will take this seriously and put some thought into it. Even if you do not want to participate, forwarding this to other knowledgeable people, especially those outside of the US, would be super helpful.
To add accountability, I hope to make these nomination ballot public with people's names attached. I put in a field for people to further elaborate about their role or history in the scene to hopefully discourage anonymous, troll answers. Or at least limit that as best I can. It's a tough line to manage because I hope to hear about some performances that might not be obvious, but I also don't want to deal with people purposefully wasting my time. I do reserve the right to not accept a ballot that I can’t verify is a real person active in lindy hop or suspect is trolling. At the end of the day, this is just a fun project for me, which I hope other people may find interesting.
Once nominations are done I hope to open the final list to voting by the wider public. The final results will be eventually be shared via this blog http://jsalmonteproductions.com/wandering and pondering
Criteria:
At the risk of copping out, I'm going to provide very few guidelines for you to decide what qualifies as the "Best Lindy Hop Video of the 21st Century." Does it mean "most popular?" "Your personal favorite?" Most "historically significant?" "Most mostest? Yes, probably. I don't have the time to negotiate everyone's definitions, so I am leaving it up to you. I am limiting this to 5 choices to provide you with some flexibility, but also so I can keep responses manageable on my end.
1. Just Lindy Hop videos. Couples, teams, performances, contests, advertisements, basement rehearsals. Whatever the context, Lindy Hop has to be the focus of the clip. I'll take a solo Jazz performance with multiple people if they incorporate any kind of partnered Lindy Hop into it.
However, there is also an Optional Bonus video response field. This is for a video that you don't think is top 5, but you think is notable anyway or a non-lindy hop adjacent video. I want to keep the main list focused, but I am also curious to hear what other videos from other dances that you think may have had an influence on lindy hop as a dance or otherwise affected the community in some significant way.
2. The performance has to be from the 21st century. Any lindy hop that was performed on or after January 1, 2000. Older videos/film clips recorded before that, but just posted in this century won't qualify. We know Hellzapoppin' is the greatest Lindy Hop performance already. The focus of this project is on dancing performed in this century.
3. Your selection has to be on YouTube. Not Facebook, not Vimeo, not TikTok, not Instagram or anywhere else. YouTube is the longest running video platform that is also the most publicly accessible as of this writing. It makes it easier for me, but also tracking videos on those other sites is notoriously inconsistent. We thought everything on the internet would last forever, and we are now learning the hard way that that is not true. That being said, I am open to nominations from other platforms in the “Optional Bonus video” field if you really think it is that important. They just won’t count towards the main list.
4. Videos will be weighted based on how you rank them. If you list a video at #1, then that video will be weighted more in the overall rankings than a video you list at #5
5. This nomination form will close on August 25, 2025.
Once all the nominations are in, I’m going to make a list available for public voting.
Link to the Google form to vote for your Best Lindy Hop Videos of the 21st Century
Btw, my post about 2016 videos also has links to the video round ups I did for 2009-2013 if you need help jogging your memory.
I also have some highlights saved by year via playlists on YouTube. This is on my newer YouTube channel I started in 2018 after my old channel got nuked. I used to have pretty extensive year by year playlists until that point. After that, they became very informal lists I use to note something interesting. I did go back recently and recreated some of the years based on the aforementioned annual breakdowns. Because of that, there’s not a lot in 2014-2017. None of these lists are meant to be comprehensive, but they may help you remember some things.
Pre-YouTube, 2005 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Thank you for humoring me, and I look forward to seeing everyone’s responses!
Link to the Google form to vote for your Best Lindy Hop Videos of the 21st Century
P.s. If you’re reading this and have no idea who I am and why I care about lindy hop, then the short version: I’ve been an event organizer, local instructor and DJ in the community since 2000, semi-formally writing online about lindy hop since 2008, and photographing it since 2012. What qualifies me to do this? More motivation and time than anyone else at the moment.