The Evolution of The Evolution of Lindy Hop Intermission

Karen mentioned ULHS 2005, but she's a little too modest to mention her own accomplishments, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to share a few more videos from that event featuring our illustrious guest blogger. She won the Jack & Jill division that year along with then DC-ite Luke Albao.

She also made the semi-finals of the solo charleston contest that year. This video still ranks as one of my favorite contests because of all the cool interactions between the dancers which I talked about in an earlier post.

Finally, I uploaded a video of her performing with other Minnesota dancers in what was one of the first notable all female charleston performances in the modern era, or at least they were one of the first ones before everyone and their mother started doing them. (I didn't take this video. It was downloaded from a source that I can't remember.)

And just so he doesn't feel left out, here's what Andrew Thigpen was doing around the same time.

Guest Post: The Evolution of The Evolution of Lindy Hop Pt. 6

After Basie Ball in 2004, I started to officially travel like a crazy person for dancing. I went to the Rhythmic Arts Festival (San Diego), Swinger’s Ball (Chicago), DCLX, Midwest Lindyfest, Camp Jitterbug, Herrang, and the San Francisco Exchange. I was thus primed for ULHS 2005, the first year it was in the amazing Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. In my opinion this event represents a marked change in the consistency of good lindy hop. There were so many epic moments this year, and I think a lot of that is due to Todd Yannaconne and Naomi Uyama teaming up, along with the Silver Shadows making their debut with Frida and Todd in the mix. Todd and Naomi brought everyone to their feet in the fast division, then the premier fast competition, by doing really intricate footwork and Charleston variations to the Wolverine’s ridiculously fast “White Heat”—and they even danced on the beat.

Billie Holiday Inspiration

Social networking. It works bitches. Especially when you’re friends with people who really know their stuff. Case in point, Rob Moreland, a Lindy DJ from North Carolina, posted one of my favorite Billie Holiday songs, "No Regrets" on his Facebook profile. Rob said he heard it from Michael Gamble, a fellow southern DJ. I first heard it played by Mike Marcotte here at a dance in DC.

Guest Post: The Evolution of The Evolution of Lindy Hop Pt. 5

In 2004 I finally started getting back into what was going on in the national scene thanks to Chance Bushman. By then the DVD compilation “Cakewalk to Lindy Hop” was circulating amongst many of my friends and I was exposed to clips like Shorty George in “After Seben” and Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers in “A Day at the Races.” I’m sure I had watched these before at some point, but it wasn’t until then that I started to really understand them and appreciate the historical significance. We were all getting back into Charleston and dancing “raw”, so these two clips were really fundamental for learning partner Charleston stuff. Andrew and I knew we had to start the evolution routine with Shorty George, so we chose this clip, leading into the “Day at the Races.” We specifically chose Leon James’ and Norma Miller’s spotlight because it was goofy and we also wanted to make sure to pay tribute to them as individual dancers.

Guest Post: The Evolution of The Evolution of Lindy Hop Pt. 4

Between 2001 and 2004 I’d taken a break from the hard-core dance life and was a casual local dancer for a while, enjoying only events in Minnesota such as Midwest Lindyfest and ULHS, thanks to Amy Johnson. I was still hanging out and practicing from time to time with Mike and other friends, during which time he very proudly showed me a clip of the “Mad Dog” routine from ALHC 2002, or NADC, I can’t remember which. Everybody I’d ever heard of or seen in any competition was in that clip. And despite the poor quality of the video, it was still possible to feel the incredible energy and rawness of the dancing. This was the first time I’d really seen people successfully bust out fast dancing with aerials and all around ridiculousness.

Guest Post: The Evolution of The Evolution of Lindy Hop Pt. 3

Back in 1999, every Sunday we would all go to Lindy by the Lake in the Lake Harriet Bandshell, DJ’d by Jesse Miner, now of San Francisco. We would all do the Shim Sham to that really cheesy song, not “T’ain’t what you do,” but “Wanna learn the shim sham?” I thought it was the greatest thing ever. It was like a show, we’d just all line up and do it on the bandshell stage to all the people passing by. I’d actually already learned the tap version of the shim sham because I’d been a tap dancer for years before I started swing. Andrew and I also definitely wanted to include the shim sham as a more modern and community-oriented Frankie reference. To be fair, Frankie would have used “T’ain’t what you do,” which is a way cooler song, but we were going for silliness here.

Greatest Hits Pt. 2: The Hits Strike Back

This is why I don’t post off the cuff that often, because I forgot a whole section of thoughts I wanted to include in my last post. I talked about why DJ’s can and have to play lots of unfamiliar stuff.* Simply because if they don’t then everyone stagnates. The dancing, the music, your breath, your mom's breath etc. However, I've come to realize that it’s easy to forget that most people that come to a dance very rarely listen to this music outside of the dance floor. Many don’t listen to it at all. The few that do probably just have those well worn hits that they really like, and they get excited to dance to those same tunes when good dance partners are around.

Greatest Hits

I DJ'd for for my friend Gretta Thorn's (Now Gretta Thorn Stone) wedding a few weeks ago. She's one of the founding members of The Jam Cellar. And even though there were a good amount of dancers there, she wanted to keep the rest of the guests comfortable, so me and my DJ'ing partner for the evening, Luke Albao ended up playing the the wedding party greatest hits for the night. That's the reason why the last song appears on the playlist below. We had a lot of fun strategizing how to get from "Twist and Shout" to "Celebration" while working in a Madonna song in there. We thought people might think we were being too cliche, but they were having too much fun to notice. At the end of the night Nina Gilkenson told me that she hadn't danced that hard in a long long time. This coming from a woman who gets flown out to a big dance event every other weekend. This got me to thinking about why those songs are popular and also about Lindy Hop's own hit parade.

Guest Post: The Evolution of The Evolution of Lindy Hop Pt. 2

Once all of us in Minnesota started really getting into Lindy Hop in 1999, Mike would mail-order videos of Camp Hollywood 1998, Can’t Top the Lindy Hop, Buck Privates, Groovie Movie and Hellzapoppin' and we would all go over to his and Amy’s apartment (nicknamed the “Swing Pad”) and watch footage until our faces were numb. The “Can’t Top” video had a special significance for me—it was the first time any of us had seen Frankie Manning, Steven Mitchell, Ryan Francois, Sylvia Sykes, Sing Lim, and Ron from London.

Guest Post: The Evolution of The Evolution of Lindy Hop Pt. 1

In July 2009 Andrew came to Santa Barbara for the first of what would become many weekend practice sessions. We had just performed our first choreography, fondly named “the Hoedown”, at Lindy Focus, and were watching Judson Laipply in his Orange Crush T-shirt doing his “Evolution of Dance” clip to get new ideas for it (he quotes “Cotton-Eyed Joe”). We ended up just enjoying the clip in its entirety—then I looked over at Andrew and said “What if we wore Orange Crush T-shirts and jeans and did the evolution of lindy hop? Andrew immediately googled “orange crush t-shirt,” clicked “buy” and we started brainstorming.[1] This became a project we would work on for over 20 months. Many people have been asking me about this routine, so I’ve decided to share my thoughts on the process from an autobiographical perspective (I’m thinking of John Cusack in “High Fidelity,” organizing his record collection autobiographically). Reuben Brown has created a playlist on youtube of all of the clips, and Ben Yau has written a thorough blog based on the historical significance of each clip we chose. I feel like most of us have our own stories about the significance of a lot of these clips, so here are mine.