Lindy Hop

My goodness.

By profession, I'm a lindy hop teacher in St. Charles.

Okay, that's amazing.

Yeah, and so as soon as

And then by the time we really think of it, here we are, this is really swing music as played for the zillions of dancers that went to the Savoy Ballroom and other places, you know, like 15 to 17 piece big bands.

So Kick was, we have to keep in mind that his music was totally in sync with dancing and that it's hard to it's hard to remember that today, you know, that these things were intertwined, the evolution of the great Lindy Hop, you know, and, and, you know, that was also called the Jitterbug by white dancers, but also other dancers.

And the music we think of that, I want to say the big white bands modeled themselves on Chick's arrangements and Ellington's and Fletcher Henderson's and a host of others.

So he was really in there at the beginning of that.

Later, we hear a story of how Bill Bojangles Robinson stuck out his hand to shake with Charles Lindbergh after his famous flight, only to have the racist aviator turn away from him.

And this gets its payoff when Bearden points out that the greatest artistic tribute to Lindbergh was none other than the Lindy Hop, a dance created in Harlem.

To music, I would add, by U.B. Blake.

Langston Hughes, who died before this party, was a leading light of the Renaissance and preached, as Arna Bontemps tells us, that black artists should claim a new freedom.

Yeah.

So I quite liked that she had little breaks and they were doing the different, like, more Lindy Hop kind of, kind of thing.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, I just noticed that when he got back into hold I wanted him to maintain that frame position.

Today, our guest is Andrew Wilson.

Andrew is a Balboa and Lindy Hop dancer based in Durham, North Carolina.

A passionate teacher, competitor, and social dancer, Andrew is drawn to the aspects of dance he finds most rewarding, connection, movement, technique, and musicality.

As a teacher, Andrew particularly enjoys helping dancers discover how strong fundamentals can bring them into greater connection with both the music and their partners.

This is like a combination of all these awesome things that I like individually.

Why not just do more of this?

How did you transition from, I guess, Lindy Hop to Balboa? How did you find Balboa?

Oh, man.

It's whooshing.

It's all very fast, but it looks like something you see a lot in like Lindy Hop or like swing dancing where he like flips her like over his arm basically.

Oh.

Okay, I could see that.

Build a nice big wall around the bunker, the ballroom bunker.

Let him do the Lindy Hop.

He can put his little, um, you know, tuxedos on and let the demented man ride out his time.

I don't care.