Race, Entertainment, and Historical Borrowing: The Case of Lindy Hop
by Guest Contributor Lisa, originally published at Sociological Images
This post is dedicated to Frankie Manning. Frankie died this morning of complications related to pnemonia. He was one month shy of his 95th birthday. I will really miss him.
Frankie is a lindy hop legend. He choreographed the first clip below and is the dancer in the overalls.
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In the 1980s, there was a lindy hop revival. Lindy hop is a partner dance invented by African American youth in Harlem dancing to swing music in the early 1930s. Named after the “hopping” of the Atlantic by Charles Lindbergh Jr., it became wildly popular in the 1930s and ‘40s, traveling from the East to the West Coast and from black to white youth. Since its resurgence, Lindy Hoppers have enjoyed a national scene with websites, workshops, competitions, and city-wide social events that draw national and international crowds.
Though lindy hop was invented by African Americans, lindy hoppers today are primarily white. These contemporary dancers look to old movie clips of famous black dancers as inspiration. And this is where things get interesting: The old clips feature profoundly talented black dancers, but the context in which they are dancing is important. Professional black musicians, choreographers, and dancers had to make the same concessions that other black entertainers at the time made. That is, they were required to capitulate to white producers and directors who presented black people to white audiences. These movies portrayed black people in ways that white people were comfortable with: blacks were musical, entertaining, athletic (even animalistic), outrageous (even wild), not-so-smart, happy-go-lucky, etc.
So what we see in the old clips that contemporary lindy hoppers idolize is not a pure manifestation of lindy hop, but a manifestation of the dance infused by racism. While lindy hoppers today look at those old clips with nothing short of reverance, they are mostly naive to the fact that the dancing they are emulating was a product made to confirm white people’s beliefs about black people. Let’s look at how this plays out.
This clip, from the movie Hellzapoppin’ (1941) is perhaps the most inspirational clip in the contemporary lindy hopper’s arsenal:
By the way, the dancers are in “service” outfits because of the way lindy hop scenes featuring black dancers were included in movies. Typically they would have no relationship to the plot; they would occur out of nowhere and then disappear. This was so that the movie studios could edit out the scene when the movie was going to be shown to those white audiences that were hostile to seeing any positive representation of black people at all. If you want to see how the scene above emerged (black “help” suddenly discovering musical instruments and spontaneously congregating), you can watch the extended clip here.
Here’s another clip (not to diss Duke Ellington, but the dancing starts at 0:57):
Both of those clips feature a dance troop called Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. You can see other famous dance segments in Boy! What A Girl! and Day At The Races.
The clip below, from the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown (2006), reveals how powerfully contemporary lindy hoppers have been influenced by clips like the ones above. Watch for how the styling, moves, and trick reflects the clips above:
Another good example can be found here (but the angle, audio, and visual quality are not very good).
So we have a set of (mostly) white dancers who naively and wholeheartedly emulate a set of black dancers whose performances, now 70 to 80 years old, were produced for mostly white audiences and adjusted according to the racial ethos of the time. On the one hand, it’s neat that the dance is still alive; it’s wonderful to see it embodied, and with so much enthusiasm, so many years later. And certainly no ill will can be fairly attributed to today’s dancers. On the other hand, it’s troubling that the dance was appropriated then (for white audiences) and that it is that appropriation that lives on (for mostly white dancers). Then again, without those dancers, there would likely be no revival at all. And without those clips, however imperfect, the dance might have remained in obscurity, lost with the bodies of the original dancers.
As a white lindy hopper myself, for over ten years now, who desperately loves this dance, I find this to be a deep conundrum.
I don’t know what Frankie would have had to say about this critique. But I do know that he loved lindy hop to his last days and he was grateful for the revival. Here he is dancing with Dawn Hampton, another legend of lindy hop, at the age of 94:
I’lll miss you, Frankie. And I’ll keep on dancing, embodying, with ambivalence, all the great contradictions of the dance and the history of this country.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
inkst wrote:
That was a really interesting post! I didn’t know anything about the lindy hop before I read it. Thanks for sharing and especially for introducing it in the appropriate context.
Guy moved good for 94!
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 10:47 am ¶
Trey wrote:
Great post! Would you say that lindy hop was used in those gap ads awhile back? I ask because when those ads were big, my mom used to say that my grandparents used to dance like that.
I’m surprised that Dancing with the Stars or one of the other dance shows hasn’t attempted to bring lindy hop to the mainstream again. I wonder if that would be considered another instance of appropriation.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 10:48 am ¶
Ilana wrote:
My first thought at watching the first video clip was shock and awe- who do they do that??? The skill is just incredible. But it became harder to enjoy the dancing for the art it is as the racial stereotypes became unavoidably clear. Also distracting was the fact that most of the women in the first clip were wearing, well, very little.
In the end, it does pose a significant conundrum, because although the dance form is in some ways, inherently racist, it’s also a part of history, and testament to dance history and some truly incredible artists.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 12:59 pm ¶
Lisa wrote:
Trey,
Yes, it was lindy hop in the gap ad. And I think there has been lindy hop in Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance (living in L.A., I know some of the choreographers)… but most of us hard-core lindy hoppers, like the ones in the contemporary clip, grimace a bit when we see it on those shows. It’s pretty watered down in those circumstances.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 2:02 pm ¶
jen* wrote:
SYTYCD has had the lindy hop as one of the dances for all the seasons that I have watched…And once, they had a couple who were lindy hoppers(?) make it through to the semifinals, I believe. They were indeed white.
I didn’t know anything about the history of the dance though, until I read this. I think SYTYCD has made greater strides at putting more diverse dance styles into the public eye than any other current dance show, one of the reasons why it is so enjoyable to me.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 2:14 pm ¶
Whit wrote:
I’ve seen the lindy hop on DWTS!!!! (don’t ask. we have a pool. it’s good money.) Anyway, it’s one of the new dances this season, along with the “Argentine” tango. DWTS usually has at least one or two stars of color. Lil Kim is AMAZING this season. I’ve got her in second place on my bracket, only because I’m cynical and recognize that a large number of women want Gilles Marini to win, because he’s hot and they want to have french sex with him.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 2:47 pm ¶
Niki wrote:
Thanks for the post! I was only somewhat aware of lindyhop, so I had never viewed these clips before. Amazing! You gotta love the last clip of Mr. Manning & Ms. Hampton. This is yet another example of young black people not being told enough about their history and letting things that were great cultural contributions (such as rock, blues, jazz, some types ofdance) be claimed and appropriated by others. I would like some insight on why some of these dance scenes, such as the swing dancing/lindyhop scene or resurgence of breakdancing have mostly non-black participants.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 5:24 pm ¶
Ratrace wrote:
Why did folks stop dancing as couples? This is so much more crunk than anything the kids are doing.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 8:35 pm ¶
Phil Deeze wrote:
Wow. It’s amazing what folks will appropriate culturally and palm off as their own, isn’t it?
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 8:54 pm ¶
Carol wrote:
Amazing post. Thank you for this!
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 8:57 pm ¶
thesciencegirl wrote:
I have watched and passed on that Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown video many times, in awe of the dancers’ skill and style, but I never knew anything about the history of the dance style. This is a very thought-provoking post.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 9:39 pm ¶
RainaWeather wrote:
This is weird. My mother showed me this video yesterday because we’re always looking for old dance clips featuring black dancers. Good post.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 9:55 pm ¶
prettypithy wrote:
Thank you for the fascinating contribution! When I was little, I used to see those depictions in the movies and ask my (black) grandparents if they used to dance like that. They would always sniff and mention that they had never danced so wildly and that the whole point of dancing was to enjoy your partner, not to do acrobatics. It seems that Frankie’s interpretation also has more of the slow, saucy quality my grandparents enjoyed in their hey-day. It is interesting to finally see the forces responsible for the disconnect between the way my grandparents actually danced and the way I perceived it growing up with popular images as a child.
Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 10:26 pm ¶
korshi wrote:
I first heard about the Lindy Hop in Malcolm X’s autobiography; there’s a great story about how after all the white customers had left the dancefloor at the end of the night all the black servants would change into trainers and dance lindy hop into the early morning. He tells it better than that, of course… if you haven’t read it already it’s worth it for so many reasons, including the vivid picture he paints of African-American culture and race relations in the forties and fifties.
Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 7:10 am ¶
Afro-chan wrote:
My grandparents were amazing lindy hoppers.
Niki-good question…I don’t know many black swing dancers, lindyhoppers etc…
Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 8:14 am ¶
gatamala wrote:
Ratrace wrote:
Why did folks stop dancing as couples? This is so much more crunk than anything the kids are doing.
Mom?
Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 10:54 am ¶
bittersweet wrote:
Black folks still do this- it’s called “hand dancing” in some parts…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHwW_uoCZo&feature=related
Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 12:12 pm ¶
Lisa wrote:
Hi all,
There was a good question over at Sociological Images and I thought I’d share the question and response(s) here, too.
A couple commenters asked how, exactly, the dance was changed in order to appeal to white audiences. This is actually really difficult to say, since few films of social dancing (black dancers dancing only for other black dancers) exist. But we have some theories. Evan, in the comments, had this suggestion:
“For white audiences of the time, Jazz was Hot Black jungle music – Black people were sex crazy hedonists, and you can see it in the moves, the exaggerated body undulation. the speed. the sweat. the rhythmical drum. It was like watching a tribe around a fire.”
I’m with Evan. I’d like to also add that, as a person with a trained eye for lindy hop, I see two things in those clips:
(1) I see incredibly effective technique. Unbelievable strength and precision. It’s fantastic. (By the way, Frankie explained that, by the time they got to the take you see in the Hellzapoppin’ clip, they’d performed that routine more than 20 times in a row… they were amazing athletes.)
(2) But I also see, layered onto and facilitated by that technique, an effort to make the dance appear more out-of-control than it is. They are wild-ing the dance.
At least, that’s how it looks to me.
More than that, though. As a dancer who has also been inspired by those clips, I know how to do that. I know how to exaggerate the out-of-control look. I won’t go into the technical details (I did, and then deleted!), but it’s do-able. And it’s not that it’s not cool… adding the drama is fun and exciting to watch… but there’s a historical reason why lindy hop has that dimension and that is worth thinking about.
Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 6:35 pm ¶
mildred wrote:
Great posting, Lisa.
As previously noted, it is hard to say how and if the dance was changed in order to appeal to white audiences but keep in mind that social dance and performance/competition dance are related, but different animals. Social dancing is mainly for enjoyment, so it is generally mellower than performance dance, no matter what dance style or era you’re talking about. I would assume that the dancers in the old film clips were just doing a fancier, more theatrical version of the lindy hop for the film on their own accord – as opposed to the” Friday night date” version of it. After all, it was dancers’ chance display their best moves to a large audience, even though the director was probably aiming for a depiction “wild animated blacks folks.”
Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 11:38 pm ¶
Rachel wrote:
Niki,
As a black swing dancer (one of very few in my swing scene), the reason I’ve heard is that black people aren’t still swing dancing is because they’ve moved on to new things. There are few people of color in the swing community as it is, even at larger events I’ve attended out of town (Albany, Montreal, and Washington DC to name a few). A majority of the nationally (and internationally) known teachers are white people in their 20s and 30s.
In addition to that, I get the sense that some black people don’t even know what swing dancing is anymore, particularly in the college generation. I taught a swing club on my campus for a year and a half and a large majority of the people I taught were white. This lack of diversity has lately become very discouraging to me. I think that a more diverse group of people would be interested in learning swing dancing if the current media representing the swing community was more diverse.
Posted 01 May 2009 at 12:02 pm ¶
pres wrote:
Wow!!!!! That was some dancing in the Helzapoppin’ clip.
Posted 01 May 2009 at 3:42 pm ¶
pres wrote:
Younger black folks don’t Lindy Hop, listen to the blues, etc. because they are always inventing and looking forward to doing something new. It’s just our nature as black to be creative that way. (How else could we have survived in America?)
But by not gaining an appreciation for what has come before you is a prescription for losing your culture. And that’s what black folks miss by not infusing this quality in their children.
Posted 01 May 2009 at 3:46 pm ¶
Natalie wrote:
Wow, that is some incredible dancing in the first clip. I didn’t know anything about lindy hop, but this makes me want to try it out. (I am, however, the world’s worst dancer, so it’s unlikely to happen.)
Thanks for the context.
Posted 02 May 2009 at 5:22 am ¶
Spunkedncr wrote:
I have to Completely agree with Pres…
The reason why so many young Black people do not practice Lindy Hop is because Black creativity is continuously evolving and there are ALOT of things that happened back in the day that STAY back in that time because our great-grandparents, grandparents and parents Don’t talk about it.
I knew the history of Lindy Hop before reading this but only because I took a Dance History class a year ago at my community college.
I’m a dancer and I took it because I wanted to learn more about the history of American dances but what I didn’t expect to learn was how the majority of American music and American (also Latin American) dances were birthed from Black people.
You didn’t mention this so I don’t know if you know but the reason why the Lindy Hop was so fast was because Whites were constantly stealing the dances from the Black ballrooms and labeling it as their own (the Jitterbug) so Blacks decided to make the dances faster in order to make it harder for Whites to steal it.
…Interesting history and the history you gave is also interesting. Someone mentioned how scantily clad the women in the video are which I noticed from the start (what their wearing is even questionable for today’s standards)
Thanks for posting this!
Posted 02 May 2009 at 8:00 pm ¶
Candy wrote:
I’m also a Lindy Hopper and sad to see Frankie Manning go.
I’m not so sure that I believe what you have to say about the form of the dance, however – for one thing, you are right that today’s dancers revere Frankie Manning, and because of this he became rather involved in teaching for a while and I’m sure that if there were a “purer” form of dancing that wasn’t tainted by racism in film that he’d have had something to say about it. Furthermore, there’s nothing in his biography to show that the dance itself had to change for films.
While I’m certain that the characters blacks had to play as well as their costumes were affected by racism, I just don’t see evidence that they had to change the dance itself at all to pander to the white folk. East Coast Swing is what happened to Lindy Hop to pander to the white folk.
So, it doesn’t trouble me at all that people are emulating the dancing in these old films. It would trouble me if they did it in blackface, though.
As to why more black people aren’t doing more Lindy Hop now, I certainly can’t say anything educated about it. Maybe it’s because the culture has simply continued to progress and they’re not all interested in a revival of really old music and dancing. And keep in mind that only about 13% of the US population is black (this is a little outdated, it’s the 2004 census info), so if there’s a revival in anything that sweeps the United States it’s *probably* going to be mostly white people.
Posted 06 May 2009 at 3:05 pm ¶
Bill Speidel wrote:
While these videos on the internet are in fact very inspirational one must realize that they weren’t widely available when the Lindy Hop revival began. The revival began via word of mouth with young dancers asking Frankie Manning and old timers, “show me that so I can steal it”.
In time people discovered recordings like Mura Dehn’s The Spirit Moves and the vintage film footage that is now so much more widely available than even a decade ago. However, its incorrect to say white lindy hoppers naively believe these recently available clips are what lindy hop is all about. I think you’d be hard pressed to find dancers who found their way to those videos without knowing the bigger picture.
Similarly, while most of us recognize that the Hellzapoppin video was a Hollywood production of tricks, it doesn’t mean they aren’t amazing to watch. Similarly, the amazing tricks that happen in competitions are great to watch, but they are not what happens on the social dance floor. That’s where the true heart of Lindy Hop lives… with one man and one woman dancing, as in your video of Frankie and Dawn.
We’d still be dancing Lindy Hop if the clip of Hellzapoppin didn’t exist; but we wouldn’t be if people hadn’t tracked down the founding African American innovators, and said, “show me that”. Respectfully, I think that’s where your argument doesn’t work.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 2:38 pm ¶
NEON wrote:
For a more intelligent discussion of this topic please visit:
http://www.yehoodi.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=86556&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
It’s great that the article highlights video footage few of you have seen. But the premise and arguments reflect an individuals own inner conflict versus a whole dance communities issues. Discussions of race and class have been integral throughout the modern Lindy Hop revival as you will see in the linked topic.
Posted 13 Jul 2009 at 9:28 am ¶