Lindy Hop is back! Amsterdam has rediscovered the American swing jazz dance from the 1930s. Frankie Manning, the man who rocked the cradle of this happy dance, took to the dance floor with Liesbeth de Bakker.

“Lindy Hop is a dance that’s done to swing music and it’s swinging that brings life together. If I wasn’t swinging I don’t think I would have lived this long,” said Frankie Manning back in 2004. Lindy Hop’s living legend was 90 but looked twenty years younger. And on the dance floor he still had the moves. “He’s really fantastic,” said a visitor to the Lindy Hop bash in Amsterdam. “He gets the whole place jumping. He only needs to make a move and you instantly see what it means to dance.”

Lindy Hop, the American feel-good dance named after aviator Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 ‘hop’ across the Atlantic, emerged during the Great Depression. “People didn’t have jobs and those who had, were only paid minimum wages and had to work long hours, so when it was finished, they wanted some kind of entertainment and dancing was the best thing they could do,” reminisces the great ‘Hopper’.

After a long quiet spell in the middle of the 20th century, it has resurfacing in a big way, especially in Amsterdam. “The interest in Lindy Hop is definitely growing, also outside Amsterdam,” says Robert Cullen, a Lindy Hop enthusiast who teaches the dance himself in the south of the country. Youngsters in particular are becoming more interested now that partner dances are popular once again.

Dutch Hoppers
Hundreds of enthusiastic Dutch hoppers flocked to Amsterdam to submerge themselves in a weekend of the dance, and Frankie Manning’s presence there was definitely the icing on the cake. Manning is one of the greats of swing dancing:

 
“When I started dancing, Lindy Hop was fairly new. Most of the dancers then were dancing like ballroom dancers in an upright position. But when I started dancing, I didn’t feel like dancing so straight up, like having a board in my back. So I started to relax. When I would swing out a girl, I would be almost parallel to the floor. My leg would be extended and I would be leaning forward and it would look like I was flying.”

 
Manning made the dance more lively and acrobatic but his main contribution was the ‘air step’, spectacularly displayed in the 1941 film ‘Hellzapoppin.’ His female partner is flung up in the air and lands just in time to the music. “Youngsters around me started watching me dance and they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great. That cat’s swinging. He’s flying’, and everybody else started to dance like I was dancing.”

Hoppers Heyday
Lindy Hop’s heyday was the mid to late 1930s and it’s home base was Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. Frankie Manning toured with top class big bands and a dance group. Their fame spread all over the world. He always says he worked with ‘royalty’, big names like Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald. He loved the teamwork between musicians and dancers in those days. “The communication between the dancers and the orchestra’s band was fantastic!”

“You could look at Frankie Manning like a teacher, but I don’t think that’s the biggest benefit we get from him,” says Robert Cullen. “The thing we really learn from Frankie Manning is how it was in those days. He’s a great storyteller - even while he teaches. So we get inspiration from the actual living legend who lived the Lindy Hop in the 30s.”

It’s clear Cullen and his fellow hoppers revere Manning but their idol laughs it off. “There’s not too many of us around today, that’s why I’m famous,” he says with a smile. “I’m the only one around.” Sadly, Frankie Manning passed away in April 2009, one month short of his 95th birthday celebrations.

Hoppin’ Alive was produced by Liesbeth de Bakker. The documentary was originally broadcast in December 2004.