Kids and Teen Blog
Happy Feet: The Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hoppers and Me
by monique t
February 01, 2006
Celebrate Black History Month with the Lindy Hop and Happy Feet, the story of the Savoy Ballroom.
On March 12, 1926, the doors of Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, the earth's hottest, most magnificent dancing palace, swung open. It was a night when blacks and whites, rich and poor, all came together to dance. And did they ever dance--spinning and flying and flipping all over the ballroom!
Happy Feet (Harcourt) is the story of the magic of the Savoy and lindy hop dancing told from a father to his son.
The Savoy Ballroom was Harlem's most famous dance club. It hosted celebrities, royalty, and most every big-name band and singer of the Swing Era (c. 1935-1940s), including Count Basie, Duke Ellignton, and Ella Fitzgerald.
The Lindy Hop was named after Charles Lindbergh's "hop," his historic first flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. The dance, with its dizzy spins and joyful acrobatics, captured the excitement and optimism of the Harlem Renaissance. It reached its greatest popularity in 1937 when Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, staring Frankie "Musclehead" Manning, became a world-famous sensation, but the Lindy Hop remains one of North America's most celebrated dances today.
