Happy 21st birthday to swing dancing in Melbourne

[joceb]

August 2016 is swing / Lindy Hop dancing's 21st birthday in Melbourne.

Adrian Spadaro, from Red Hot Rockers, organised the first swing / lindy hop workshop in Melbourne on 20th Aug 1995 when he put on a workshop with Rob Bloom from Sydney.

To celebrate there will be a group performance of the Lindy Chorus on Sat 27th Aug at the Buckley Park Bowls Club, Essendon dance with Honkytonk Rockers. Everyone who knows the routine is welcome to join in the performance, just let Adrian know beforehand.

For those who'd like to join in the performance there will be 2 lindy chorus workshops on Mon 15th and 22nd of Aug at Camberwell Bowls Club, 14 Bowen St Camberwell from 7-10pm for $15 each. This will be an intensive workshop with partners preferred, and is not suitable for inexperienced dancers. Some knowledge of 8 beat moves required. This is a world famous Frankie Manning routine and is danced all over the world.

Here's a youtube clip of the Lindy Chorus being danced at Flipside in May 2014 for the world wide Frankie Manning 100 tribute.

https://youtu.be/WArlySj_eio

Video of Frankie Manning teaching the Lindy Chorus

https://youtu.be/p-Yx3CwSj6k


A brief history of Swing dancing in Australia.

Swing dancing was popular in Australia in the 1930's and 40's but died out when rock n roll took over in the 1950's. In 1986 swing was revived in the US when 2 young dancers found Frankie Manning and asked him to show them how to dance the lindy hop. It then spread to the UK and was then revived in Sydney,Australia in July 1995 by Rob Bloom, who was Australia’s first Lindy Hop teacher. Rob learnt to dance in London in 1991 and after 4 years with the UK’s best swing dancers he moved to Sydney in 1994. Rob launched the Lindy Hop revival in Australia, running the first lindy hop workshop in Sydney in July 1995.

In August 1995, dance teacher Adrian Spadaro, from Red Hot Rockers, invited Rob Bloom to Melbourne to teach a Lindy Hop workshop, kicking off Melbourne’s swing revival. Pat Noakes started Lindy Hop Melbourne/ Swing Central teaching Lindy Hop in Melbourne in 1997, and Claudia Funder and Scott Cupit founded Swing Patrol in 1998. In 1997 Frankie Manning , then aged 83, came to Canberra to teach the lindy chorus routine. He later came to Melbourne in 2002 to teach, then aged 88.