Rough Translation: May We Have This Dance?
Credit: Cassidy Araiza for NPR
Lindy Hop is a Black dance born in Harlem in the 1920s. In the past decades it has been adopted by several dance communities around the world. In this episode of Rough Translation we travel to a dance camp in Sweden and we follow the efforts of Black dancers trying to reclaim Lindy Hop as a living tradition.
Additional Context
- Learn more about the Black Lindy Hoppers Fund and Collective Voices For Change, organizations that were founded in 2020 to support and promote Black dancers while educating the international jazz dance community on the African American history of Lindy Hop and other Black social dances.
- Guardian Baltimore is a community-based organization founded by Breai Mason-Campbell that aims to pass on African American history and culture through dance.
- The Frankie Manning Foundation seeks to carry on the work and spirit of Frankie Manning. They administer the Frankie Manning Ambassador Scholarship.
- Learn more about the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program.
- Watch the spectacular Lindy Hop sequence in the 1941 film Hellzapoppin.
- Watch Frankie Manning talk in 2006 about his life and career.
- Watch LaTasha and Felix Berghäll dance at the 2019 International Lindy Hop Championships.
- Listen to Snatch & Grab It, by Julia Lee.
- And here are some of LaTasha's favorite songs to dance to!
- Chicken An' Dumplings (Live), by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
- Lavender Coffin, by Lionel Hampton
- Wailing Interval, by Duke Ellington
- Sister Sadie, by Horace Silver
- Harlem, Harlem, Harlem, by Charles Turner & Uptown Swing
- You Can't Pull the Wool Over My Eyes, by Catherine Russell
- Jersey Bounce, by Ella Fitzgerald
- Pickin' the Cabbage, by Cab Calloway