#lindy hoppers

[thefugitivesaint]

''Life'', Dec. 28, 1936  Some selections from a year end overview by ‘Life’ Magazine, one with some dated terminology. Speaking of which, the “Lindy Hop” "is a partner dance that originated in 1920's and 30's Harlem, New York. The Dance itself consists of both 8 and 6 count steps and it includes footwork borrowed from the Charleston and Tap.” The dances exact origins are unclear, “The Harlem Lindy Hop developed probably from four possible sources, or some combination thereof: the breakaway, the Charleston, the Texas Tommy, and the hop.”  “What was special about the Lindy Hope was that it left room for the dancers to improvise. The Savoy and other ballrooms would often host competitions and dance marathons where guests would compete against each other and come up with wild variations on the moves. The dance allegedly got its name at one of these dance marathons when in 1927 a reporter asked the famous dancer George “Shorty” Snowden what the dance he was doing was called. Inspired by pilot Charles Lindbergh’s recent solo “hop” across the Atlantic, Shorty George replied “the Lindy Hop” and gave the new dance craze its name” You learn something new every day. All I know is that I love dancing. Here’s clip from the 1941 film ‘Hellzapoppin' that’s considered by some to be “the greatest Lindy hop sequence ever filmed.” (I’m not getting into the thorny business of contextualizing black performances for white audiences on film and how what’s shown might reflect American racism and/or racist expectations of black physicality but at least the clip avoids the unfortunate black face adorned by the Marx Brothers in the 1937 film ‘A Day At The Races’ at the end of another ‘Lindy Hop’ dance sequence. But, if you want to see it, you’ll get to hear Ivie Anderson sing and that’s pretty great shit right there.)  Source

[notherpuppet]

Headcanon that alastor learned how to move like that in battle because he was a Lindy hopper

[thechanelmuse]

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Black Americans are Soul People. 

The amount of times I just watched this compilation made by BlackPowerBA. I love us. We are vibrant people with a culture unlike any other.

And that double dutch transition into Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers is the chef’s kiss.

[lindyloowho]

ILHC Europe All-Star Classic Routine: Tamara Lobato Nieto & Héctor San Andrés Jaime (Spain / Spain)

From ILHC Europe All-Star Classic Routines

[iddstar]

IYKYK

As part of my continued campaign to convince whoever I need to to let me make the official Callisto 6 comic book, here’s one of my favourite moments from the show.

[bieups]

Langblr Reactivation Challenge Week 1 Day 5: Share a Video

I actually don’t watch many things in Korean other than the occasional drama or random videos other people show me… But there was recently a swing dancer on this tv show, 취미로 먹고산다, which reminded me of when a different swing dance instructor (who’s pretty famous in the Korean swing scene) was on the same show a few years ago! I definitely watched this back when it came out, but it was a little bit hard to follow. My listening must’ve improved cause it’s pretty easy now! (The newer episode focused on someone else is much shorter and doesn’t include as many different people speaking, so this one seemed better to share for language study purposes~)

Korean tv is really good about including subtitles, which makes it easier to understand. And since this is a little slice of life style documentary, not only is it great for listening practice, but it also shows a little bit of what Seoul and the swing dance community looks like~ They blurred out the sign for the dance hall (or 스윙 빠/바) but I know exactly which one they’re at and where it is because I recognize the inside ㅋㅋ

[travsd]

The Norma Miller Centennial

Born 100 years ago today, Norma Miller (1919-2019). Remarkably, this Harlem Renaissance Woman (who came a long a shade too late for the Harlem Renaissance) nearly lived to see this day. She passed away back in May. While mostly known as a dancer and choreographer, Miller was also an actress, comedian, author, and teacher. As a kid, Miller hung around outside Harlem clubs like the Savoy Ballroom…

[badbitchstromboli]

California Dreamin’

( @elizabethepb )

Sleepy spindly spiderlegs set cracks in dreams, spread, further than fathoming and what can we fathom at such a distance?

Oh the pricking of my thumbs says something’s on its way, something blowing in the wind; there is a wind for sail, a winding price for tea— steeplechase? What seahorses may be, adept at ditches, britches striped and capped, all ready set for a long nighttime nap.

I call on Barbie and Ben, the sleeping friends, to take me to a land beyond, abscond with me beyond the sea oh won’t you, Bobby D? And the spidercracks that stretch their way to stepping, step me down to stumbling ‘round like a teenaged lousy lindy-hopper— pull the stopper and the plug!

Sleep and I are not lovers, barely friends; I’ve not networked with dreaming, surely we share some channels? One never knows with those shadows.

I have dreamt, with blessings of Amaterasu, golden, gilded things one might associate or dissociate with— I have daydreamt myself anew, and daydreamt myself an old; I dance the Regression! I do the Backslide! I shake and shimmy off the shawl of self-help! I hip and hop, heaving healing at the wall!

What sticks there? At the wall? Snatch whispers at my snout, but what sticks at the wall? What spaghetti can be had? What marinara? Why, healing does look an awful lot like spaghetti— comfort and cold, leftover and piled high at the past potluck; pasta everpresent; past that lingers as reddened fingers stained with hunger hunger hunger—

What hungers in you, in dreams? What hungers for you there too?

Perhaps the dreamers are abed, taking care to have been fed; ‘haps the dreamers dream spaghettiless dreams.

Perhaps I have thought too much of spaghetti.

I must untwirl my tangled meaty-phors, and make some veg of it all— an ensalada en suite, adjoined, though separate, stately.

Forgive my famished fathoms— I cannot go such distance but we try, we try. The sea and me we rock to sleep, though the ocean gets there quicker; if ‘twere up to me, to race to sleep, we’d ought needs call a vicar.

Give me Ben and Barbie, then, Ben Zo and Barbie Tall, keepers of the steeples that we chase; oh, nuns and their habits.

You’ve told me of dreams—

Am I in my homeland, in your dreaming? My homeland, here we come— strictly, directionally speaking, strictly locationally speaking; am I coming through that golden gate?

Are you?

One wonders if spaghettiless dreamscapes could compare to my homeland, but one trusts you and your dreaming; one trusts a poet; one must, for a poet has the whole thing wrought, and a poet has his heart in hand, better dreaming than the knot— one trusts that you have made long the journey, fathomed of homeland and its sprawl. One trusts the dreamscape you’ve dreamt-scoped is grand as sand.

It is better, I bet.

[thejuiceblog]

Parties

What makes a party? Amy Sedaris once wrote:

“When you see the word "party"...don't think of pony kegs and loud Southern rock or cigarillos and business women. Don't think of pools and diving for loose change. Don't think about cockfights - even though it's hard not to. Don't think tiki lights and fruity cocktails served in coconut shells on the patio, or a large group of drunken seamen clustered together shouting over each other. Think simplicity." 

Parties are as old as homo sapiens themselves. But for most people, the thing that makes a party a party and not just a meeting with snacks is usually the music; preferably upbeat, and preferably loud.

Buddy Bolden was somebody who knew about loud music and parties. It was said that when he played in New Orleans you could hear him from across the river. And his song Funky Butt was, as Danny Barker once put it, "a reference to the olfactory effect of an auditorium packed full of sweaty people "dancing close together and belly rubbing." That's definitely one way to party.

The Bolden band around 1905 (top: Jimmy Johnson, bass; Bolden, cornet; Willy Cornish, valve trombone; Willy Warner, clarinet; bottom: Brock Mumford, guitar; Frank Lewis, clarinet)

Even though he's considered the King of Jazz, there are no known recordings of Buddy Bolden, who improvised his music and never wrote it down. Really the only thing we have to go by is Jelly Roll Morton's rendition, which came to be known as Buddy Bolden Blues or I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say. 

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Jelly Roll Morton wasn't a man who shied away from a party. He made a name for himself playing ragtime in the brothels of New Orleans, and ragtime was, of course, known as the Devil's music. His rendition of Buddy Bolden Blues was considered so rude at the time that it was offensive even just to whistle it on the streets. Ruder still when you find out what Jelly Roll means. Or olfactory.

Some parties are planned and some are spontaneous. The difference between an average day at work and a spontaneous party could be as simple as the the presence of some unattended bongos, like in this scene from Hellzapoppin' -  a weird film from 1941 with one of the most iconic dance scenes ever created.

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That was Frances "Mickey" Jones, WiIliam Downes, Norma Miller, Billy Ricker, Willamae Ricker, Al Minns, Ann Johnson and Frankie Manning, also known as Whiteys Lindy Hoppers - all dancing to music by the Slim Slam band.

When a dance floor is involved, parties become divisive: you're either on the dance floor or you're not. The dance floor is where life plays out, where you define yourself, where acquaintances become something more. In an American high school scenario, the dance floor is a status symbol. Being on the dance floor with the right person is everything.

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Good parties share a collective, unspoken energy. Maybe all parties serve some sort of need to rebel against something oppressive, something that you need to escape. At the very least parties are a chance to act out in a way you otherwise can't.

One epic film party scene worth mentioning is from Olivier Assayas' Cold Water, if only because the scene goes on for about thirty minutes. The director admits that at some point he felt he was witnessing an experience that was "possibly stronger than whatever [ended] up on the screen."  It's a brilliant demonstration of that unspoken, rebellious energy that escalates into something unforgettable, something an onlooker would describe as a party even if party feels like too shallow of a word to describe it for those who are part of it.

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It should also be said that parties can be shallow, and not everyone likes a party. Some people see them as just another feature of the hedonic treadmill. Tim Holmes of Rolling Stones wrote about this next song in 1985, saying, "In "Swinging Party," life is a lilting series of ultimately empty, but nonetheless compulsory, soirees."

What inspires you to party?

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 5.26

Holidays

Battle of Pinhincha Day (Ecuador)

Bob Day

Boulder Day (Republic of Molossia)

Carb Day

Crown Prince’s Day (Denmark)

Drool Day

Dzien Matki (a.k.a. Mother's Day; Poland)

Feast of VooDoo Economics

Go Barefoot Around the House Day

Grey Day

Independent Artist Day

Mother’s Day (Poland)

National Death Busters Day

National EMS Recognition Day

National Grey Day

National Paper Airplane Day

National Poppy Day

National Ranboo Day

National Sorry Day (a.k.a. National Day of Healing; Australia)

National Wig Out Day

National Work From Home Day

Oat Grass Day (French Republic)

Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day (Hawaii)

Sally Ride Day

Starfleet Remembrance Day (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)

Windmill Day (Netherlands)

World Dracula Day

World Lindy Hop Day

World Orienteering Day

World Product Day

World Redhead Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Blueberry Cheesecake Day

National Cherry Dessert Day

World Sherry Day

4th & Last Friday in May

Ascension Friday (Belgium)

Bermuda Day [Last Friday]

Don't Fry Day [Friday before Memorial Day]

European Neighbours’ Day [Last Friday]

Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival begins [Last Friday, thru Sunday]

Heat Safety Awareness Day [4th Friday]

National Cooler Day [Friday before Memorial Day]

National Death Busters Day [Friday before Memorial Day]

National Heat Awareness Day [Last Friday]

National Polka Festival begins (Ennis, Texas) [Friday before Memorial Day]

National Road Trip Day [Friday before Memorial Day]

National Wig Out Day [Friday before Memorial Day]

Portland Rose Festival begins (Oregon) Friday in late May; thru June 26]

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Day (Western Australia) [Last Friday]

Trader-Willi Syndrome Awareness Day [Last Friday]

Title Track Day [4th Friday]

Independence Days

Erenian Republic (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Georgia (from Russia, 1918)

Guyana (from UK, 1966)

Molossia (f.k.a. the Grand Republic of Vuldstein; Declared; 1977) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Augustine of Canterbury (Anglican Communion and Eastern Orthodox)

August Kopisch (Artology)

Buddha Day (Buddhism)

Doc Owl (Muppetism)

Dorothea Lange (Artology)

Eleuterus, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Festival of the Valley (Ancient Egypt)

Lambert of Vence (Christian; Saint)

Lemminkainen’s Day (Pagan)

Lenny Bruce Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

St. Monica (Positivist; Saint)

Oduvald (Christian; Saint)

Peter Sanz  (Christian; One of Martyr Saints of China)

Philip Neri (Christian; Saint)

Philippe de Champaigne (Artology)

Quadratus of Athens (Christian; Saint)

Shavuot (Judaism) [6 Sivan] (a.k.a. …

Feast of the Harvest

Feast of Weeks

Festival of Weeks

First-Fruit festival

Wheat Harvest

Thargelia (Birthday Festival of Apollo & Artemis; Ancient Greece)

Totally Random Day (Pastafarian)

World Hunger Day (Pastafarian)

Zachary, Bishop of Vienne (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Butsumetsu (仏滅 Japan) [Unlucky all day.]

Premieres

Absolutely Free, by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (Album; 1968)

American Pie, by Don McLean (Song; 1971)

Avengers Assemble (Animated TV Series; 2013)

Beatlemania! (Broadway Musical Tribute; 1977)

Big Jake (Film; 1971)

Buddy of the Apes (WB LT Cartoon; 1934)

Caspar (Animated Film; 1995)

Dracula, by Bram Stoker (Novel; 1897)

Flying Home, recorded by Lionel Hampton (Song; 1937)

Games People Play, by Eric Berne (Self-Help Book; 1966)

God’s Men, by Pearl S. Buck (Novel; 1951)

Johnny Mnemonic (Film; 1995)

Kung Fu Panda 2 (Animated Film; 2011)

Mad Love (Film; 1995)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Film; 2017)

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, by The Beatles (Album; 1967)

Sourcery, by Terry Pratchet (Novel; 1988) [Discworld #5]

The Whole Truth and Nothing But, by Hedda Hopper (Memoir; 1963)

X-Men: The Last Stand (Film; 2006)

Yellow Submarine, recorded by The Beatles (Song; 1966)

Today’s Name Days

Alwin, Philipp (Austria)

Anamarija, Filip, Zdenko (Croatia)

Filip (Czech Republic)

Beda (Denmark)

Miina, Minna, Valme, Valmi, Vella, Velli, Vilma, Vilme (Estonia)

Miina, Mimmi, Minna, Minni, Vilhelmiina, Vilma (Finland)

Bérenger (France)

Marianne, Philipp (Germany)

Alfaios, Karpos, Sinesios (Greece)

Evelin, Fülöp (Hungary)

Filippo, Pellegrino (Italy)

Eduards, Edvards, Varis (Latvia)

Algimantas, Eduardas, Milvydė, Vilhelmina (Lithuania)

Annbjørg, Annlaug (Norway)

Beda, Filip, Marianna, Paulina, Więcemił, Wilhelmina (Poland)

Carp (România)

Dušan (Slovakia)

Felipe, Mariana (Spain)

Vilhelmina, Vilma (Sweden)

Felipe, Flip, Phil, Philip, Philippa, Phillip (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 146 of 2024; 219 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of week 21 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Huath (Hawthorn) [Day 13 of 28]

Chinese: Month 4 (Ding-Si), Day 8 (Jia-Shen)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 6 Sivan 5783

Islamic: 6 Dhu al-Qada 1444

J Cal: 25 Bīja; Foursday [25 of 30]

Julian: 13 May 2023

Moon: 42%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 6 St. Paul (6th Month) [St. Monica]

Runic Half Month: Odal (Home, Possession) [Day 2 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 68 of 90)

Zodiac: Gemini (Day 6 of 32)

[ginger-grimm]

🥀 + Melinda Parker, please?

@dancingsunflowers-ocs 🖤

Oh, my lil baby, this is going to hurt!

Okay, so, first of all, Lindy's mother Joanne would obviously be absolutely devestated to have lost her daughter. Like, Lindy was her one and only. She gave birth to her, raised her, loved her ferociously. So if she ever died, Jo would be done with everything. Unfortunately, due to past mistakes, Jo wouldn’t be able to visit her grave.

Dustin and Lindy have the tumultous romance of a lifetime, that's for sure. It's on and off and on and off, but one thing is for sure: these two dummies will always love one another. If Lindy ever died, Dustin might actually stay at her grave for the rest of his own life if he's not removed. Their love is for the ages.

Max and El would be at her grave for a while as well. The rest of the party would come in seperately and grieve for a while.

Hopper would pay his respects as well. He and Jo had been close friends since High School, and Lindy was like a second daughter to him before El showed up.

[lindyloowho]

THIS GETS ME SO EXCITED ABOUT JAZZ DANCING

[na3kosha]

and the only thing you wanted all along was to be seen

realization that that's the thing you've been missing, the only thing you wanted all along, to be seen. And it doesn't feel like a relief, to finally be seen. It feels mean, like, "Oh, it turns out that you knew what I wanted, and you waited until the very last moment to give it to me." I was prepared for more cruelty. I was sure that she would get in one final zinger about how I let her down, and about how I was fat and stupid, and too tall to be an effective Lindy-hopper. How I was needy and a burden and an embarrassment. All that I was ready for. I was not ready for "I see you." Only my mother would be lousy enough to swipe me with a moment of connection on her way out. But maybe I'm giving her too much credit. Maybe it wasn't about connection. Maybe it was a... maybe it was an "I see you," like, "I see you." Like, "You might have the rest of the world fooled, but I know exactly who you are." That's more my mom's speed

[bieups]

It's my last week of vacation~ I've spent 90% of this break at my house, sleeping whenever I want and playing video games

But last weekend I went to help my friend teach a dance class (we did the California routine, for any lindy hoppers out there) and I felt like my Korean speaking was terrible...so now that my brain is rested, it's time to talk to people again!

I'll be going back to teach swivels after I move, so I gotta start looking up some helpful vocab/phrases to use in that lesson