The 9:20 Special - Swing Lessons and Dancing in San Francisco

❤️ We’ve been having a blast virtually dancing with 70+ of you on Thursdays! To continue to bring you (and us) some joy, we're bringing you more dancing!
🥰Starting tonignt, April 16th, Hannah Mackenzie-Marguilies will teach the Tranky Doo. Another well-known (and super fun!) solo routine, created in the 40s and danced by Frankie Manning and other Lindy Hoppers of the time. The Tranky Doo is not as widespread as the Shim Sham but it is one of the "holy-trinity of the original swing-era jazz routines," as stated in this Swungover blog post about the mysterious history of the Tranky Doo.
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Tranky Doo
8:00pm - 9:15pm
Thursday, April 16, 23, 30
All levels welcome

It's free.
✅ Register through the link in our Instagram profile or the link in the comments.

Drop-ins allowed every week (but you still need to register for the series). However, this will be a progressive series so we encourage you to attend all 3 weeks, especially if you've never learned the routine before.

✅ We will email the Zoom link to those who registered 1 hour before the start of class so be sure to register early.

🙏While the class is free, we're asking for donations to our PayPal account at [email protected] or Venmo at . The donations will go toward The 9:20 Special on-going operating costs, instructors, and local musicians. If you're unable to pay, it is 100% OK!





swing dance

⭐ The Frankie Manning Foundation is preparing to launch an EMERGENCY SUPPORT PROGRAM in the coming days.

Support will be made available for full-time Lindy Hop professionals who show pressing financial need and who demonstrate a commitment to preserving and passing on the legacy of the Lindy Hop that originated in the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. ***Please standby for application details.

💠 We are asking for your financial contributions as part of a matching fund to help the global Lindy Hop community pull through this crisis. The will match every dollar raised by the community. We are starting with an initial goal of $20K with matching by FMF of an additional $20K.

➡️ Please follow the link in our Instagram bio to make a donation and share broadly! https://www.frankiemanningfoundation.org/emergency

❤️For those who haven’t seen our announcement from Monday, please take note...

Dear 9:20 Special community,
Because of the recent recommendations from the Department of Public Health regarding COVID-19, we've decided The 9:20 Special will be on hiatus effective immediately. We feel it's important to do our part by not providing an opportunity for this virus to spread at our event.

On Friday, March 6th, The San Francisco Department of Public Health released a statement that recommended all non-essential large community events be canceled for the next two weeks. While our classes and dance may not meet the implied definition of a "large" event, we are planning to be closed the rest of March because our event involves close physical contact with others. We will continue to monitor the updates and re-evaluate toward the end of this month to determine if we can re-open in April.

Please read our recent newsletter which includes more details: https://conta.cc/2IzXr4m

Air hugs and jazz hands,
Iris and Kirk

We can’t wait to kick off another month with you!

We are back to a regular 4-week month in March and are particularly excited for our Special Topics and Level 3 classes.

For Special Topics (8:30pm), Amanda Collins and Philippe Wilson are teaching Dips, Tricks, and Other Cool Sh$t.

For Level 3 (7:20pm), Hannah Howard and Kevin Weng are teaching a Musicality class to help you learn how to dance "in the pocket" - such an amazing feeling and skill to learn!

For all the class details, including our Level 1 and Level 2 classes, check out the recent newsletter linked in our Instagram profile.

See you Thursday!

Last night at in was magical. We hope to see many of you again tonight! They’re selling dance tickets at the door!

✨BLACK HISTORY MONTH SPOTLIGHT✨
Another fascinating excerpt from the Lindy Hop page on Wikipedia...

“As white people began going to Harlem to watch black dancers, according to Langston Hughes:

The lindy-hoppers at the Savoy even began to practice acrobatic routines, and to do absurd things for the entertainment of the whites, that probably never would have entered their heads to attempt for their own effortless amusement. Some of the lindy-hoppers had cards printed with their names on them and became dance professors teaching the tourists. Then Harlem nights became show nights for the Nordics.

Hughes's mocking statement reflects how the Harlem Renaissance Movement acknowledged the Lindy Hop which the movement considered part of "low culture", and thus not an important cultural achievement. According to Snowden, "When he finally offered to pay us, we went up and had a ball. All we wanted to do was dance anyway."

Read the entire Wikipedia history by visiting the link in our Instagram bio or go here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Hop

Screenshot from a video: “Shorty” George Snowden and “Big Bea” 1937

✨Black History Month Spotlight✨
A fascinating excerpt from Wikipedia about the specific relationship between Black dancers and Savoy-Style Lindy Hop (aka the original Lindy Hop)....we encourage you to read the full Wikipedia post by searching “Lindy Hop.”

“Perhaps the most useful employment of the term 'Savoy-style Lindy Hop' lies in the association of the Savoy Ballroom (and dancers who were associated with it, particularly those of the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers) and ethnicity. Despite the differences noted above, there are marked tropes in African American and African dances which are present in the Lindy Hop of these dancers in this period. These may include:

✅clear angles at the ankle - between leg and foot - and often at the wrist and/or elbow

✅wide-legged stances for both women and men, particularly in the follower's swivel

✅Frankie Manning's characteristically 'athletic' stance - like a runner spread out in motion, parallel to the ground - echoes African dance

✅particular 'variations' or jazz steps associated with Savoy-style date back to the African communities from which African American slaves were taken (and are discussed in the History of slavery in the United States article), including the move "the itch" which then moved on to white communities and across to the west coast of America with dancers like Dean Collins.

These associations between African American Lindy Hoppers and a particular dance style are important as Lindy Hop developed in a close relationship with jazz, in particular swing. Both are African American vernacular art forms.”


📸 This photo: Willa Mae Ricker and Leon James, original Lindy Hop dancers in iconic Life magazine photograph, 1943

✨Black History Month Spotlight✨
We sure hope you’ve seen the Hellzapoppin’ dance clip! It’s arguably the best footage of Lindy Hop from those who helped create the dance.
And while it’s an amazing clip of dancing, it’s also very important to understand the context.
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Yahoodi wrote-up a wonderful post that shares “7 things you should know about Hellzapoppin.” Number 7 is most important, as a reminder of how far we’ve come (and how far we still have to go).
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Number 7:
Not Shown to All Audiences because of Racism
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The dance scene is completely superfluous to the rest of the film. The dancers appear in no other scenes. In fact there is only one tiny sequence where a Black person and white person appear in the same shot, for a throwaway joke about the standing bass.

That segregation is intentional and was common practice in Hollywood at that time. Black people performing or speaking in scenes was still controversial or even scandalous to certain white audiences, particularly in the American south. So those scenes were shot in such a way that they could easily be omitted in certain theaters.

This is particularly upsetting since this was clearly the standout dance number of the entire movie, which is about putting on a stage production. And yet, this routine is not included in the actual show.”
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Check out the full yahoodi post linked in our Instagram profile or

http://www.yehoodi.com/blog/2018/7/23/seven-things-you-should-know-about-hellzapoppin

As part of Black History Month, we’ll be sharing some photos and history to help spread the love 💕 and gratitude 🙏 we have for the dancers who created this dance we all get to enjoy today.

📷 This photo:
Whyte’s Hopping Maniacs performing with “Le Cotton Club de New York” at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, summer 1937.
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(left to right) Naomi Waller and Frankie Manning, Lucille Middleton and Jerome Williams, Mildred Cruse and Billy Williams.
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Photo credit: studio c. bracken
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Thank you Frankie Manning Foundation
for this photo and description.