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Swing Dance and The Silver Screen
For the swing dancer who is also a movie buff, or perhaps the dancer who is encouraged and ultimately learns better visually, there are a wealth of movies and clips available at a moment’s notice. Easily accessible from the web, the video shop and even the mall, swing dance movies and instructional videos are an excellent source of entertainment and inspiration that anyone can turn to.
The heyday of swing dance brought along with it insatiability to its fans! Audiences could not get enough of it and clamored for more. Because of this, Hollywood and the silver screen began incorporating swing dance routines into the movies that they were making. The dances were fresh, fun and provided a new facet of entertainment besides the actual movie plots themselves. The twenties, thirties, forties and fifties saw countless films with some sort of swing dance in them!
Hellzapopping is perhaps the most popular swing dance movie of all time. Released in 1945, this “no plot” movie was mainly a crazy convergence of over a hundred dancers! This movie was based on a popular musical of the same name that ran from 1938 to 1941, and featured well-known dancers Dean Collins and Martha Raye. Starring in the film were comedians and gag stars Olsen and Johnson.
Untamed Youth is the story of two sisters who are hitchhiking to LA and are arrested when the police catch them skinny-dipping. They are convicted, but instead of being sent to jail, they are sent to a farm instead, where they are asked to sing and dance besides pick cotton and potatoes. This upbeat film, released in 1957, features about 25 swing dancers, aside from Gil and Nick Brady, Lou Southern and Frieda Angela Wyckoff.
A more contemporary film that features swing dancing is Swing Kids. This 1993 picture tells of a group of young kids in Nazi Germany who attempt to avoid and defy the Hitler youth programs by immersing themselves with British and American influence. The Lindy Hop- the American dance favored by these teens was banned in Germany during that time. The young kids, in their desire to learn and practice the dance, resorted to an underground movement of sorts. The film is truly touching and poignant, expressing how dance is more than just a series of movements, but an expression of choice and freedom.
All these films, the dancing excerpts in them, and so much more can be readily accessed online. They give swing dance lovers and enthusiasts a better understanding of the continuous evolution of swing dance through the ages and what it has become today!
