Are you up for a jazz-step challenge? Do you want to bring some lindyhop greatness to Halifax? The Big Apple is such an amazingly fun group routine. It's not an easy routine, but the feelings of elation are worth the effort, and it is now going to be taught once again, back by popular demand. One of the things that makes it great is that it's done in a circle and that Frankie Manning is credited with many of the steps (see more history below).
Once you've learned this routine, you will have a plethora of jazz steps at your musical disposal. Check it out:
Whitey's Lindy Hoppers perform the Big Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfgKMfexdPQ
Harlem Hot Shots perform the Big Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmsYp583IYw
Time: 6:30-7:40 pm
Dates: Five Saturdays June 1, 8, 15, 22, & 29
Who: Level 1a
Cost: ??
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From http://www.bigappleroutine.com/
"The Big Apple had already exploded in New York City when we started doing it in the famous Savoy Theatre every Saturday"Night!
- Frankie Manning
Frankie Manning is credited with inventing the steps of the famous Big Apple Contest for the Movie "Keep Punching." With the release of the Movie in 1937, his steps where preserved for all of us to see. Along with the original footage of this dance, Hanna & Mattias attempt to recapture the original Hype of the 1920s. They give step-by-step instructions on how to dance the Big Apple Routine and with Whiz and Jazz make the routine fun for all dancers alike.
The exact origin of the Big Apple is unclear but one author suggests that the dance originated from the "ring shout", a group dance associated with religious observances that was founded before 1860 by African Americans on plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. The ring shout is described as a dance with "counterclockwise circling and high arm gestures" that resembled the Big Apple.
It is still practiced today in small populations of the southern United States. The dance that eventually became known as the Big Apple is speculated to have been created in the early 1930s by African American youth dancing at the House of Prayer Synagogue on Gates Street in Columbia, South Carolina. The synagogue was converted into a black juke joint called the "Big Apple Night Club.