Spuds & Rik recap the event of the decade: The Frankie 95 Birthday Festival in New York City. The guys share memories and video from this amazing event where over 2,000 lindy hoppers showed their love for our ambassador for Lindy Hop, Frankie Manning. Catch the show on Yehoodi or subscribe to the podcast. Get…
Category: Dancing / Music
Breakin’ Soap: When you want to feel “supa fresh”!
My friend Emily saw this at her work and had to get it for me: "Breakin Soap." I love that comes with a soap cassette tape and old skool boombox. This is the awesomest random gift I have received in a long time! Thanks, Emily!
A soggy but satisfying Mermaid Parade at Coney Island
What started out as the worst Mermaid Parade day ever, turned into one of the best! The weather forecast was for severe thunderstorms all day. So the organizers of my group the Brooklyn Bombshells Revue decided that it was too risky to have us march in the parade. I can not explain how much the…
OMG Mermaid Parade is Tomorrow! Harvey Keitel, They Might Be Giants… and possibly rain
Finally finished my outfit for the MermaId Parade tomorrow! For those that don’t know, Saturday, June 21, is the 26th annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade, the nation’s largest art parade and the my absolutely favorite part of summer in New York City. As has been tradition for the past years, the lindy hoppers participate as…
Lindy hoppers in Sean Kingston music video “Fire Burning”
Toni Duguid sent out news to the swing community that there are four lindy hoppers in the new Sean Kingston music video "Fire Burning." You can see them exit a convertible at the beginning, and perform some swing aerials at the 2:20 and 3:40 marks. Toni identifies the girlies as twin sisters Christina and Jessica…
Digital recreation of Al Minns doing the charleston in Maya
This is a neat 3D digital animation recreating Al Minns awesome charleston steps from a film in the 1950s. Don't know how this was done exactly, but the character does seem to mimic quite well a lot of the subtle styling of Al Minns. I'd love to get this animation for my Second Life avatar!…
PBS documentary about Frankie Manning online!
PBS channel 13 in New York has put online a sweet 30 minute documentary about legendary lindy hopper Frankie Manning called "Never Stop Swinging." From the website: The documentary features the last major interview of Frankie Manning before his death, as well as precious archival footage of his dancing from the 1930’s to 2009 in…
Lindy hopper gives shoutout to Frankie Manning & dances with Adam Shankman on SYTYCD! (video)
I have to give mad props to California lindy hopper Calico Sequeira for her appearance on Episode 3 of Season Five of "So You Think You Can Dance." Not only does she mention that Frankie Manning is her inspiration in her intro, she also gets choreographer / judge Adam Shankman to lindy hop with her! …
Twitter as an Event Organizer’s Tool: Our Experience with the Frankie 95 Birthday Festival
About a month ago my friend David sent me an email asking about how we could use the micro-blogging service Twitter to help spread the word and coordinate a swing dance festival that we were helping organize. We started brainstorming and decided to try it out. As it turns out, Twitter is a pretty effective…
The Global Shim Sham compilation video: a labor of lindy love involving 5,000+ dancers from around the world
This video is the result of several months of effort involving an estimated 5,000 dancers in over 22 countries: the Global Shim Sham. This was produced by a dedicated team of volunteers for the Frankie Manning 95th Birthday Festival, and shown to an appreciative audience of about 2,000 people on Saturday, May 23. Read on…