Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
Well I finally finished the oral history of Yehoodi.com, a project I started back in May 2023. It’s not perfect, but I think it does a good job of highlighting the many ways that Yehoodi touched people’s lives over the past 25 years. This was the biggest personal writing project I had taken on for…
As I try to summarize 25 years of Yehoodi, I realize that Yehoodi has been a lot of things to a lot of people over the years. Yehoodi has been…. But that seems a little backwards. Yehoodi has always been its community, the many thousands of lindy hoppers who have connected through this site, in…
This week I announced to the world that Yehoodi.com was closing after 25 years of service to the Lindy Hop community. It was a bittersweet announcement. Sad, because it’s always sad to see something you loved and poured your heart into for so long come to an end. But happy too, because it’s good to…
The Cakewalk is one of the lesser known “grandparents” of Lindy Hop, alongside the Charleston, Black Bottom, the Breakaway and others. The cakewalk, however, was more than just a dance, it was also a subtle but powerful means of Black resistance to white supremacy. The history of the cakewalk goes all the way back to…
During the 1980s in London and other Northern UK cities and towns, an underground movement of dancers and DJs were creating a wild, frenzied, and electrifying style of dance called “Old School Jazz Dance,” or simply “Jazz Dance.” A blend of vernacular jazz, tap, ballet, West Indies and African dance traditions, these UK jazz dancers…
The dance scene from Hellzapoppin’ (1941) is arguably the most iconic lindy hop clip in history. Certainly millions of viewers have been inspired by this routine, that is still unmatched in dynamism, exuberance, and athleticism. Go ahead and watch it again here. But how much do you know about this scene? Here are seven remarkable…
NOTE: Originally posted to website Yehoodi.com on March 14, 2018 Earlier this week, the issue of race came to the forefront again in the lindy hop community over something that to an outsider might seem quite benign: a woman came back from a trip to Africa and posted to her social media feed a selfie….
NOTE: Originally posted to the website Yehoodi.com on March 11, 2018 CONTENT WARNING: Sexual assault. Steven Mitchell has been a very influential figure in the lindy hop community for the past 20 years. Steven and his then-partner Erin Stevens are credited with helping convince Frankie Manning to return to lindy hop in the mid-1980s. Steven…
I love this SwingNation video short on the occasion of Frankie Manning’s 103rd birthday. Frankie had many talents, including one of the most infectious laughs ever. I never grow tired of hearing it. Learn more about Frankie Manning on his website.
The Jack & Jill contest is a mainstay of the lindy hop dance scene, from local contests to international competitions like the International Lindy Hop Championships. It’s an exciting and dynamic format that many feel is a true test of a lindy hopper’s dancing ability. It’s also an archaic term that we should stop using. A…