HARLEM — Before the Harlem Shake there was the Lindy Hop.
From when it was invented in the 1920's until the late 1970’s, hundreds used to pack neighborhood ballrooms and even Madison Square Garden for amateur swing dance competitions.
The Lindy Hop, an acrobatic form of the ballroom dance, was everywhere.
The Harvest Moon Ball, which ran between 1935 and 1980, was the biggest competition of all and Harlemites dominated the Lindy Ball category.
“It was big, the best Lindy dancers ever came out of the Savoy Ballroom,” said Sonny Allen who won the contest in 1958. “The Savory won the Harvest Moon Ball almost every year.”
But as music changed, the dance lost its popularity and by the 1980's few people in Harlem were swinging, Allen said.
It isn’t until recently that the Lindy Hop began to regain some of its popularity. In May, 2,000 dancers from 47 countries attended a dance in honor of the 100th anniversary of Lindy Hop’s founder Frankie Manning.
Despite a global resurgence in Lindy Hop, Harlem hasn’t caught on, said Barbara Jones of the Harlem Swing Dance Society.
“It’s strange, it’s in all over the world but not Harlem,” she said. “It’s in Mexico, in Japan, in Mozambique, all over, but the place where it began its zero. It’s gotten to the point that some school children think it started in Europe.”
Jones helped form the Harlem Swing Dance Society six years to preserve the culture and help bring it back to the neighborhood.
On Saturday, the Dance Society will host its version of the Harvest Moon Ball at 5 pm. in the Hansborough Recreation Center on 35 W. 134th St.
Jones learned about the Lindy Hop at school. She could either take gym or dance, so she decided to dance.
She fell in love with the culture by seeing swing dancing in old movies, looking up clips on the Internet. Then after finding out more about the culture and the history, she decided to bring it back to Harlem.
Jones enlisted Allen as a dance instructor, who teaches free lessons every Tuesday. Allen is happy to teach the next generation of dancers, even though he doesn’t particularly like their new music.
“This generation is into hip hop,” he said. “They call that music and I scratch my head. It’s electronic not music. I come from an era where we used to dance together. We used to hold a woman in our arms and look into her eyes and have a conversation.”
