"Don't think about getting old," said energetic, 80-year-old dancer Frankie Manning, who effortlessly demonstrated the "Lindy Hop" and other dance styles, including tap and swing, to an overflow audience in the Mumford Room on May 17.
The Library's American Folklife Center presented Mr. Manning as part of the 1995 American Folklife Center Neptune Plaza Concert Series. The event was held indoors because of rain. Washington-area radio personality Dick Spottswood from American University's WAMU 88.5 FM introduced Mr. Manning to the audience.
Mr. Manning gained fame for adding acrobatic "air steps" to the "Lindy Hop," or jitterbug dance style at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s, when he hoisted a female partner on his back and then flipped her over his head to land facing him.
During the hourlong performance, Mr. Manning explained the history behind each dance number. Dressed in a black body suit and red shirt, Mr. Manning was joined on the dance floor by his son, Charles "Chazz" Young, and two women, Mickey Davidson and Debbie Williams.
Mr. Manning demonstrated a "flying Charleston," first kidding that he could not do that type of dancing anymore, then performing it with ease by doing a high kick forward and a low kick backward. The audience gasped in astonishment.
A third number, "Tribute to Chorus Girls," was performed by Ms. Davidson and Ms. Williams. They mirrored each other's movements as if they were in a chorus line. "Chorus girls were treated special during vaudeville," said Mr. Manning. "Each theater on the circuit, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, had chorus girls; Josephine Baker, Lena Horn and Ethel Waters got their starts as chorus girls."
A fourth number, "The Shim Sham," was a father-and-son duet choreographed by Mr. Young to the tune of "'Tain't What You Do." The numbers were performed to the music of Brooks Tegler's Hot Jazz. Members of the band were: John Jensen on trombone, Tom Mitchell on guitar, John Previti on bass, Robert Redd on piano, Al Seibert on tenor sax and Brooks Tegler on drums.
A tap trio performed the fifth number, "Swing." According to Mr. Manning, the swing can be used in combination with other dance styles, including the mambo. The last number, "Woodside Hotel," was dedicated to a New York hotel of the same name, where Mr. Manning spent much of his youth listening to the jam sessions of Tommy Dorsey, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman and Count Basie.
Mr. Manning was born in 1914 in Jacksonville, Fla. At age 3, he moved to Harlem with his mother, who was a dancer. He grew up in the Swing Era and became part of its history by dancing to the music of the 1930s and 1940s.
The name Lindy Hop emerged shortly after Charles Lindbergh completed his trans-Atlantic flight in 1927. Shorty Snowden, a dancer at the time, coined the phrase during a dance marathon in Manhattan. It was later at the Savoy Ballroom's weekly dance contests that Snowden's style of Lindy Hop, in which the body is held upright as the dancer executes intricate footwork, was soon overshadowed by Mr. Manning's more acrobatic style.
In 1934 Mr. Manning was a dancer and the chief choreographer for the original "Whitey's Lindy Hoppers," the professional troupe organized by Herbert "Whitey" White, a bouncer at the Savoy Ballroom. Mr. Manning also performed in several films, including the Marx Brothers' "A Day at the Races" in 1937 and "Hellzapoppin'," before touring the world with jazz artists Ethel Waters, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Cab Calloway.
While dancing in London in 1937, Mr. Manning gave a command performance for King George VI. By 1943 a Life magazine cover story proclaimed the Lindy Hop as "America's national dance" and "this country's only native and original dance form" except for tap dancing.
Whitey's Lindy Hoppers disbanded during World War II, and Mr. Manning joined the U.S. Army. But upon his release in 1947, Mr. Manning formed his own dance troupe, "The Congaroos Dancers." They appeared on the "Milton Berle Show," and toured with Nat "King" Cole, Tony Bennett, Dizzy Gillespie, Martha Raye and Sammy Davis Jr.
As popular taste turned to rock 'n' roll in the 1950s, Mr. Manning settled down to family life. A revival of swing dancing in the mid- 1980s sparked a renewed interest, which has sent Mr. Manning throughout the world once again, leading workshops and lectures and developing choreography for groups such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Rhythm Hot Shot of Sweden.
Among national recognitions he has received, Mr. Manning was profiled on the ABC prime-time news program, "20/20"; he received a Tony Award for best choreography in the Broadway hit musical "Black and Blue"; and choreographed "Stompin' at the Savoy," an NBC made-for-television movie directed by Debbie Allen. Recently, he was involved in the two- part TV film on American social dancing called "Gotta Dance!"
Before the concert ended, Thea Austen, public events coordinator in the American Folklife Center, announced that Mr. Manning would be celebrating his 81st birthday in a couple of days. The audience responded by singing "Happy Birthday" to Mr. Manning while he was presented with a sweet potato pie.
