blog entry

Back to The Big Apple

If you’d been at The Big Apple this past weekend, you could have added your chapter to dance history. 
Photographer Molly Harrell was on the dance floor  (and occasionally above it), taking photos.  She sent us a few.

In December 1937, Life magazine ran a four-page spread declaring that the year would be remembered as “The Year of The Big Apple.”   One writer proclaimed that even Winston Churchill was doing it.  (And yes, if I had a time machine, I might actually travel back to see that.) 

The origins of the dance go back to the 1800s, but it became popular at The Big Apple  Club (a building that’s behind Richland County Public library downtown) around 1936.  The Big Apple was a nightclub that had once been a synagogue.  These  two dancers are Frankie Manning and Helen Coplan.  Helen was there in the 1930s to see The Big Apple dance take off.  Frankie helped to make it famous.

Helen was a member of this orthodox synagogue and sat upstairs here to worship.  Later, when it became a juke joint, young whites would sit upstairs at this black dance club and watch the young African-American dancers do The Big Apple below.  Helen sat upstairs then, too. 

She told Molly that The Big Apple had only a juke box for music.  When it would stop playing, she and the rest of the crowd upstairs would throw nickels down on the dance floor to get the music--and more important, the dancers--going again. 

Frankie Manning (born in 1914!) still teaches dance and is one of the founding fathers of the Lindy Hop.  He’s performed in movies, on stage, and received a Tony Award for choreography. 

Molly was so in awe of Frankie, she actually found someone to take HER  picture.  That’s Molly with him in the photo at left.

Among the other people sharing the floor with Mr. Manning was Erin Jaffe Bolshakov, a tango dancer, instructor, and owner of Vista Ballroom.   We featured Erin in skirt! last year.  Erin at The Big Apple (photo on right) and Erin from our skirt! story (below).