Frankie Manning – An Inspiration; My Inspiration

This year, 2016, would have been Frankie’s 102nd birthday.  You might think, since he died a month before his 95th birthday, that there wouldn’t be much of a hubbub about him any more.  You’d be wrong.

This year, Google finally listened to the chorus of voices calling for it and did a Doodle on his behalf. 

 
The first I heard about it was from the local vicar here in London where I spend most of my year.

The second I heard (after seeing all the posts on Facebook, including a shot of the Korean version) was from a colleague, who remembered me telling her about him many years ago. The following is a story from a friend of hers (at the moment, still nameless), that pretty much encapsulates the man I was so privileged to know and call my friend.  I’ve edited slightly to improve accuracy.

• I don’t usually write all anything email, but today will have to be an exception.
• Every year for the past six years, I’ve written a message to Google, along with many of my friends, asking that they consider Frank Manning for a Google Doodle on his birthday, and it’s finally happened.
• I love to dance Lindy Hop, an American dance birthed in Harlem, New York in the 1920s and 30s jazz era. This dance grew out of a number of influences, especially African, but is widely recognized as the first truly American dance that separated the United States from the European aesthetic. Being a completely improvised dance, it was accessible to both rich and poor, and played a major role in the desegregation of many New York social gathering places.
• But what about Frankie? Frankie Manning is considered one of the founding fathers of swing dancing. Born in 1914, he and his mother moved to New York when he was only 3.  He started sneaking into ballrooms and dance clubs to watch and eventually dance at the ripe old age of 12.
• Then, in the Savoy Ballroom’s famed Harvest Moon Ball, Manning performed the very first air step, or aerial, with his friend and dance partner Frieda Washington in 1935. This highly influenced the boom that followed. Manning and his dance team appeared in many movies and was asked to travel the world to demonstrate ‘his swing’. Eventually, Manning left dancing to fight in the war.
• Then disco happened, and basically the death of American dance in general.  But the germ of swing dancing reawakened in disparate places around the world in the mid-’80s, most notably the UK, California, and Sweden. One story of many from that time is that two dauntless teenagers, not too unlike Frankie in his day, traveled to New York from California looking for the original innovators of this dance in the mid-80s. One by one, they used an old phonebook and a pay phone to track down these legends – most of whom had hung up their dancing shoes for ‘real jobs’ – and invited them to Sweden to teach. Eventually, they found Frank Manning, the postal worker. Manning left his job at the postal office after a time, and later became the Ambassador of Lindy Hop, inspiring other dance friends to come out of retirement to teach as well. Many of them did, giving a contemporary world the gift of their remembrances of that time and their knowledge of the dance.
• He became one of the first teachers at the acclaimed, now 5-week Herräng Dance Camp in Sweden, traveling to a Swedish forest camp site to teach every year for about twenty years and proudly wearing the title ‘old-timer’. Dancers who took a chance to visit New York, looking for the past, still teach at and run Herräng today. Unfortunately, Manning died in 2009 just a few days before his birthday.
• I ‘met’ Frankie once before he passed. He was traveling a lot still, all over the US [and the rest of the world] to teach and he came to Orange County. I was at the ballroom that day but didn’t have the price of admission. He waved to me as he was walking up to the front door. I waved back, but before he disappeared inside, he turned around and walked up to me asking if I was coming. I explained why I would not, and he said “you can’t go inside because you can’t pay? Oh okay, let’s dance right here then”. I was new and terrible and scared, but he danced with me for about 30 seconds in the parking lot and it made me feel like the most special person in the whole world.
• If you are at all interested in his life and the impact he’s had on so many, you can watch this short video on your next break. Have a great day, everyone! Swing Out!

That story of Frankie taking the time for someone in a crowd of people is so like him.  Frankie was an inspiration to people young and old all over the world.  For me, he defined the term generosity of spirit; when he taught dance, yes, he taught steps, but he taught so much more.  He taught respect for others, teamwork, humility combined with excellence.  Today, I would tell you he taught emotional intelligence, joy, and most of all, how to share love.