Three days before the world celebrates Frankie Manning’s birthday, the Pasadena dance school that helped bring him back will throw the party.
The Pasadena Ballroom Dance Association is hosting an all-day Frankie Manning Celebration on Saturday, May 23, doubling as a 100th-anniversary tribute to the Savoy Ballroom — the Harlem dance hall where the Lindy Hop was born when it opened on March 12, 1926. The event pairs four afternoon swing workshops with a full big-band evening dance at PBDA’s home in Grace Hall.
For PBDA, the connection to Manning is not abstract history. In 1986, co-founder Erin Stevens traveled to New York and persuaded the retired postal worker to return to teaching the dance he had helped create a half-century earlier, according to the organization’s published history. Manning’s official biography confirms that year as the start of his second career.
“We are best known for our expertise in Lindy Hop, and are recognized for our role in helping to usher in the 2nd Era of Swing in the 1990s, bringing Frankie Manning out of dance retirement,” co-founder Tami Stevens said in an interview with Voyage LA Magazine.
Manning, who died in 2009 at 94, referred to the Stevens sisters as his “California Family,” according to PBDA. His birthday, May 26, is now recognized globally as World Lindy Hop Day.
The afternoon workshops run from 1:00 to 5:15 p.m. and include classes at four skill levels. Guest instructors Rob Van Haaren, a California Swing Dance Hall of Fame inductee, and Diane Van Haaren, who together worked alongside Manning for more than two decades, will lead three of the four sessions. The first workshop — “A Taste of Savoy Style Lindy Hop,” a beginner class — will be taught by PBDA founders Erin and Tami Stevens and instructor Scott.
The evening features Pete Jacobs and his Wartime Radio Revue Full Swing Orchestra, a 16-piece big band that recreates the sound of 1930s and 1940s swing. A complimentary introductory swing lesson starts at 7:30 p.m., with live music and dancing from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. The evening includes light hors d’oeuvres and door prizes.
The Frankie Manning Celebration and Savoy Ballroom 100th Anniversary takes place Saturday, May 23. Afternoon workshops run from 1:00 to 5:15 p.m.; the evening swing dance runs from 7:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Workshops are $25 per class per person, or $105 for a day pass that includes all four workshops and the evening dance. Evening-only admission is $40. The event is at Grace Hall, 73 North Hill Avenue behind Hill Avenue Grace Lutheran Church. Free parking is available in the church lot. No partner is needed. For more information, visit www.PBDA.dance.
The Savoy Ballroom itself closed in 1958, but the dance it incubated never entirely disappeared — in part because a Pasadena dance teacher knocked on a retired postal worker’s door in New York and asked him to remember.
