ABOUT THIS SITE

A combination of the lindy hopping skills of the London based Jiving Lindy Hoppers and the research activities of myself, Terry Monaghan, who along with Warren Heyes cofounded the company in 1984, has led to the development of this site dedicated to the Savoy. We began getting to grips with the Lindy Hop after first meeting in 1983 and decided soon after to establish a professional performance group. That was the start of a long journey which put our dancers on stages round the world, to the teaching of innumerable associated classes out of which the UK Lindy Hop scene emerged and to the continuous questioning of swing elders. A seemingly unquenchable thirst for an ever-deepening understanding of the art form developed out of these activities along with a realisation that a great deal has yet to be done in order to preserve the memory and heritage of that former illustrious Academy of Swing - Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.

It was probably more than a coincidence that just as the JLH were being offered major touring work in the USA at the end of the '90's, I enrolled for a PhD on the Savoy Ballroom at University College, London. The two activities, the growing mastery of the dance form and the quest for a rounded out understanding of how it was created in the first place and subsequently reproduced, went hand in hand.

We starting the Jiving Lindy Hoppers as part of a new interest in the early 1980's amongst people who wanted to keep the Lindy Hop alive, and now that we are approaching 20 years of continuous dancing we can now see the importance of getting a much more accurate understanding of where it came from. New dancers joining the scene, students and shoolkids along with their lectuerers and teachers who want to know more will hopefully find what we have collected together useful and informative. We also hope to address the woefully inadequate balance in jazz studies that tends to mention dance at best on its extreme margins. The usual reason given is inadequate sources; this site is intended to provide them.

Terry Monaghan

Please contact: SavoyBallroom@yahoo.com