Lindy Hop

Lindy Hop, dance for couples, popular from the late 1920s through the early 1940s, performed to big-band swing music (see Jazz: The Big Band Era). The lindy hop, named after American aviator Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight (“hop”) across the Atlantic Ocean (see Lindbergh, Charles), developed about 1927 in the Savoy Ballroom, a jazz music and dance establishment in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. The lindy hop begins with a syncopated two-step, after which partners separate and perform intricate steps individually before coming back together. The best couples competed against one another, challenging each other to virtuosic improvisation.

Two styles of lindy hop eventually developed. One favored footwork, spins, and other floor steps, and the other focused on acrobatic aerial movements. At first the dance was mainly performed in Harlem, but in the late 1930s its popularity spread throughout the United States (see Popular and Social Dance: Ragtime through World War II). Another popular dance form, the jitterbug, evolved from the lindy hop.