Dear Forum,

I'm doing a bit of research on the 50's and am trying to identify the name of the dance used in the movie 'Blast from the Past'.

Could anyone in the forum please help?

cheers!

Been a while since I saw that, but I think the scene at the club where he meets the two girls would be swing, maybe approximately Lindy as the substyle - but of course the primary style is "what makes a good movie"

thank you! I will go look up the Lindy and see if it is the one!

BTW-other than this website, can you suggest any other good online resources?

cheers!

I also assume you are talking about the club scene where he dances with two girls.

Lindyhop is a good guess but there actually isn't any official Lindy in there. It's a good smattering of various swing and jazz dances. Specifically, there is 6-ct. single step east coast swing, a small amount of lindy-charleston, a bit of 20's charleston, some basic aerials, and a few classic jazz moves (peckin' and truckin' specifically) that you'd see in a dance like the Big Apple (circa 1937, attributed to Frankie Manning).

Wikipedia has a decent article on the jazz era of dance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28dance%29 (search "Swing (dance)" if the link doesn't work)

You can also do a search for Frankie Manning if you're interested in that era of dance.

A few books to check out are: "Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop" by Frankie Manning and Cynthia Millman and "Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance" by Marshall & Jean Stearns. Frankie's book is phenomenal to ready and feel as if you are actually there experiencing everything he is relating and an amazing piece of history. Stearns book is more of a reference book but has a phenomenal amount of information in it.

Hope that helps!