Tyrone Geter in this work has recognized the unheralded creators of the Big Apple Dance, one of the largest dance crazes in American history. He has celebrated their imagination and innovation in a fitting tribute that encourages us to embrace them and promote their creation to future generations.
On Friday and Saturday nights in 1936 Columbia, South Carolina, young people gathered at The Big Apple Club (1000 Hampton Street) to socialize, listen to the “piccolo” blare the big band sounds and dance and dance and dance. From the Savoy Club in Harlem some brought the revolutionary partner dance known as Lindy Hop. From the plantations and farms of their own rural South others brought the Ring Shout which had crossed the Atlantic from Africa with the slave trade. The young people represented here fused African and American cultures with their personal interpretations of daily life into a dance formation, round like the rig shout. In the traditional African way, dancers took turns “shining the apple” in the center while being encouraged, even dared, to outdo one another in creativity and bravado!
For a few cents admission, young white people could view the excitement on the dance floor from the balcony of the former Orthodox Jewish synagogue. The adopted moves traveled from Columbia and a dance contest to standing-room-only crowds at the famous Roxy Theater in New York City and the world. By the end of 1937 everyone was doing the Big Apple, from elite Ivy League Universities to the smallest whistle-stop hamlets. Winston Churchill did a pretty good Big Apple as did guests at the White House.
Written by Breedlove and Richard Durlach, Dance Historians
