This weekend in Munich for the Rock That Swing Festival, Juan and I taught a class of moves from the Harvest Moon Ball. As promised, here is the footage I showed at the beginning of class. It’s a compilation I put together of a bunch of the surviving footage, overlaid with a recording of The Wolverines Big Band playing live for the Liberation division at the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in 2004, neat huh?

If you’re not sure what the Harvest Moon Ball was all about, here’s a quick history:

The Harvest Moon Ball was an amateur dance contest held in New York City, in August or September each year from 1935 to 1974.  It was sponsored by the Daily News.

The very first Harvest Moon Ball contest was actually held in 1927 in the Central Park Mall, but when 75,000 people showed up to watch the contest, the organisers postponed future contests in the hope of finding a larger venue. Another attempt in 1934 was officially shut down by then Mayor La Guardia, for being a public safety risk. So the official first Harvest Moon Ball contest is considered to be the 1935 competition held in Madison Square Gardens.

The contest was not only a Lindy Hop contest, but included other dance divisions including Rumba, Foxtrot, Polka, Tango, Collegiate Shag, Viennese Waltz, a Serviceman’s Division, and later even the Hustle. There was also an “All Round Champions” prize awarded, which usually went to the winners of the Foxtrot division. However, the Lindy Hop division (later called the Jitterbug Jive division, and then the Rock ‘n Roll division), was the most spectacular and particularly popular with audiences and press.

To compete in the contest, there were preliminary rounds held in ballrooms starting in August, including the Savoy and Roseland Ballrooms. Contestants for the finals were selected by three judges.

The finals were held in Madison Square Gardens, where the 20,000 seats typically sold out within days of going on sale. Big name celebrities and famous Hollywood actors often attended, and Ed Sullivan was the emcee for most of the earlier contests. The winners were selected by a panel of five judges, and were awarded sponsored prizes and a contract to perform at one or more Loews State Theatres, thus making them professional dancers.

The contest was held in Madison Square Gardens from 1935 to 1974. When the Savoy Ballroom closed in 1958, Louise “Mama Lu” Parks promised the Savoy Ballroom manager Charles Buchanan, to continue to organise the Lindy Hop preliminaries, which were thereafter held in the Savoy Manor hall in the Bronx. In 1979 when the official Harvest Moon Ball organisers dropped the Lindy Hop division from the competition (in favour of dances like The Hustle), Mama Lu turned her preliminaries into the main Lindy Hop contest, which continued until 1989, in various venues. The final official Harvest Moon Ball contest was held in 1984, so the Lindy Hop division of Harvest Moon Ball outlasted the event itself, thanks to Mama Lu Parks.

Here are a few photos of the event program for the 1943 Harvest Moon Ball:

And here is an article in the October 2nd, 1950 issue of LIFE Magazine about the Harvest Moon Ball. Click on the image to see a larger version, or click here to read the full article.

The Savoy Ballroom dominance is pretty easy to see! And that’s a great whos-who list of dancers. You’ll see some of our favourites, that Juan and I mention a lot, like Sandra Gibson, Blue Outlaw, and Tops & Wilder, and of course you know Leon James, Al Minns, and living legend Sugar Sullivan.

But there’s some names in there that just don’t get enough recognition in the swing world today. Like Edith Matthews, who won with Leon James in 1935, is the lady who (legend has it) invented swivels on counts 1 and 2 of a swingout. She was better known as the partner of “Twistmouth” George Ganaway, yeah that’s the guy that discovered the young Norma Miller on the sidewalk outside the Savoy Ballroom. And George Grenidge and Ella Gibson, the 1936 winners, you can see dancing in A Day At The Races.  Russell Williams & Connie Hill, the 1939 champions, are the dancers in that 1943 Cootie Williams & His Orchestra soundie, and Russell Williams dances with Willa Mae Ricker alongside Frankie Manning & Ann Johnson in the Congaroos performance in the film Killer Diller.

Anyway, my whole point was, if you want to learn to dance like that, check us out on iDance.net: