Frankie “Musclehead" Manning, a Harlem dancer and Tony Award-winning choreographer widely celebrated as one of the pioneers of the Lindy Hop, a breathlessly acrobatic swing dance style of the 1930s and '40s, died April 27 at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital of pneumonia. He was 94.
The effortlessly nimble Manning was a star attraction of Harlem's Savoy ballroom and brought to swing dance a flair for the theatrical that helped catapult the Lindy Hop from ballrooms to stage and screen, said Cynthia Millman, who co-wrote Manning's self-titled 2007 memoir.
His nickname developed from the chants of dancers, “Go, Musclehead, go!" as they watched Manning's strong and closely cropped head glisten with sweat as he kicked and spun himself, and his partners, into human propellers.
Appropriately, the dance reportedly owed its name to transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh, when one Savoy dancer told a reporter, “We flyin' like Lindy!"
Manning's chief innovation was popularizing the thrilling “air step" move in which a female partner is tossed in the air and lands in time with the music. After introducing this choreographic accent, sometimes called an “aerial," he and fellow Lindy hoppers developed dozens of others in which partners fling each other around, over and between various limbs.
Manning and several notable big bands helped make the Savoy an epicenter of swing. It was an elegant, racially integrated dance hall boasting two large stages where the big bands of Count Basie, Chick Webb and Cab Calloway could duel rhythmically.
The effortlessly nimble Manning was a star attraction of Harlem's Savoy ballroom and brought to swing dance a flair for the theatrical that helped catapult the Lindy Hop from ballrooms to stage and screen, said Cynthia Millman, who co-wrote Manning's self-titled 2007 memoir.
His nickname developed from the chants of dancers, “Go, Musclehead, go!" as they watched Manning's strong and closely cropped head glisten with sweat as he kicked and spun himself, and his partners, into human propellers.
Appropriately, the dance reportedly owed its name to transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh, when one Savoy dancer told a reporter, “We flyin' like Lindy!"
Manning's chief innovation was popularizing the thrilling “air step" move in which a female partner is tossed in the air and lands in time with the music. After introducing this choreographic accent, sometimes called an “aerial," he and fellow Lindy hoppers developed dozens of others in which partners fling each other around, over and between various limbs.
Manning and several notable big bands helped make the Savoy an epicenter of swing. It was an elegant, racially integrated dance hall boasting two large stages where the big bands of Count Basie, Chick Webb and Cab Calloway could duel rhythmically.
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