Local Dancers Head to N.Y. for Swing Set

When his wife dragged him to his first swing dance class, Lee Moore walked out after 15 minutes.

But five years later, Moore, along with his wife, Terri, and her twin sister, Tammy Finocchiaro, are being flown to New York City with three other world-class swing dance couples to put together a pilot for a Broadway show.

The pilot is being assembled by Paul Kelly of Richard Frankel Productions, who has helped produce other popular theatrical dance shows such as “Stomp,” “Tap Dogs” and “Forever Tango.”

These Ventura dancers will rehearse for a week, then put on a show at the Supper Club in Manhattan on June 6.

If all goes well, there could be a swing show on Broadway as early as next spring. And this Ventura trio could be in it.

“He told us we’re on the A team,” Terri Moore, 33, said, during a break from their all-day rehearsal Thursday at Nicholby’s nightclub in downtown Ventura.

Lee, Terri and Tammy had already achieved local fame with their traveling dance troupe, The Flying Lindy Hoppers.

The Moores also strutted their stuff in the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Zoot Suit Riot” music video and imparted the secrets of their flashy “street style” swing to hundreds during the past three years. They teach Monday and Wednesday night classes in the athletic dance style, where partners fling each other across the floor, around their bodies and into the air to upbeat music from the ‘30s and ‘40s.

But this could be the big break of their dance careers. And it all started with an innocuous e-mail that arrived a few weeks ago.

“This guy said he was putting together a show, and he wanted to know if we were available,” said Lee Moore, 34. “I looked down to see who it was sent to. I thought maybe it was a mass mailing.”

But, he said, the only other people contacted were “world-class dancers.”

Once Lee, an insurance agent, got over his shock, he called his wife.

A friend--whom he calls the Michael Jordan of Swing--telephoned and told the couple to take the offer seriously.

The Moores will be joined in their Manhattan show by Johnny Boulland, a.k.a. “Johnny Swing” of San Francisco, who will dance with Finocchiaro, as well as couples from England, Sweden and Germany.

So half a decade after they started, they practice in anticipation of a lucky break on Broadway. All this, despite that it took Moore’s wife six months to get him out on the dance floor.

“I was like: ‘There is no way I’m gonna do that,’ ” Lee Moore said of his first exposure to swing. “But she finally wore me down.”

He smiled and added, “because my wife is a strong-willed woman.”