The Joints Keep Jumpin’

Fly 3,000 miles for dance lessons? The moment the muse beckoned in 1986, Erin and Tami Stevens booked flights.

As dance teachers, the Pasadena siblings knew all about waltz, fox trot and the like but yearned for something more. Something that jumped.

“We couldn’t find a style in California we felt in our souls,” Erin Stevens recalled recently.

In fact, manna was waiting in New York City, where the women sped when they heard they could learn the Lindy Hop from one of its founding fathers. Smitten, they’d seen the infectious form of swing in a Marx Brothers movie and begged Frankie Manning, who was hopping before the Great Depression, to teach them what he knew.

Returning home enlightened, the women began spreading the gospel, hoping a few students might catch the bug. They never imagined what was to come--and stay.

Remember the lambada? Perhaps only the macarena had a shorter shelf life. But 12 years after the Stevenses taught their first Lindy Hop, their swing classes are bigger than ever and still growing. Today, 250 people jam their nightly lessons at Fellow Hall and Throop Hall in Pasadena, taking what they learn there and at myriad schools elsewhere to clubs across Los Angeles drawing throngs seven days a week.

“The resurgence of swing,” Erin Stevens said, “is lasting longer than the true swing era,” which flourished from the mid-’30s to the mid-’40s, when big-band leader Benny Goodman was king. “We’re overwhelmed with what’s happened.”

Indeed, class rolls throughout the L.A. Basin continue to lengthen even as the fad that won’t fade begins to boil in pockets of Middle America and all manner of newbies discover what long ago turned L.A. trendsetters into self-described addicts.

Members of the Inland Empire Harley Owners Group peeled their leather for a recent afternoon “Putt-n-Strutt” at Anaheim’s Memories nightclub. Parking their horsepower outside after a 25-mile caravan from Riverside, the heavily tattooed riders took their first tentative “rock steps.”

“It’s nice to see bikers getting culture,” said organizer Richard Hall, also known as Splatt the Harley Ratt.

Only a few hours later, 300 seasoned hepcats, most in their 20s, turned a drab community center on La Brea Avenue into Hollywood circa 1940, when boys on leave from war danced each dance as if it were their last.

Flaunting the retro threads seen nationwide in Gap commercials capitalizing on the craze, guys in two-tone wingtips and Eisenhower jackets rocketed their split-leg partners in platforms and cherry-red lipstick above their heads, and whoosh, back down to the ground.

The room exploded with energy as the frenzied crowd circled around the night’s shining stars--including Burbank’s own national Lindy Hop champions, Sylvia Skylar and Erik Robison--to watch a breathtaking display of swivels, kicks and acrobatic aerials ignited by the blaring horns of a new-swing band.

The dance highlighted a weekend workshop celebrating Hollywood swing, an indignous style championed by the late hoofer Dean Collins.

Many of those assembled had taken their moves directly from Collins’ films, such as “Buck Privates,” the 1941 Abbott and Costello opus in which the Andrews Sisters sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Mary Collins, his sixtysomething widow and sometime dance partner, was invited to judge a Lindy contest. She bubbled with praise for the dancers’ authentic stylings, thrilled and a bit stunned to see the dance she’d learned decades before thriving in the ‘90s.

“A year ago, I thought, well this is just a phase,” Collins said. “But it’s getting bigger and bigger.”

So is attendance at the Derby, the club that rose to international fame through its featured role in the 1996 cult hit “Swingers.”

The plush Hollywood venue, which hosts swing dancers Monday to Monday, had been packing them in for three years when the film came out. This year it was voted America’s hottest nightspot by Playboy magazine and TV Guide and has become the preferred party place of such celebs as Whoopi Goldberg, who turned another year older there two months ago.

Later this month, the Derby and eight other Southland swing clubs will host preliminaries for a national dance contest promoting the film “Blast From the Past.” Opening Feb. 5, the romantic comedy is no “Swingers,” but Brendan Fraser wins Alicia Silverstone’s heart in a single, swinging scene on the dance floor.

Dance lore designates the Lindy Hop as one of the earliest forms of swing dance. Inventive African Americans supposedly hatched the jump fest in Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in 1927, the year headlines announced that Charles Lindbergh, dubbed “Lindy,” hopped the Atlantic solo, writes dance historian Christian Batchelor in “This Thing Called Swing.”

Manning, 84, was just a teen back then. He later earned renown for creating the aerials that became ubiquitous when the dance soared in popularity as big-band leaders Goodman, Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw toured the nation with the bouncy tunes driving today’s resurgence.

Some of L.A.’s earliest nouveau swingers practiced a rudimentary form at rockabilly clubs in the early ‘80s, easily adapting the basic steps to the beat and style of such raucous, punk-tinged bands as the Cramps. The Stevens sisters taught their first Lindy class in 1987.

“Nobody even knew what the word meant,” said Erin Stevens.

Word spread, however, with the release of the dance-packed films “Malcolm X” and “Swing Kids.”

The latter, a portrait of free-thinking youths in Nazi Germany mesmerized by the dance that Hitler disdained for its practice by blacks, opened in 1993, the same year as the Derby.

It is arguably the country’s busiest swing club, and its first house band started the swing-music revival that’s fed the enduring frenzy.

Raised on punk, ska and rockabilly, the L.A.-based Royal Crown Review blends those hard-edged rhythms with the old-time brassy exuberance and suave insouciance, in sync with such other neo-swing bands as the Brian Setzer Orchestra and Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, whose records have gone platinum.

“It’s a type of music that seems kind of wild and similar to music of today,” said Justin Zillman, 27, who competed in Anaheim’s 16th annual U.S. Open Swing Dance Championships at Thanksgiving. “Yet there’s a class to it.”

What else has kept dancers like Zillman coming back? Even Tush Push-mania didn’t captivate the mainstream for this long.

For starters, swing is more individualistic than line dancing, he and others say. Yet, except for West Coast swing, a complex form with fewer acolytes, it’s a snap to learn.

Diana Araos taught her friend Allan Robina the basics in fewer than five minutes at the Derby recently.

“You guide me with your hands, tell me where you want me to go,” Araos told Robina, articulating another reason for swing’s attraction: After gyrating solo for so long, dancers are glad to get back into each other’s arms. There’s the romance of it, of course, and the challenge of mastering your own steps, then coordinating them with another’s, all while matching the beat and interpreting the song’s rhythmic and emotional, well, swings.

Chris Shima of Torrance, who gave the Harley riders their intro, rhapsodizes over the teamwork of two individuals uniting as one.

“That’s when the magic happens,” Shima said. “You have this connection with your partner and with the music, and when you dance the perfect dance, it’s real satisfying.”

Guys like Shima also say they find the bent-kneed dance more masculine than the pelvis-friendly lambada, for instance. Escapism stokes the swing fires too.

Hard-core devotees of the era who perceive the ‘30s and ‘40s as innocent, decorate their homes with ‘40s furniture, collect wartime victory parade pins and dress retro around the clock. The tailored elegance “makes the guy look like a man and the girl look like awoman,” said Vitali Yasnogorodsky, rarely home from clubbing before 3 a.m.

“If you look the part and feel the part, it’s more fun,” said the Cypress resident, 28.

Then there’s the old-fashioned etiquette, wherein women with neatly coiled barrel curls piled atop their heads are politely invited, then escorted by an elbow, to the dance floor. It’s a wholesome vibe. Meat-market bars and dirty dancing have no place in this nostalgic tableau.

“There’s this desire to return to a more innocent age of more bounce and happy dancing from the heart,” said Tami Stevens.

How long that desire lasts is anybody’s guess, but the Stevenses and others, confident that die-hards won’t ever say uncle, believe the fad’s all-ages appeal and hot-selling music will help sustain its mainstream popularity. Just this month, four bands were included on Billboard magazine’s top pop album chart.

Manning, who still goes dancing several nights a week and looks 64, not 84, is certain that the craze hasn’t even reached its peak. Back in his salad days, he toured the States with a troupe called Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, opening for titans like Ellington and Basie.

Today, the much-beloved teacher, whose choreography can be seen in the Marx Brothers’ “A Day at the Races” and in “Malcolm X,” regularly travels to Japan, China, Australia and Sweden (where swing also is booming) to share his greatest passion. Students from around the world flock to his classes on Catalina Island, where the Stevenses organize an annual dance camp through their Pasadena Ballroom Dance Assn. About 1,500 attended last summer.

Manning recently came to L.A. from his New York City home for a weekend workshop, also staged by the Stevenses. The temp outside hit the deliciously high 70s, but the dancers crowded into cool halls at the Pasadena Civic Center didn’t care. No, swing’s not going anywhere soon, Manning said during a break. He sees too many new faces all the time.

“I’d like to predict that the whole world’s going to be swinging,” he said. “And if they are, you’re going to see a bunch of happy people, because that’s what swing’s all about. Having fun.”

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BE THERE

Erin and Tami Stevens begin a new round of six-week group swing lessons on Saturday at Fellow Hall and at Throop Hall, 300 S. Los Robles, Pasadena. Each session costs $58. Single classes run $12. (626) 799-5689.

Other places to swing dance:

The Derby, 4500 Los Feliz Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 663-8979. Open daily, 4 p.m.-2 a.m., live bands at 10 p.m. Free lessons Sundays-Thursdays at 8 p.m., except for Mondays at 8:30 p.m. 21 and older. Cover: $5 Mondays-Tuesdays, $7 otherwise.

Coconut Club, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, 9876 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 285-1358. Dancing Fridays and Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.-2 a.m. 21 and older. Cover: $20.

Club Caprice, 1700 S. Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach. (310) 316-1700. Dancing to bands every Friday. Doors open at 8 p.m., free lessons 8:30-9:30 p.m. 16 and older. Cover: $8 to $20.

Hollywood Athletic Club, 6525 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 962-6600. Dancing to live bands every Tuesday, 8 p.m.-2 a.m. Free lesson 8-9 p.m. 18 and older. Cover: $10-$15.

Pasadena Ballroom Dance Assn., Fellowship Hall, 997 E. Walnut St., Pasadena. (626) 799-5689. Dance every Saturday, 7:30-11:30 p.m. Live bands. Free lesson at 7:30. All ages. Cover: $10.

Twin Palms, 101 W. Green St. Pasadena. (626) 577-2567. Dancing to live bands on Sundays, 7-10 p.m. All ages. No cover.

Jitterbugs, 6101 Reseda Blvd., Reseda. (818) 342-1563. Dancing to live bands on Saturdays, 8:30 p.m.-1 a.m. 21 and older. Cover: $10.

Moonlight, 13730 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 788-2000. Dancing to live music Wednesdays, 8 p.m.-midnight. Free lesson at 9 p.m. 18 and older. Cover: $7.

Ventura Club, 13920 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 788-5550. A mix of ballroom and swing dances Tuesdays and Fridays, 7:30-11:30 p.m. Lessons 7:30-8:30 p.m. 21 and older. $9 includes lessons and a buffet.

Granada Pavilion, 11128 Balboa Blvd., Granada Hills. (818) 366-1805. A mix of ballroom and swing to live music Saturdays, 7:30-11:30 p.m. Lesson 6:30-7:30 p.m. Cover: $10, includes lesson and refreshments.

Memories, 1074 N. Tustin Ave., Anaheim. (714) 630-9233. Dancing to recorded music Mondays and Fridays, 8:30 p.m.-1 a.m. Lesson at 7:30 p.m. Also “Late Night Lindy” dancing on Saturdays, 11 p.m.-3 a.m. All ages, but anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an adult. Cover: $5-$8.