Part of my job involves writing promotional copy, and I regularly have to resist the urge to add a little femmostroppo footnote. This week I wrote the below text for work, but here on my own blog I get to add the final sentence.
We’re just a moment away from May, which means lindy hoppers around the world are starting to get excited about Frankie Manning’s birthday. Many of us are off to Frankie100 for the enormous celebrations in New York, while others are planning smaller parties or special classes here at home.
Frankie was important to lindy hoppers not only because he was an amazing, innovative dancer and talented choreographer, but because he was a generous, open-hearted man. In the last part of his life he came out of retirement to teach us young folk how to lindy hop, traveling nearly every weekend in the year when he was well into his 90s.
Frankie would say that when we dance, we are in love for three minutes. When we celebrate Frankie Manning’s life, we celebrate that above all: for three minutes we are in love with music, with dance, with our partners, with musicians, with all the other dancers in the room. At this time of year, as Australia remembers the ANZACs, christians celebrate easter, jews observe passover, and wiccans see beltane/samhain on the horizon, Frankie seems all the more important an example of radical pacifism.