Lindy Hop Dance Camp in Herräng, Sweden
It's not so far from the end of the world where 2000 young people meet every summer. In fact, they meet in a tiny village which has 1 (one) shop, 1 (one) schoolhouse, a church and nothing much else. The name of the place is Herräng, and the name of the game is Lindy Hop.
Now where is Herräng? About 2 or 3 hours north of Stockholm, depending on where you start in Stockholm. And what is Lindy Hop? A dance. A smooth, elegant Jazz Dance, where in fact nobody hops. It is called after the headline in a newspaper which was "Lindy hops the Atlantic" - Lindy meaning Charles Lindbergh, and hopping the Atlantic his first flight from America to Paris in 1927. The dance developped in the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, along with Swing, and has its roots in Charleston and Black Bottom. Another name for Lindy Hop is Jitterbug, and it was the craze of the late Twenties.
Since the early 80's Herräng has developped to some kind of Mecca for the worlwide Lindy Hop community, due to the Dance Camp run by the Harlem Hot Shots and Frankie Manning. Of course, a tiny village like Herräng doesn't have enough room for thousands of dancers. So they sleep in bunks in the school and in the folkets hus, and there are tents everywhere. And they dance and train in huge tents - teachers with wireless microphones in the middle, showing the difficult steps and counting one, two, three, four. And the one and only shop makes its business of the year. In fact the mood is so good and contagious you feel like dancing, too.
