Day At The Races Movie [swing dance scene]

Uploaded by themindstripper on Sep 1, 2007

The whole beautiful, inspiring dancing scene of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.

-snip-

The scene begins with a White pied piper figure [one of the Marx brothers who were stars of the movie] playing his flute for a White couple who ignore him. He then moves on to the barnyard where he interrupts Black girls jumping rope, and other Black children at play [The longest focus is of boys engaged in the lower class pastime of shooting dice. ]The children ask "Who dat man?" and answer "It's Gabriel!' (meaning the Biblical archangel) singing a Gospel tinged song.

Unlike the White couple who brush the pied piper off, the Black children and adults quickly drop what they are doing, form a circle and dance for the pied piper, and supposedly for themselves.

In my opinion, the set up for this dancing, and some of the antics found in the dancing displays and reinforces a prevailing White view at that time of Black people as coons, meaning immature, happy, care-free, non-threatening, and superstitous people who love to dance.

For a largely non-dance technique related critique of this video, click http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/07/05/race-appropriation-lindy... Race, Appropriation, & Lindy Hop: How to Honor our Heroes