3 flapper girls you must know

In the 1920s flappers girls broke the image of what a traditional woman should be. They cut their hair short, wore make-up and are what many considered the "modern" woman, breaking away from victorian womanhood.  Flappers Josephine Baker, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks are maybe the most famous three from the era but what made them stood out and stand the test of time?

Josephine Baker

JOSEPHINE BAKER
Josephine Baker was born in Missouri in 1906. Originally she was named Freda Josephine McDonald, but after immigrating to France she was known as Josephine Baker.
She is one of the most famous Charleston dancers of the era and her career began as a street dancer, which attracted attention and helped her being recruited as a dancer for the St. Louis Chorus Vaudeville show at the age of 15. Not long after this, she moved to New York City where she performed at the Plantation Club and in the Broadway chorus line of Shuffle Along and The Chocolate Dandies.
After New York, she moved to Paris in France where she stayed until she died. Her Danse Sauvage brought her success overnight, because her skirt was consisting only of a griddle of artificial bananas. It’s one of her most famous pictures and a symbol of the Jazz of the 1920s, and it also gave birth to the term “Art Deco”.
Baker was not only an entertainer but also an activist. During World War Ⅱ, she aided the Red Cross, the French Forces and the French Resistance. And in the United States she refused to perform for segregated audiences and is noted for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1975 Josephine Baker died in France.

Louise Brooks

LOUISE BROOKS
Louise Brooks, who was born in 1906, has one of the most iconic flapper looks: Her bobbed hair, The American was a famous dancer, an actress and later in her life an author. She came into the spotlight as Lulu in the film Pandora’s Box.
Her career began at the age of 15, when Brooks dropped out of school to move to New York City to join the Denishawn dance troupe. She performed two seasons with Denishawn, but was dismissed at the end of her second season, because St. Denis, one of the most renowned artists of that time, thought that Brooks was possessed by a superior attitude.
After this, she found work as a Broadway chorus girl and became a Zeigfeld showgirl.
Brooks travelled to England, where she found work at the city’s famed Café de Paris and became the first person to dance the Charleston in London. This helped her get noticed by film star Charlie Chaplin, with whom she had an affair that lasted one summer.
When Brooks was 18 years old, she signed a five-year contract with Paramount, which is still a leading film studio, but in her days, she was never really considered a major star in the film industry. In 1985 Louise Brooks died of a heart attack.

Clara Bow

CLARA BOW
Clara Bow, born Clara Gordon Bow in 1905 was an American actress which became famous through silent films during the 1920s.
At the age of the 16 she participated at the nationwide acting contest, because previous winners got film roles, and Bow wanted to be an actress. She won an evening gown and a silver trophy, but the breakthrough never came after the competition.
In 1921 Bow was introduced to the director Christy Cabanne, who cast her in Beyond the Rainbow and was really impressed by her, but she was cut out in the final print. Bow dropped out of school after this incident and worked a normal job.
But her father encouraged her to keep looking for a film role because it was a huge dream of her. In 1923 she was featured in the silent film Down to the Sea by Elmer Clifton, which helped her getting known as an actress.
One year later Bow got her first lead role in the film Poisoned Paradise.
The appearance in the film It brought her global fame and the name “The It Girl”. Now she is still the personify to the Roaring Twenties and is often described as its leading sex symbol.
In 1965 she died of a heart attack.

3 flapper girls you must know

In the 1920s flappers girls broke the image of what a traditional woman should be. They cut their hair short, wore make-up and are what many considered the "modern" woman, breaking away from victorian womanhood.  Flappers Josephine Baker, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks are maybe the most famous three from the era but what made them stood out and stand the test of time?

Josephine Baker

JOSEPHINE BAKER
Josephine Baker was born in Missouri in 1906. Originally she was named Freda Josephine McDonald, but after immigrating to France she was known as Josephine Baker.
She is one of the most famous Charleston dancers of the era and her career began as a street dancer, which attracted attention and helped her being recruited as a dancer for the St. Louis Chorus Vaudeville show at the age of 15. Not long after this, she moved to New York City where she performed at the Plantation Club and in the Broadway chorus line of Shuffle Along and The Chocolate Dandies.
After New York, she moved to Paris in France where she stayed until she died. Her Danse Sauvage brought her success overnight, because her skirt was consisting only of a griddle of artificial bananas. It’s one of her most famous pictures and a symbol of the Jazz of the 1920s, and it also gave birth to the term “Art Deco”.
Baker was not only an entertainer but also an activist. During World War Ⅱ, she aided the Red Cross, the French Forces and the French Resistance. And in the United States she refused to perform for segregated audiences and is noted for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1975 Josephine Baker died in France.

Louise Brooks

LOUISE BROOKS
Louise Brooks, who was born in 1906, has one of the most iconic flapper looks: Her bobbed hair, The American was a famous dancer, an actress and later in her life an author. She came into the spotlight as Lulu in the film Pandora’s Box.
Her career began at the age of 15, when Brooks dropped out of school to move to New York City to join the Denishawn dance troupe. She performed two seasons with Denishawn, but was dismissed at the end of her second season, because St. Denis, one of the most renowned artists of that time, thought that Brooks was possessed by a superior attitude.
After this, she found work as a Broadway chorus girl and became a Zeigfeld showgirl.
Brooks travelled to England, where she found work at the city’s famed Café de Paris and became the first person to dance the Charleston in London. This helped her get noticed by film star Charlie Chaplin, with whom she had an affair that lasted one summer.
When Brooks was 18 years old, she signed a five-year contract with Paramount, which is still a leading film studio, but in her days, she was never really considered a major star in the film industry. In 1985 Louise Brooks died of a heart attack.

Clara Bow

CLARA BOW
Clara Bow, born Clara Gordon Bow in 1905 was an American actress which became famous through silent films during the 1920s.
At the age of the 16 she participated at the nationwide acting contest, because previous winners got film roles, and Bow wanted to be an actress. She won an evening gown and a silver trophy, but the breakthrough never came after the competition.
In 1921 Bow was introduced to the director Christy Cabanne, who cast her in Beyond the Rainbow and was really impressed by her, but she was cut out in the final print. Bow dropped out of school after this incident and worked a normal job.
But her father encouraged her to keep looking for a film role because it was a huge dream of her. In 1923 she was featured in the silent film Down to the Sea by Elmer Clifton, which helped her getting known as an actress.
One year later Bow got her first lead role in the film Poisoned Paradise.
The appearance in the film It brought her global fame and the name “The It Girl”. Now she is still the personify to the Roaring Twenties and is often described as its leading sex symbol.
In 1965 she died of a heart attack.

Move of the Week: Tick Tocks

This week we are teaching you Tick Tocks as our Move of the Week. A simple, but also very popular move in the Charleston.

Start off with your feet parallel. Keep your knees bent at all time and go really low.

If you want to travel to the right start by turning in your knees and feet and while turning out again slide a bit to your right side.
Turn your knees and feet in again, but this time while turning out lift your left foot off the floor. Make sure that you keep the position which you had on the floor and really flex your foot.

Then repeat the same to the left. Knees in and out, while moving to your left, but this time lift your right foot up.

Now to the arms. Hold them like a marionette and just mirror your knees and this is all you need to know for the Tick Tocks.

Move of the Week: The Hitchhike

You will never be without a lift with the hitchhike move, a travelling step which uses the classic thumb signal for hitching a ride.

The footwork is a simple step behind, so your travelling backwards. Its good to start by stepping back and bouncing. You need have a small pulse in each step you take.

Once you are comfortable with the pulse, add the swivel to your footwork. Each time you step back lift the heels out and when you place the foot, bring the heels in to create the swivel motion.

Interestingly a few of our students said they learnt to swivel through practicing this move.

Once the feet are moving in the right direction you can add the arms. When you travel, the same arms as leg is moving. So when you bring you right foot back, lift your right arm over your shoulder. The arms are moving as if your wiping your back with a towel.

You can also stylise the move by gently tilting the head of each move.

Flappers & Feminism

The early decades of the 20th century were a battleground for women,  in terms of political and legal reform. But women were also testing out another arena of emancipation: their bodies. As fashions grew simpler and skirts rose higher, reaching knee-length by the late 1920s, women found new physical freedom.

Josephine Baker dancing the Charleston at the Folies-Bergère, Paris

On the dancefloor, too, women were displaying an alarming lack of modesty, with the social dances that began spreading through the west just before the first world war. Driven by the rhythms of American ragtime, the Bunny Hug, the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear.

These encouraged dancers to kick up their feet, rock crazily from side to side and lock their swaying pelvises together. To the young these ragtime dances were part of a new "budding freedom", a sign that "Victorianism" had finally lost its grip.

Nightclubs had begun to appear in London in 1912, these dark and crowded basements promised a cocktail of illicit thrills: smoking cigarettes, wearing lipstick, drinking Pink Ladies – and dancing. 

In the 1920s, ragtime was superseded by the wayward jangle and bounce of the Charleston and by the pert, buttock-flourishing naughtiness of the Black Bottom. Zelda Fitzgerald, famously the inspiration for her husband F Scott's fictional flapper heroines, was also a wicked exponent of the decade's jazz dances. 

If dances were getting wilder, so too were morals. Between 1914 and 1929, the divorce rate doubled in the US and surveys reported that premarital sex was rising even faster. The promiscuity of young women caused alarm, particularly in Britain. The Daily Mail warned that the number of "superfluous" females could be a "disaster to the human race" (clearly the Daily Mail’s attitudes haven’t advanced much, as they are still spouting the same sexist bullsh*t today!)

Young flappers may have thrown off the tyranny of the corset, but they discovered the new tyranny of dieting! Which still lives on today!

The flapper represented a new spirit of emancipation. If women were to follow their "inner compulsion to be individuals", they had to throw off their shackling inheritance of obedience, whether to the puritanical tenets of old-school feminism or to the sentimentalised duties of marriage and motherhood. It wasn't hardcore politics but, on the dancefloor at least, these women of the 1920s embodied Bromley's views. As they shimmied their shoulders and swivelled their hips, they were released into a brief but deeply subversive world – a world of freedom.

This blog was put together from extracts of Judith Mackrell’s article on the Guardian. Read Full article here

Charleston Move of the Week: Squat Charleston Variations

Last week we started to look at Squat Charlestons and we thought this one was worth another look as there some great ways to combine single and double kicks with arms.

The key to remember with this move is to keep your knees bent and you start with your feet in a wide second position. Each time you kick your leg, you are kicking to your side rather in front of the body. Your feet are always flexed and never pointed.

In terms of your arms, you can do them in to style: Either crossing in front of you on the single kicks with pushes over the left leg or in a swaying motion from side to side.

To stop you from falling over, you must engage your core. 

Charleston with Skye Humphries

To celebrate a hundred years of the Charleston, we are running a series of masterclasses with some of the biggest names in Charleston and Solo Jazz world. The first masterclass was with Skye Humphries. His amazing style and energy made it an inspiring day of dance.

Skye Humphries is a founding member of some the most influential modern Lindy Hop troupes. He has won titles at all of the major Lindy Hop competitions and as a dancer he is memorizing to watch. As a teacher, Skye’s infectious energy and easy manner puts you at ease, energises you and motivates you to take on new challenges.

Skye has also won titles at all of the major Lindy Hop competitions- including ULHS, ILHC, ALHC and the World Lindy Hop Championships.

This workshop focused on fine tuning style and technique. The students also learnt a Charleston routine which had the joy and energy of this iconic Twenties dance.

To book an upcoming Masterclass, visit: www.mycharlestondance.com/masterclasses

Christmas Speakeasy 2019 - Video Highlights

Well done to all our fantastic performers who joined in for the 'Great Show' at the Xmas Speakeasy! It was brilliant to have students from Eastbourne, Portsmouth, Lewes, Worthing, and Brighton all come to perform. Here are the highlights from the weekend with the 3 class routines.

Yes Sir! That's My Baby! - Charleston Classes

Why Don’t You Do Right - Intermediate Jazz & Charleston

Rich Man’s Frug from Sweet Charity - Musicals Class

Everything you need to know about our courses

MyCharleston specialise in teaching 20s Charleston, it is a playful dance full of character and you don’t need a partner. Learning through fun is key and you will be dancing the Charleston by the end of you first class. We run six week courses so you can develop your style, swivel and learn a dance routine. 

Class Structure

Each class starts with a simple warm-up, this is just to get you moving, stretch out and get you in the mood to dance.  Week one is all about learning the basic Charleston, over the coming weeks we will introduce short exercises that will teach you the moves coming up in the routine. Charleston has a wide vocabulary of dance moves each with a name and a character which making them easy to remember. Even when these exercises go a bit wrong, the room is full of laughter and having fun is definitely more important than always getting it right.

The final half of the class is dedicated to learning the routine, this is often people’s favourite part.  If you’ve not learnt choreography before then this will challenge you in a good way. Musicians and dancers have highly developed frontal lobes, this comes from exercising the part of the brain which aids memory recall.

Benefits of Dance

Dance requires concentration and anchors your brain into the ‘here and now’.  A lot of research shows how dancing can maintain and even boast your ability to think as you age. To me the greatest benefit of dance is that it gives you some distance from your worries and improves your mood.

As you get into the routine of coming to a regular class you will develop your skills and discover great music. The fitness benefits of dancing are an added bonus. You get a great cardio workout - Charleston is famous for being fast and furious. Charleston dance incorporates movement on all planes of motion from all directions, this variety of movement means no muscle if left behind as you exercise. In our dance classes you will burn over 400 calories an hour.

Practice and achievement

There are many benefits to dance, by committing to a regular class you are more likely to attend. The key thing about the six week course is there is a progressive learning path therefore you can build up your knowledge week by week. There is a clear outcome because people are committed to learning the routine. For those who want to practice at home, MyCharleston give you a free video of the dance routine when you sign up for a course. 

By week six you will know the choreography and we celebrate this by dressing-up and dancing the full routine (this is sometime followed by a cheeky drink after class.) For those who wish to show their friends and family, we regularly offer opportunities to take part in video and performance projects. 

Dancing is both a personal thing and something to celebrate and share. I often say there is a dance out there for everyone, so if you like to have a little bop around your kitchen, then have a look to see what dance classes there are in your area. Take a risk and you will soon be feeling the benefits of a dance.

Take a look at our latest timetable below:

Learn Shoe Shine: Charleston Move of the Week

This move does what it says on the tin, you are pretending to shine your shoes, so it's as much mime as it is dance and has a strong historical context.

You begin by presenting the foot, lean back and wipe the hand across as if polishing your shoe. You can the hop jump to switch sides to clean the other shoe (cause you'd look odd with just one shinny shoe!) and again flick the hands 4 times as if cleaning your shoes. This is a great move to master, so try it around the house or next time you shoes need cleaning!