The exact origin of the Big Apple is unclear but one author suggests that the dance originated from the "ring shout", a group dance associated with religious observances that was founded before 1860 by African Americans on plantations in South Carolina and Georgia.
[1] The ring shout is described as a dance with "counterclockwise circling and high arm gestures" that resembled the Big Apple.
[3] The synagogue was converted into a black juke joint called the "Big Apple Night Club".
[2][3][4][5] In 1936, three white students from the University of South Carolina – Billy Spivey, Donald Davis, and Harold "Goo-Goo" Wiles – heard the music coming from the juke joint as they were driving by.
"[3] During the next few months, the white students brought more friends to the night club to watch the black dancers.
We had to feed the Nickelodeon", recalls Harold E. Ross, who often visited the club and was 18 years old at the time.
"[3] During the summer of 1937, the students from the University of South Carolina started dancing the Big Apple at the Pavilion in Myrtle Beach.
Eight couples were chosen for the show, including Wood, Spivey, and Davis, to perform the Big Apple during a three-week engagement that began on September 3, 1937.
[2][3] They performed six shows a day to sold-out audiences and greatly contributed to the dance's popularity.
After the engagement at the Roxy, the group became known as "Billy Spivey's Big Apple Dancers" and toured the country for six months.
By 1938, there were franchises in several major cities, including Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta, Louisville, and Minneapolis.
In the film Jimmy Stewart and his fiancée, played by Jean Arthur, are enticed to learn the dance by some youngsters for the payment of a dime.
In the movie Vivacious Lady (1938) Ginger Rogers and James Ellison teach some moves from the dance to Beulah Bondi.
A notorious December 1937 radio broadcast by Mae West, condemned as "vulgar and indecent" by the Federal Communications Commission, featured an Adam and Eve sketch in which Eve (played by West) asks the Snake in the Garden of Eden to fetch her some forbidden fruit: "Now, get me a big one -- I feel like doin' a Big Apple!"
In the spring of 1938, Whitey's Lindy Hoppers performed the Big Apple at the Roxy Theater during a three-week engagement.
[12] A theatrical producer, Harry Howard, saw their show and hired the group to perform for Hollywood Hotel Revue, a production that would tour New Zealand and Australia.
The group was billed as "The 8 Big Apple Dancers" or similar variations, and consisted of four couples that included Frankie Manning.
Jeff Wilkinson claims that "even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was doing the dance.
The Big Apple has many commonalities with Afro-American vernacular partner dances of the early part of the century through the 1930s and '40s.
Dances such as the Cakewalk, Black Bottom, Charleston, and Lindy Hop share both similar elements and a common underlying improvisational spirit.
Left hand clasps the right (think "synergy"), both heels scoot to the right, then both toes 4 slow, 8 quick.
With upper body bend down, with fingers pointed at the floor, twisting shoulders opposite hips.
Tick Tock: Put heels together with weight on the back of one foot and the front of the other, then shift toes together and the heels apart and alternate the weight on the feet and repeat the actions to create a sideways travelling motion while at the same time the forearms move in front of the torso then out to the sides in time with the shifting of the feet.
Everyone runs to the center of the circle and shouts "Hallelujah" while throwing hands in the air from a bent over posture.