Second time seeing lindy hop related thread on HN. Are there many practitioners here? Very excited and sad as I don't see I can go back to this hobby anytime soon.
(Herrang is a small village (pop 400) in Sweden which becomes an international swing dancing festival / camp for 5 weeks each summer)
Frankie Manning has a good autobiography published - https://frankiemanning.com/book.php well worth reading for an idea of what his days looked like. He was at some historic events like battle of the bands with Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Re. missing the dancing: I know it's not the same as the real thing, but have you tried joining some "local" zoom classes? I found it really fun to drop in to a random one across the world.
My scene seems to be dominated by teachers (the older participants) and social sciences/pedagogy/psychology people (the students): the local university is strong in those fields.
Dawn was a short woman whose talents spanned dance, music, songwriting, and anything Cabaret. Her favourite song was Count Basie's Splanky.
I had arrived at Herräng during setup week, and got to know some of the crew who run the show, plus a few secrets---password for free Internet, less-frequented shower areas, and to avoid laundry duty at all costs.
Between the DJ booth and Dawn were countless dancers sitting, mostly cross-legged, eating up her every single word.
So on that afternoon while Dawn was holding the crowd's attention, I was up in the DJ booth, gazing over everyone, a clear view of Dawn at the other end. When she asked, "Who wants to do Splanky with me?" nobody budged. It took me a half-second later to shout, "I do!" I launched myself off the platform, leap-frogged over people's heads, and managed to score a dance with Dawn Hampton to her favourite song.
See when Dawn danced with you, she danced _with_ you. She held your gaze, recognized you as a person, played with you, back-led with you, showed you how to embody the music with your movements. She adapted to your level and made you look like a pro. She and Frankie Manning were Lindy Hop.
This snapshot video to me is nicely capturing the spirit of "what's lindy hop?"