Last year, right before college graduation, Jenny Shirar and Christian Frommelt threw “a giant, one-off dance party” called the Nevermore Jazz Ball—as in, it was never supposed to happen again. “We didn’t want to drag ourselves into something big and then leave,” Shirar says.
“But after that first year, we were pretty sure we were going to stick around,” Frommelt says. “And so many people liked the name…”
They’d already founded Lindy Hop St. Louis, not only to give people a chance to dress up and dance—they host regular Tuesday-night classes and dances in the Grandel Theatre’s Grand Hall, where Pokey LaFarge can sometimes be seen cutting a rug—but also to preserve St. Louis’ swing-era music and dance. They’re always seeking to learn from older dancers like Johnny Hatcher and Marqua McGull-Billingsley of The St. Louis Boppers, an African-American group that meets at Legacy Books & Café to dance.
“Johnny Hatcher grew up doing the bop, but during a time when they were still doing jitterbug steps,” Frommelt says, noting how fluid it all was.
“They say, ‘We just danced. We didn’t think that hard about it,’” Shirar adds. “There’s another dancer, Tommy Russo, who’s going to turn 95 in September—”
“Ninety-six,” Frommelt corrects.
“Holy cow!” Shirar says, shaking her head. “You’re right. Anyway, he came to Nevermore Jazz Ball last year, dressed to the nines. He wouldn’t go out of the house not dressed up. He went up to the stage, to the band, and asked, ‘Can I sing one?’ And so not only did he sing, but when the band was playing solos, he danced.”
Lindy Hop St. Louis’ dances attract a huge age range, on average between 13 and 70, and Shirar and Frommelt want everyone to feel welcome. So Nevermore will have a beginner’s track—people can show up and attend the festival, even if they have no prior dance experience. For those too shy to dance, there’s a free Cherokee Street Jazz Crawl Saturday afternoon, with local bands playing in venues up and down the street (where you can at least watch other people break out the shine steps).
The festival proper kicks off on Thursday, November 1, with a dance at Atomic Cowboy and music by the St. Louis Sidemen. On Friday, there’s a “Choose your own St. Louis adventure” tour for out-of-towners, including history and architecture walks and a trip to City Museum. That night, Miss Jubilee and the Bella Rue Jazz Band play Casa Loma Ballroom, where you can shop Retro 101’s pop-up vintage-clothing boutique
on the mezzanine. The day wraps up with a 3 a.m. trip to John Donut on South Broadway. Saturday night, the dancing’s scheduled to go until 4 a.m., with music from New Orleans’ Meschiya Lake & Dem Little Big Horns. Many instructors and bands are coming from elsewhere, but Shirar and Frommelt say preserving dance heritage requires us to value the regional.
“Back in the ’30s and ’40s—and ’50s and ’60s, before YouTube—people had a spin on things,” Frommelt says. “That’s why we’re able to look into St. Louis dance and music history and find so much that people love, because it’s different. So many of those different styles have been silenced.”
Take the St. Louis shag, for instance. (The shag evolved from the lindy hop around the same time East Coast swing emerged.) Shirar says they’ve been lucky enough to find older dancers who learned the style firsthand, like John “Johnny Soul” Bedrosian. He comes to all of Lindy Hop St. Louis’ dances and will be teaching a St. Louis shag class at Nevermore—which will, by the way, remain Nevermore, forevermore.
“Last year, one of our friends just started putting the word ‘more’ on the end of everything,” Shirar says.
“So sometimes we just say…more,” Frommelt laughs. “That’s been our tag line: More!”
For more information, go to nevermorejazzball.com and lindyhopstlouis.org.
