Saturday, May 2, 2009

Quote by Hitlerjugend Patrol

The sight of some three hundred dancing people thrashing about was absolutely horrid.  No one can describe the dancing because no one danced normally.  Indeed, this was the naughtiest of Swing dancing that can be imagined.  Sometimes two boys danced with one juvenile girl, and at other times several couples locked themselves into a mass embrace and just hopped around.  Many couples hopped together while holding hands and bent over wildly, so that their long hair flew across their faces and whipped their thighs as they spun.  You had to worry about the sanity of some of them.  The scenes that happened on the dance floor were fit for a lunatic asylum.  Even the most hysterical and primitive Black jungle warrior war-dance would have paled in comparison to what happened here.  Everyone jumped about like crazy while they mumbled English musical gibberish.  The Band increased the tempo faster by the minute.  No member of the band was sitting, because they were all getting hotter and wilder as they also succumbed to the jungle beat on the stage. You often saw boys dancing together with other boys, always with two cigarettes dangling from each corner of the mouth.”

-Hitlerjugend Patrol Report on a Hamburg Swing Dance, August 2, 1940.

No comments:

Post a Comment