A Real Throwback
Teens swing -- and catch some air -- at the Caves.
Scott Schafroth slaps on chocolate-brown corduroy pants, vest and jacket,
then tops the ensemble with his granddad's brown felt fedora. You wouldn't
catch him strolling through a mall in this getup. It's requisite wear for
him every Thursday night at St. Paul's Wabasha Street Caves.
``When in Rome . . .'' Schafroth, 18, says with a shrug. ``It makes me feel more into the scene.''
Big-band swing is so woven into youth culture now
that, with some people, it's more than a revival; it's an adopted lifestyle.
Guys and gals are stripping off their Sketchers and Tommy Hilfigers for
bloomers, black-and-whites, silk ties, knee-length skirts and suspendered
slacks.
The attraction isn't so much jazz, but the dancing
it inspires. The culture and clothing follow.
Every Thursday from 7 to 10 p.m., scores of decked-out teens turn the Wabasha Street Caves into a zoot suit riot. True, other Twin Cities clubs host swing nights; but none is as teen-friendly as the age-old Caves.
It's a nightclub cut into a hillside, and the natural
caverns open lots of floor space for the footloose.
Newbies hole up in the Caves' deeper recesses, away from the main floor,
goofing with each other and practicing moves without fear of embarrassment.
There are dancers of all ages here. Most appear
under 40, and roughly half seem to be minors. The younger dancers -- many
too young for drivers' licenses -- generally school together like fish,
too impatient, wound-up and action-jacked to contain themselves to
swing's more modest steps.
For them, it's all about catching air. There's the
Egg Beater, the Suicide and other aerials -- throws, rolls, jumps and jives
-- that sound like roller-coaster rides, and the music becomes a soundtrack
to their self-propelled amusement park.
The Caves has its regulars, and some have become
stars. There's Chris Evans, a strapping blonde known to some here as the
``aerial king.'' Amy Johnson, a petite redhead, has danced her way into
local television and paid swing-dancing jobs. Pete Kirwin is perhaps the
most charismatic of the youngsters -- James Dean with a busting-out smile
-- and nobody figures Pete for only 16.
They and the other ``Cave Cats,'' as they've come
to call themselves, set the standards on the floor. It's not uncommon to
see guys with other guys, hip-tossing each other, and girls cutting it
up with other girls. They're all trying to re-create the fun they see in
the 30-second burst of a Gap commercial.
Blast From Past
``Coming here is like stepping into a different world, like going back
in time,'' says Greg Ramm, who has been coming to the Caves nearly every
Thursday night since January. He first showed up in jeans and a T-shirt.
He promptly slapped together slacks, dress shirt and $3 shoes from Goodwill
and a surplus store.
``This place
has a classiness to it. Not a snooty classiness, but you can dress up and
go for it,'' says Ramm, who normally listens to Beck, nine inch nails and
Green Day.
``I felt kinda intimidated and outclassed my first week, because people
just looked spectacular,'' he says. ``But what's cool is if you see a hot
move, you can just ask and they'll show you how to do it.''
In the '30s, swing came from rebellion. Today, teens
embrace it as a fixture of innocence. The body contact, steps and aerials
have an inherent sexual energy couched in the unspoken understanding that,
at least here, dancers leave it all on the floor.
Kirwin and Johnson, one of the hottest young tandems
at the Caves, move through the music as if undressing each other with their
eyes. As a song ends, they'll often walk off the floor to separate friends,
as if they'd done nothing more than pass each other in a school hallway.
``I experience that feeling every time I dance. It's intense
and amazing,'' says Johnson, who looks like she dropped out of the '30s
until you see her silver tongue stud. ``It enhances the connection, and
you need that energy to dance well, but it's nothing serious.''
``There's some gratification in dancing with a beautiful girl,
but it doesn't mean you have to go on a date or be together,'' adds Chris
Evans. ``It can be playful, and you can leave it at that.''
Few dancers here have taken formal lessons, instead
learning by watching and aping what they see at the Caves. Many take advantage
of free lessons that run about 45 minutes before the big band kicks up
at 7 p.m. Top dancers reserve most of their steps for specific partners,
though people rarely turn down any request to dance. Often, guys grab a
girl's hand and sprint for the floor before she can say no.
One night, a girl stomped off the floor in a huff.
``Oh, my partner's so annoying,'' she said.
``That's cool. I'll dance with you,'' another girl said, whisking her
friend away by the arm.
Once a night, dancers clear space on the floor for
a ``swing circle.'' People pack the rim three or four deep, clapping and
cheering as the best or more daring dancers take turns flipping, vaulting
and tossing each other to a song's conclusion. There are contests, too,
where Evans, Johnson and others have won dance lessons and a half-year
of free admission to the Caves.
``I like being in the spotlight. I know people are watching me -- I
know it -- and it just energizes me,'' Johnson says of the swing circle.
``I go `Oooooh' and I ham it up.''
Some girls
here say their favorite dance partner is 71-year-old Hal Bennett. He usually
comes with his wife, but sometimes arrives alone, and he's never left standing
in the wings. Bennett wears a hearing aid, and he was once kicked so badly
that he spent three weeks off the dance floor with a hematoma on his ankle.
He returned to the Caves as soon as he could.
``The guys and girls call us Grandma and Grandpa. Well, we're not like grandparents because we still have our chops,'' Bennett says. ``I used to do this when I was a 20-year-old, but `Sing, Sing, Sing' was about as fast as it got. The tempos that kids demand today are faster, and I find it really exhilarating.''
Teen Scene
The Wabasha Caves have brought in big bands for three years, but swing
nights were such a small draw that organizers thought about dropping the
weekly series. Crowds picked up a bit two years ago, with the move from
Monday to Thursday, but teens didn't
trickle in until late 1997. By the next spring, through word of mouth,
the Caves had grown into a full-on teen scene. Demand to get in this past
summer was so strong that lines stretched past the parking lot onto the
sidewalk.
Young people caught onto swing through a collision of pop culture. They've seen movies, such as ``Swingers,'' ``Swing Kids,'' ``Tango'' and ``Strictly Ballroom.'' They listen to Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. And, of course, there's that commercial featuring ``Jump Jive an' Wail.''
``They have no idea who Louis Prima is. They just ask for `The Gap Song,' '' says a leader with the Minnesota Jazz Orchestra, one of several big bands on weekly rotation at the Caves.
Kirwin discovered swing through the commercial, then discovered Glen Miller, Benny Goodman and Count Basie through a $10 three-CD set. Kirwin found only a handful of young people when he made his first trips from Stillwater to the Caves. He was younger than all of them -- as much as 10 years with some Cats-- but found the difference meaningless when it came to the talk and prance of dance.
He and the other ``Cave Cats'' rented swing-laden movies, holed up in coffee shops and dolled themselves up for swank dinners. They still cap most evenings at the Caves with a trip to the Perkins on South Robert Street. There, they'll belt out Sinatra tunes until managers kick them out or, in Kirwin's case, the clock strikes his 12:30 a.m. curfew.
``I feel a lot closer to the Cats than I do to even my family,'' says Kirwin, who owns seven suits from the '30s, all bought on the cheap. ``When I hang out with my dancing friends, it's like nothing else matters.''
Lauren Deming, a 16-year-old from Mendota Heights had to calm down her parents before she could make a Thursday-night habit of the Caves. Beyond staying out late on a school night, they didn't like the thought of Lauren surrounded by older people in an all-ages bar.
``They saw how fun and exciting it was for me,'' she said. ``And I told them to just trust me.''
Lauren's dad, Kevin, remembers the Caves from his youth as ``a tough place with a tough crowd.'' He'd never stepped inside until a few weeks ago.
``This is totally cool -- very, very cool. It's safe and a good environment,
and everyone's helping everybody,'' he said while watching his daughter
and others on the dance floor.
``I was a child of the '60s and '70s, during a lot of turmoil, and
you would have seen a psychedelic scene in here,'' he said. ``But maybe
now it's more like what it might have been in the '30s -- just good, healthy
fun. Everyone's just dancing, and it's uplifting to see this.''
It wasn't immediately so. Teens early on busted into aerials from all over the floor, during any point of a song, tweaking the older, more serious dancers around them. Club leaders told the teens about ``dance etiquette'' and say they haven't had problems since.
Most teens leave their swing on the Caves' dance floor. Johnson has turned it into an avocation. Eight months after taking her first tepid steps, she's taken this semester off from college to focus on dancing.
``It was just too distracting trying to go to class and study and dance every night,'' she says. ``I'll probably never have another chance to do something like this, so I want to enjoy it and get the most out of it before I get real again.''