Frankie Manning: Four things you probably didn't know about the 'ambassador of the Lindy Hop'

The dancer and his troupe brought the swing dance, created in Harlem in the 1920s, to a mass audience

Today marks the 102nd birthday of one of the founders of modern dance.

Frankie Manning is best known as the "ambassador of the Lindy Hop" - a fusion of several genres including jazz, tap, breakaway and the Charlestown.

But there is a lot more to the choreographer than meets the eye.

Here are four things you probably didn’t know about him:

He didn’t come up with the Lindy Hop name

Although an early pioneer of the dance and its most famous practitioner, Manning did not come up with the name for it.

Inspired by the achievement of US aviator Charles Lindbergh becoming the first person to fly solo from New York to Paris in 1927, the name was coined by a member of Manning’s troupe George “Shorty” Snowden as a reference to his “hop” across the Atlantic.

Their troupe performed the Lindy Hop at a dance marathon in New York. A reporter asked Snowden what the dance was called and his spur of the moment reply meant the name stuck.

He popularised the dance and moulded it into what is today

The Lindy Hop first originated among African American communities in Harlem, New York during the 1920s.

The dance can vary in tempo but involves lots of jumps, kicks and lifts. It is performed with the dancer's body contoured into right angles against the floor rather than the stiff, upright positions of ballroom dancing.

Manning began teaching and performing the dance with the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers dance troupe before the Second World War and introduced an aerial flip (where one partner rolls over the back of the other) in 1935.

Despite his success he worked at the post office for more than 30 years

Following the end of the swing era in the 1950s Manning disbanded his post-war troupe, the Congaroo Dancers, and took a job at the US Postal Service.

He did not begin teaching again until 1986 - a year before he retired from the post office.

Frankie Manning's 102nd birthday

A fellow member of the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, Al Minns, had begun teaching it in 1982 and had piqued interest in the dance once more.

Dancers Erin Stevens and Steven Mitchell asked Manning to begin teaching again but at first he was sceptical because he did not think young dancers would be interested.

He was proven wrong and in 1989 he won a Tony Award for Best Choreography for the musical Black and Blue.

His birthday became a major event in the New York calendar

His birthday attracted dancers and instructors from all over the world to New York to celebrate. His 80th birthday in 1994 was commemorated by a weekend-long celebration in the city.

His 85th in 1999 was celebrated with a sold-out dance show at New York’s famous Roseland Ballroom where a pair of his dance shoes were placed in a special showcase alongside Fred Astaire’s.