Swing History – Jean Veloz

I’m going to kick off a new blog segment on Swing history by talking about an amazing Follow from the LA scene, Jean Veloz.  Jean is an amazing dancer and is still alive and dancing today.  She’s a wonderfully warm and friendly person and, ridiculously, still dances as well as she did back in the 40s (she’s currently in her eighties).

Jean started dancing Lindy Hop in LA in the early 40s and very quickly rose through the ranks.  Early on in her dancing, Jean won a competition that gave her the opportunity to perform in a feature film which in turn gave her the chance to appear in even more Hollywood movies.  Jean is probably most well known for her dancing in Groovy Movie (a goofy dance film) and the “Undecided” dance clip (jump to 2.30 in the clip below).

Jean has an amazing style that never fails to blow me away even after having watched these clips hundreds of times.  I had the chance to dance with Jean a few times and, man, what a thrill.  I have to say though that one of the biggest thrills was being in the room during this next clip and watching the 88 year old Jean Veloz tearing it up and looking exactly the way she used to all those decades ago.