Name: Tranky Doo Workshop
Start: 2026-05-10T14:30:00+01:00
End: 2026-05-10T17:45:00+01:00
Location: The Belfrey Hall

Learn the Tranky Doo - an iconic solo jazz routine from the Savoy era. It is a playful, upbeat routine that regularly makes an appearance at social dances around the world today.
Join us for an afternoon of dancing on Sunday 10 May where you’ll have the chance to learn the Tranky Doo, an iconic solo jazz routine from the Savoy era. The Tranky Doo is a playful, upbeat routine which still regularly makes an appearance at social dances around the world today.
The workshop will comprise 3 hours of teaching including a short break, and you are warmly invited to join us for a meal out in York afterwards.
There’ll also be an opportunity to perform this routine for the York Lindy community at our special World Lindy Hop Day social dance on Saturday 30 May should you wish to!
This workshop is open level and everyone is welcome. It is a solo routine and features a variety of vernacular jazz steps, but we will teach you everything you need to know on the day, so don’t be put off if you’re fairly new to the world of solo jazz!
Originally choreographed in the early 1940s by Frankie Manning for his performance group, The Congaroos, the Tranky Doo was named after a chorus girl from Chicago and inspired by her signature exit step from the stage. The routine, originally lasting only two choruses, then began to be danced socially, becoming popularly known on the Savoy ballroom dancefloor.
Watch the first known video footage of the routine, danced by former Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers Thomas ‘Tops’ Lee and Wilda Crawford in the 1946 movie Love in Syncopation.