Dancer and choreographer known as the Queen of Swing
Born: December 2, 1919;
Died: May 5, 2019
NORMA Miller, who has died aged 99, was a dancer, choreographer and actress known as the Queen of Swing. In the 1930s and 40s she was a member of the Lindy Hoppers, the famous dancers who helped popularise swing dancing. Later, she shared a Las Vegas stage with Sammy Davis Jr.
Born in Harlem, Miller grew up near the famous Savoy Ballroom and was 12 when the legendary dancer Twist Mouth George saw her and asked her to dance with him inside the Savoy.
"I danced with the world's greatest dancer," Miller said. "And I couldn't tell nobody. I was too young to go inside the Savoy. I wasn't supposed to be there."
Just three years later, Miller was cherry-picked by the dancer Herbert "Whitey" Ford to join his Lindy Hoppers, whose high-flying dance moves were named after the aviator Charles Lindbergh. She was the last surviving original member of the all-black dance troupe.
Miller ended up touring Europe with the group in 1935. And that led to appearances in, among other things, the Marx Brothers movies Hellzapoppin and A Day at the Races.
Miller and the other Lindy Hoppers took aerial dancing to new, creative heights with a combination of hopping, somersaulting and other gravity-defying moves. To get that good, Miller and the other dancers practised endlessly.
"You'd bust your backside," she said in 2005. "It's hard dancing. We had all kinds of fractures. I'm just healing now and it's 70 years later."
Miller later worked as a choreographer, comedian, actor, author and a performer at various nightclubs, opening for big names such as Davis. She did a little of everything: dancing, singing, comedy. She also appeared in Sanford and Son, the American remake of Steptoe and Son.
Film-maker John Biffar, who made a documentary about Miller in 2005, said she was better known in Europe than in the United States. One time, he remembers, she even got top billing over The Rolling Stones in one Italian newspaper. “She was big,” he says.
Biffar met Miller 25 years ago in a Las Vegas nightclub. He he was drawn to her singing voice, and the two quickly became close friends. He said she had an indomitable spirit and had an endless knowledge of pop culture. “She was just hip," he said. "She was a very cool lady.”
Biffar said about 1,000 dancers from all over the world are expected to attend her funeral later this month. Miller died of congestive heart failure.
“She’d hoped to make it to 100, but it just wasn’t mean to be,” said Biffar. “She was still active up to the very last minute.”
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