DEBORAH DIAZ and photographer GLENN JEFFREY put on their dancing shoes for a night of swing at the Civic.
The eye goes straight to the swinging hemline. In the dimmed light Cazandra Wood is a wartime sweetheart, her blond hair and green dress the hues of a hand-painted photograph.
It's a moving picture - black-heeled shoes shuffling a six-beat, then an eight, on a talcum-powdered floor.
Wood, from Grey Lynn, is certainly reviving memories for a few oldtimers at the back of the room, and one says: "There are always one or two that your eye goes straight to in the crowd."
On stage Adrian Keeling is singing about "Ba-by" like she never went out of style, or grew up and had sex in the sixties. Keeling is the crooner in Prima Swing Riot, a band named for an Italian musician whose fear of flying meant he never went far from his adopted home of Las Vegas.
Back then Louis Prima brought the clubs alive from midnight to 6 am. That was as the swinging 50s.
Right now it's an Auckland Sunday evening - and swing is on the rise, tonight with Prima Swing Riot. The group has a home for the next year as part of a four-band nostalgia rush put together to recapture an oldfashioned atmosphere at the refurbished Civic Theatre, where every Sunday the Winter Garden below the main theatre becomes a dancehall.
One of four bands will play each week by rotation, each offering a different slice of musical history.
The Palm Court Orchestra - a 12-piece string orchestra - brings music from as far back as the 1700s, and the 1932 Jazz Orchestra and the Barry Clewett Show Band follow through to the earlier half of this century.
Already they have struck a chord with Aucklanders. When The Edge put the bands on together - the first show was free - people turned up in their hundreds and overloaded the dancefloor.
Prima Swing Riot's band leader Pete McGregor says: "They were queuing by 6.30. People had to out before more could come in."
It was a sight McGregor had waited a long time to see. He has played double-bass in bands since he was a 14-year-old in Tauranga, when he had to soak his soft, blistered fingers in meths to toughen them. He was 17 when he decided he'd like a Prima-style band.
Thirty years on he has a band well equipped to take advantage of a worldwide swing revival.
American Bill Shuff - one of many on the on the dancefloor - packs his leather-soled shoes when his salesman's job takes him around the world. He found out about the Civic's Sunday dances on the Internet.
The steps are the same as in his native Chicago, where clubs dedicated to swing abound.
Wood is jitterbugging with David Chen. He can move, and he's dressed for the part in red pants, suspenders and two-tone dancing shoes.
Chen, aged 34, from Takapuna, has been a swing convert for about 18 months.
"It's so much more emotionally charged, not like in an ordinary club where everyone is standing a foot apart and doing their own thing," he says. "Songs now are really just basically the first four minutes, then its a remix, every thing just repeats. There's more freedom in this."
Until the Winter Garden revival Auckland swing had been something of an underground scene, with enthusiasts keeping in touch on the grapevine and turning up when they heard a band was going to play their kind of music.
About 40 couples are on the dancefloor tonight, which fills it up. You can pick the ballroom dancers - they're the ones gliding across the floor with feet perfectly linked with invisible string. A bigger dancefloor is on order and should be in place by April.
At the back of the room stands one soul who looks old enough to have remembered swing the first time round, drumming his fingers, sipping a beer, and admiring the dancers.
In his earlier days Auckland had plenty of dancehalls, including St Sep's, St Ben's, the Crystal Palace, the Orange and Oriental Ballrooms. And they were always so packed that you had to get a stamp on your hand to get back in.
It was illegal to have alcohol in or nearby the dancehall.
"Some of the guys would have grog in the boot of their cars, but most people weren't interested in alcohol. They were interested in the music and the chicks."
It was his last year of primary school that he snuck out to St Sep's, just off Khyber Pass, and heard swing for the first time.
"This music - it just gets to you."
*You can enjoy some nostalgic swing at the Civic's Winter Garden Dance Club every Sunday at 7 pm for $20 (members $15). Tomorrow it's the Barry Clewett Show Band.
In the swing
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