Documentary chronicles "The Queen of Swing"

BY EVAN WILLIAMS ewilliams@florida-weekly.com

COURTESY PHOTO Filmmaker John Biffar collaborated with Norma Miller, "The Queen of Swing," for a documentary that plays Monday at the Florida Repertory Theatre. Norma Miller's career has spanned dancing, comedy, acting, authorship (her book "Swing Baby Swing" chronicles the evolution of swing culture into the 21st Century), multiple continents, three major wars and the civil rights movement. But she is still spry and imbued with an infectious energy that belies age and experience.

Today, the 88-year-old swing dancer spends her days in her Fort Myers home writing and remembering her show-business career.

"I always danced," she said. "We didn't even think about it. I came up at a time when everybody danced and that was my whole world."

She grew up across the street from The Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, one of the first integrated jazz and dance clubs in America, and performed there first at age 12. Later she graced the stage of Harlem's famous Apollo Theatre. She was whisked away to Europe by a dance troupe in her teens, and continued to perform around the country and overseas since then, keeping a residence first in New York, and later Las Vegas. Miller made Fort Myers her permanent home in 2005.

COURTESY PHOTOT Norma Miller, "The Queen of Swing" and friends at a ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution. "Can you imagine me down here in Dixie?" she said, soft eyes wondering over her life. "From the city that never sleeps to Las Vegas to Fort Myers where you can hear a rat piss on cotton. But I like the quiet; it allows me to write, and what else is there to do when you get old?

"In my time, I saw the walls of segregation broken down, I saw the civil rights bill passed, and today we have a woman running for President and a black man running for President. Did you know that's going to be our Democratic ticket? Who would have ever thought we would have seen this?"

It was almost as unexpected as her relationship with filmmaker John Biffar, who first approached Miller at a comedy club in Las Vegas in the early 90s, to cast her in his coming-of-age tale, "Captiva," released in 1995. (Previously, she acted in films such as the Marx Brother's "A Day at the Races" in 1937 and "Hellzapoppin'" in 1941, and Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" in 1992. Other documentaries where Miller appears include National Geographic's "Jitterbug," 1991, the Smithsonian Jazz series on NPR and Ken Burn's "Jazz," 2001).

Miller's initial response to Biffar's query lacked promise.

"Her direct quote was, 'You're full of (ham), I've heard that one before,'" he said.

After they made the movie and became friends, he decided to write and direct a documentary about Miller's life called "The Queen of Swing." But it wasn't because of any particular interest in jazz or swing dance, he said.

"She thought I was doing a story about jazz and dance," Biffar said. "Really it was a story about how attitude can get you through everything. Really, it was about love."

The film was co-produced and edited by Dave Beaty and chronicles the circles Miller swung in, including many of the top jazz performers this century: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Artie Shaw, Ethel Waters, Benny Goodman and others. Later, Miller worked with comedians Red Foxx, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, both on stage and television (in the 1970s series "Sanford and Son").

Miller said she is now writing a book about Biffar and his documentary, a film 10 years in the making.

"It's something that we worked on a little at a time," Biffar said. "It kind of took on a life of its own."

The documentary interlaces Miller's life with all the significant historical events she skirted and sometimes was involved in directly, such as WWII.

"The draft took all the best artists," she said. "We had no dancing partners, so that changed everything."

Also the Vietnam War, where Miller performed a comedy act for troops.

"I played every base in Vietnam from Danang to the DMZ (demilitarized zone)," she said. "I was there for 10 months."

Since the "The Queen of Swing" first premiered in Sweden in 2006, Biffar and Miller have traveled with it to openings in London, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans. It will premier in downtown Fort Myers at The Florida Reperatory Theatre on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

"Everyone dances after the show," she said. "Sometimes I get up and dance."

Miller is perhaps best known for a style of dance named after aviator Charles Lindbergh called "the Lindy Hop." (Lindbergh "hopped" over the Atlantic Ocean in his famous solo airplane trip in 1926). But the thing itself was a fusion of early dance styles that co-evolved with jazz in Harlem. In 2003, the National Endowments of the Arts presented Miller with the National Heritage Award, for her role in creating that "acrobatic style swing dance."