Irene was born November 22, 1921 in Missouri. She grew up in Missouri and Oklahoma, and spent a lot of her childhood learning and performing tap, ballet, and gymnastics. She moved to the Los Angeles area as a teenager and, around 1939, learned some Lindy Hop steps from a dancer named Bill Alcorn in just one sitting before becoming a Lindy social dancer and, soon after, performer.
She learned the other Southern California swing dances Balboa and “Swing” as well, began auditioning for films, and developed a close friendship with fellow SoCal dancer Jean Veloz, which would last her entire life
When she learned steps others had done, she would quickly change them and put her own spin on them. For instance, when she saw Jewel’s continual swivels, she added a tap-influenced kick-ball-change styling. “Dean taught [Jewel] the pure Lindy. I have a bastard version,” She said. “Cause if it didn’t feel good, I didn’t do it.”
Irene’s “switches,” as she called them, is just a taste of her contributions; Irene was one of the most inventive dancers in the swing era. Aside from a ton of tap-inspired rhythm variations, she developed a style that constantly used her shoulders (and eyebrows), and a movement where she would plant her feet and stretch her hips back at the end of moves (“the bump”). She pushed the envelope for what was expected from a follower when she invented the “corkscrew” (I don’t think this was her term) — when a leader gave her an outside turn, she could pop the turn twice as fast under the arm and get two turns in before the leader knew what happened. But her most famous invention is the move she called “The drop,” but which Jean Veloz renamed “The Quick-Stop” It’s yet another way Irene played with the outside-turns leaders would give her, and has gone down in history as one of the greatest follower-initiated moves of all time. R.I.P. Irene 1921-Feb 26, 2020. Many thanks for (Bio and Info Bobby White, Swungover)