Artist · Dancer · Author
About Denise
Denise Steele is an artist, dancer and author whose work lives where the brushstroke meets the dance floor. Her paintings are steeped in swing dance, Art Deco glamour and the golden age of jazz — and the rhythm in them is real, because Denise has danced every step.
The Dancer
Nearly thirty years of teaching
Denise specialises in the authentic early Jazz and Swing Era dances of the 1920s–50s — Lindy Hop, 20s Charleston, vernacular jazz, vintage shag, Big Apple and swing blues — with nearly thirty years of teaching through her studios, universities and dance events across the US, UK and Europe.
Her mentor was the legendary Frankie Manning, the Father of the Lindy Hop: her teacher, friend and dance partner for over fifteen years until his passing in 2009. Through Frankie she learned the authentic steps, styling, musicality and spoken history of these uniquely American dances — and she documented everything: workshops, performances, and Frankie's own stories of his rise at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers and the Congaroos.
From 1994 Denise pioneered the revival of the Lindy Hop across Oregon through her studios, The Joint Is Jumpin'. She taught weekly classes at Portland's renowned Crystal Ballroom — 300 to 800 dancers every Swing Sunday — directed and choreographed performance troupes from age eleven to adult, judged top competitions, and wrote for Dancing USA magazine. Crucially, she brought the original dancers of the 1930s, such as Chazz Young and Betty Wood, to her studios to teach their own styles and tell their own stories — and built one of the most unique personal video libraries documenting these remarkable performers, footage that now feeds the Frankie Project. She has been a guest instructor at Portland State, Oregon State, the University of Oregon, George Fox, Linfield, Washington State and the University of South Carolina.
- 50+ Years exhibiting her paintings, from California to Sweden
- 1994 The year Frankie Manning asked her to start teaching Lindy Hop
- 15+ Years as Frankie Manning’s student, friend and dance partner
- 800 Dancers on a busy Swing Sunday at Portland’s Crystal Ballroom
The Artist
Each work begins with a song
Denise's painting style is a fusion of realism and impressionism, the Art Deco glamour of the 1920s, and the dramatic lighting of early Hollywood — Eastern and Western painting traditions meeting on one canvas. Each work begins with a song, a dancer, a historical moment or a fragment of mystery.
Step into a world reminiscent of Paris in the 1920s, when Montmartre bustled with the Charleston, le hot jazz, and the young artists, dancers, writers and philosophers who made a new era — Picasso, Hemingway, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet. Or travel further afield: Istanbul, the Pyramids, Zanzibar, Argentina — places where dance, music and wild animals share the same canvas.
Denise has exhibited since 1975, from Palo Alto, California to Eugene, Oregon — and as far as Herräng, Sweden, the spiritual home of the Lindy Hop. Her paintings are held by private collectors, including five commissioned works.
Here, now
Denise now lives in England
Every print in this store is reproduced from one of her original paintings using 12-colour giclée fine art printing, made to order by her print partner and available framed or unframed. More of her world — the Frankie Project, the Mystery of the Magna Carta book and the brand new Roaring 20s Art Deco Mystery Mail Club — live right here on this site.