Stompin’ at the Virtual Savoy

Famed Harlem Ballroom to Throw Open its (Digital) Doors Once More In May of 1937, around 4,000 swing fans crowded a ballroom to see two jazz giants trade musical blows. Another 5,000 gathered outside, as the bands of Benny Goodman and Chick Webb dueled on the venue’s famous double bandstand. That venue was the Savoy—cradle of rising stars like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, crucible of the flying Charleston, Lindy Hop, and jive. For three short decades it brought black and white musicians, singers and dancers together betwixt its crystal chandeliers and mahogany floorboards. Demolished in 1959, it has become Babylon to swing fans—a culture-crossing high water mark now long gone, which many would love to have experienced. Thanks to an ambitious virtual reality project, they could soon have the chance. Welcome to the Savoy is rebuilding the ballroom digitally, reopening its doors to new generations of jazz-lovers. French CGI experts Novelab have already recreated a bare interior, on which digital decorators will paint pixel-perfect decor. The virtual venue will invite guests through a host building’s real doors, interacting with live bouncers and cloakroom attendants, before donning a VR headset and stepping into the animated ballroom. There they will mingle with computer characters and real actors—digitized live using Hollywood motion capture technology—pl