Love, Life and the Lindy Hop.

This Valentine's Day, lindy hoppers Jenny Thomas and Ryan Francois, lately of the Broadway musical Swing!, will be in Las Vegas for the first time since 1996, when they tied the knot at The Little Chapel of Flowers.

Though Jenny, 32, and Ryan, 34, will celebrate their love on February 14, this time they'll be in Vegas to work. Having just finished a year as dance partners in Swing!, where they delighted audiences with their infectious energy, the couple will launch an eight-city series of master classes, teaching in Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver, Houston, Boston, Miami and Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, a new show which they co-choreographed is set to open in New York, their home base. The Story of Lindy Hop (the working title at press time) will have an indefinite run Fridays through Sundays at Swing 46, a midtown Manhattan cabaret. In addition to filling the stage with high kicks and lively shim shams, the show will be a lesson in the history of the lindy hop.

The name lindy hop, for example, is said by some to have come from Charles Lindbergh, the first solo aviator to "hop" the Atlantic in 1927 when the dance style was born. New to audiences might be the fact that the lindy hop, along with the Charleston, cakewalk, minstrel blues and boogie-woogie, was not originally called swing, but rather jazz. What we know as jazz dance today, says Ryan, is "contemporary jazz," versus the "authentic jazz" from the early part of the century. The show will also point to lindy hop as the "one true American folk dance," he said.

It may seem odd that Jenny and Ryan are so interested in this American art form, given that they are English. For Ryan, however, the more important component of lindy hop is its roots in black history. "Henry VIII and Queen Victoria don't mean a whole lot to me," he said. "My history lies within what black people have done, not in the white country that I reside in."

Jenny admits that her original attraction to swing was not the history of the dance, or even the dance itself. "My interest at the time was Ryan," she said. They met at a tap-dance class in London. Later, in 1993 when Ryan choreographed and was dancing in Souls in Motion, he asked her to join his company, Zoots and Spangles. Though she had trained in ballet since she was 4, Jenny Thomas had never seen the lindy hop. Ryan had been dancing it for eight years and taught her everything he knew. A year or two later, they were in love. They went on to perform together at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994 and won the American Swing Dance and U.S. Open Championships in 1997, which led to the gig on Broadway.

Though they work, live and play together, the two say they never tire of one another's company. "The longest we have ever been apart was three weeks, and that nearly killed me," said Jenny. For relaxation, they turn to other hobbies, such as scuba diving.

They say their interracial status has never been an issue. "That is something I attribute to the power of art," said Ryan. "You can really transcend a lot of those racial barriers we seem to carry in life."

Though dancing brought them together, it is now what they argue about the most. According to Jenny, an argument might go like this: "I won't agree with Ryan about something, and he'll say, `Hey, I've been doing this for sixteen years, and you've only been doing it for eight years.' And I'll say, `Yes, but I had the best teacher.' Then he'll calm down and say, `OK, I see your point.'"

Shayna Samuels is a New York City correspondent for Dance Magazine.