Social Dancing In America Lindy Hop To Hip Hop 1901 2000

Describes the history of social dancing in the United States from the complicated early set dances to modern breakdancing and the recent revival of swing, discussing how, why, and with whom Americans have danced.

Describes the history of social dancing in the United States from the complicated early set dances to modern breakdancing and the recent revival of swing, discussing how, why, and with whom Americans have danced.

This title in the American Dance Floor series provides an overview of the origins, development, and current status of Latin social dancing in the United States. Latin dance and music have had a widespread influence upon the development of other social dance and music styles in the United States. As a result, Latin dance styles are among the most important dance forms in America. Latin Dance addresses every major style of Latin dance, describing the basic steps that characterize it as well as its rhythmic pace and time signature, and examining its development from European, African, and Amerindian influences. The author explains the range of styles and expression to be found in Latin dances primarily within the context of couples social dancing, the popularity of salsa today, and the broader social meanings and implications of their multicultural origins from the 1600s to the present. The historic connection between exhibition Latin dance and American modern dance through vaudeville is explained as well.

Embodied Nostalgia is a collection of interlocking case studies that focus on how social dance in musical theatre brings forth the dancer on stage as a site of embodied history, cultural memory, and nostalgia, and asks what social dance is doing performatively, dramaturgically, and critically in musical theatre. The case studies in this volume are all Broadway musicals set during the Jazz Age (1910-1950), however, performed and produced after that time, creating a spectrum of nostalgic impulses that are interrogated for social and political resonance and meaning. All reflect the fractures or changes in the social dance when brought to the stage and expose the complexities of the embodied nostalgia – broadly interpreted as the physicalizing of community memories, longings, and historical meaning – the dances carry with them. Particular attention is focused on the Black ownership of the social dances and the subsequent appropriation, cultural theft, and forgotten legacies. By approaching musical theatre through this lens of social dance––always already deeply connected to notions of class and race––and the politics of choreography therein, a unique and necessary method to describing, discussing, and critically evaluating the body in motion in musical theatre is put forth.

"The history of American dance reflects the nation's tangled culture. Dancers from wildly different backgrounds watched, imitated, and stole from one another. Audiences everywhere embraced the result as deeply American. Chronicling dance from the minstrel stage to the music video, Megan Pugh shows how freedom--that nebulous, contested American ideal--emerged as a genre-defining aesthetic. Ballerinas mingled with slumming thrill-seekers, and hoedowns showed up on elite opera-house stages. Steps invented by slaves captivated the British royalty and the Parisian avant-garde. Dances were better boundary crossers than their dancers, however, and the racism and class conflicts that haunt everyday life shadow American dance as well. Center stage in America Dancing is a cast of performers who slide, glide, stomp, and swing their way through history. At the nadir of U.S. race relations, cakewalkers embraced the rhythms of black America. On the heels of the Harlem Renaissance, Bill Robinson tap-danced to stardom. At the height of the Great Depression, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers unified highbrow and popular art. In the midst of 1940s patriotism, Agnes de Mille brought jazz and square dance to ballet, then took it all to Broadway. In the decades to come, the choreographer Paul Taylor turned pedestrian movements into modern masterpiecds, and Michael Jackson moonwalked his way to otherworldly stardom. These artists both celebrated and criticized the country, all while inspiring others to get moving. For it is partly by pretending to be other people, Pugh argues, that Americans discover themselves ... America Dancing demonstrates the centrality of dance in American art, life, and identity, taking us to watershed moments when the nation worked out a sense of itself through public movement"--Publisher's description.

Satan in the Dance Hall explores the overwhelming popularity of social dancing and its close relationship to America's rapidly changing society in the 1920s. The book focuses on the fiercely contested debate over the morality of social dancing in New York City, led by moral reformers and religious leaders like Rev. John Roach Straton. Fed by the firm belief that dancing was the leading cause of immorality in New York, Straton and his followers succeeded in enacting municipal regulations on social dancing and moral conduct within the more than 750 public dance halls in New York City. Ralph G. Giordano conveys an easy to read and full picture of life in the Jazz Age, incorporating important events and personalities such as the Flu Epidemic, the Scopes Monkey Trial, Prohibition, Flappers, Gangsters, Texas Guinan, and Charles Lindbergh, while simultaneously describing how social dancing was a hugely prominent cultural phenomenon, one closely intertwined with nearly every aspect of American society fromthe Great War to the Great Depression. With a bibliography, an index, and over 35 photos, Satan in the Dance Hall presents an interdisciplinary study of social dancing in New York City throughout the decade.

Covering significant historical and cultural moments, public figures and celebrities, art and entertainment, and technology that influenced life during the decade, this book documents the 1950s through the lens of popular culture. On the surface, the 1950s was a time of post-war prosperity and abundance. However, in spite of a relaxation of immigration policies, the "good life" in the 50s was mainly confined to white non-ethnic Americans. A new Cold War with the Soviet Union intended to contain the threat of Communism, and the resulting red scare tinged the experience of all U.S. citizens during the decade. This book examines the key trends, people, and movements of the 1950s and inspects them within a larger cultural and social context. By highlighting controversies in the decade, readers will gain a better understanding of the social values and thinking of the time. The examination of the individuals who influenced American culture in the 1950s enables students to gauge the tension between established norms of conformity and those figures that used pop culture as a broad avenue for change—either intentionally, or by accident.

Telling a riveting true story of the emergence and development of an American icon, this book traces swing dancing from its origins to its status as a modern-day art form. From its unlikely origins in the African slave trade, one of the saddest chapters of American history, swing dance emerged as a celebration of the soul. Swing is now recognized around the globe as a joyous partnered dance, uniquely Afro-American in origin and an American treasure. This book examines how the original swing style of the 1920s, the Lindy Hop, branched out and evolved with the changing dynamics of popular culture, paralleling the development of the nation. Swing Dancing covers the dance through the years of minstrelsy, the jazz age, the big band era, bebop, and the decline of partnered dancing in the 1960s. Swing experts and instructors Tamara and Erin Stevens have combined a compelling historic examination of swing dance with an assortment of riveting personal interviews and photographic documentation to create a comprehensive reference book on this important art form.