Dance video Analysis

Copyright ©2010

With more time to listen to music and more time to dance, Americans were excited to experience innovations in both. The 1920s was all about the “latest greatest.” Everyone was clamoring for the next new thing. Broadway audiences were ready for fun and they wanted to be shown the next great song and dance. Harlem was chic, and audiences who had previously considered black dance to be “vulgar” were beginning to appreciate the explosive energy and emotional passion that black dance brought to the stage.

Dance halls brought jazz dance to the masses in much the same way that radio brought jazz music to millions of Americans. Dances performed in Harlem clubs became the new jazz dances featured in Broadway musicals. Dances from the Broadway stage made appearances in New York City dance halls.

As mentioned earlier, white dance stars were largely responsible for appropriating black jazz dance and delivering it to the American public. This appropriation was not new to Broadway dance. Ziegfeld paid to feature the jazz dances from The Darktown Follies in his revue, and Vernon and Irene Castle, a star ballroom dance couple in the 1910s also “borrowed” from black dances.

The Castles represented the mainstream white societal view on black jazz music and dance. While the energy and innovation of jazz music and dance were held in high regard, both art forms were considered wild, primitive and overly sexual. The Castles whitewashed the freedom of movement in the body and the call-and-response element of dance to music. They made their own romanticized, restrained version of the dances and performed them in a ballroom hold, maintaining a “dignified” posture. The result was fresh, lively--and sexually unthreatening--to conservative American audiences.

Remember the “Black Social Dances” video from the last section? Take a look at the video below and compare the two. Do you recognize the black influences? You will have to be a very good detective!!!

Video: Black Social Dance

Though several jazz dances gained national recognition in the 1920s, it is difficult to pinpoint the year of their origin. Many of them took decades to travel from Africa to the American South to Harlem to the stages of Broadway; steps and dances evolved during their long journey. Dance historians concede that it is very difficult to offer an exact chronicle of a dance’s evolution. Dances can be “created” or adjusted endlessly. In the time it takes to respond to a few beats of music, two feet—seemingly on their own—can create something new. In the blink of an eye, a dancer sees that step, admires it, copies it or uses it as inspiration for another innovative step. Yet another dancer might take all of these steps, put them together and give the “new” dance a name. Very often, the naming of the dance gives a dancer bragging rights to the creation of it. Dance history is an inexact science. Reliable jazz dance resources are full of “They say Mr. X created that dance in 1919, but I saw that same dance at a jook joint in the South in 1908!”

The printed material (e.g. newspaper reviews or articles) during a particular time period offers some evidence of time and place. However, it is important to remember that these reviews and articles were written by an individual writer for a specific cross-section of people. In other words, it is unlikely that black contributions were acknowledged or that white appropriation of black contributions was noted. For the most part, we must rely on the combined chronicle which printed material and word of mouth provide, and we must understand that dances do not necessarily follow a linear progression. It is more accurate to say that each dance had a web of contributors and that the events mentioned by witnesses of the dance happened at certain intersections on that web.

The 1922 edition of Ziegfeld’s Follies was notable for two events, both performed by lead performer, Gilda Gray. In the show, the fair skinned, Polish-born Gray first popularized the “Shimmy.” It is said that when she sang, she was unable to keep her body still. When questioned about her new “dance,” Gray replied, “I’m shaking my shimmy, that’s what I’m doing” (cited in Giordano, 2008, p. 119). Whether or not the move had been done before, “The Shimmy” was named by Gray in that show. Gray also sang, “It’s Getting Dark On Old Broadway,” a song that commented on the popularity of black musicals in the early 1920s and tipped its hat to the Harlem Renaissance:

It’s getting dark on Old Broadway,

You see the change in ev’ry cabaret;

Just like an eclipse on the moon,

Ev’ry café now has the dancing coon.

Pretty choc’late babies

Shake and shimmie ev’rywhere

Real dark-town entertainers hold the stage,

You must black up to be the latest rage.

(Woll, 1989, p. 76)

The Charleston is generally characterized by a few different movements. The two most well know are the “Charleston step” [a step forward, followed by a kick forward; the kicking foot steps back to place, followed by a touch behind with the beginning foot] and “Rubber Legs” [bent forward at the waist, with knees bent and hands on knees, the performer bring the knees in and out, switching the hands so that they alternately open with the knees, then cross to the opposite knees.] Here is a timeline of gathered ideas about the Charleston's origin:

· African origin: Ashanti ancestor dance

· 1903: The dance—later to be named the Charleston—is seen in Charleston, South Carolina.

· 1905: Noble Sissle learns the dance in Savannah, Georgia.

· 1909: The Charleston is spotted in Europe.

· 1911: The Whitman sisters’ dance act includes the Charleston.

· 1917: The Charleston is spotted in California.

· 1919: Dance lessons available for general public to learn the Charleston.

· 1922: Charleston act in the black musical Liza.

· 1923: Charleston appears on stage in How Come, Chappelle and Stinnette and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923.

· 1923: Runnin’ Wild features the Charleston danced to James Price Johnson’s iconic song.

· 1923-1926: The Charleston craze sweeps the nation.

The Charleston dance journeyed slowly from the South, making appearances in dance halls and at dance contests, in dance studios in California, and on stage in Europe and in New York. As it traveled, the exuberant steps, kicks and knee movements were often modified and restrained. The Charleston dance steps were also adjusted to fit a ballroom dance “hold,” so that couples could dance the Charleston together.

However, it wasn’t until the all-black musical Runnin’ Wild (1923), that the signature song “The Charleston,” written by black composer James Price Johnson, became the iconic song of the Charleston dance. With the winning combination of the dance moves and the song, the preceding embers of popularity were fanned by a tornado, and the Charleston burst into flame and spread like wildfire across the nation. [We’ll take a closer look at Runnin’ Wild a bit later.]

In her years as a performer in the 1920s, Florence Mills rarely performed “The Charleston.” When asked why, she replied that the dance was too absurdly easy, especially the “watered-down” version done by most people. Mills said:

I smile to myself when I see you do so sedately, with such good taste, the Charleston in your ballrooms. It is the dance of my people, of our piccaninnies, the happiest dance in all the world. They were Charlestoning in Kentucky before the Civil War. Do you know how the Charleston came to New York? It came on the feet of the coloured piccaninnies. (In Egan, 2004, p. 270)

· African origin: Unknown, although one tale of the origin states that the pulling up of the knees in the dance came from slaves lifting their feet out of the mud in the swamps of Savannah, Georgia.

· 1907: Perry Bradford composes “Jacksonville Rounders’ Dance,” music for a dance he believes was the original Black Bottom.

· 1919: Perry Bradford rewrites the lyrics for “Jacksonville Rounders’ Dance” and renames it “The Original Black Bottom Dance,” the first time the name is used.

· 1924: The Black Bottom is introduced in the Harlem show, Dinah. White Producer George White hires songwriters to write a new song to go with the dance.

· 1926: Anna Pennington popularizes The Black Bottom in George White’s Scandals of 1926 and starts a new national craze, replacing the Charleston.

The Black Bottom consisted of hops forward and backward, stamping feet, and gyrations of the torso, pelvis and hips. It was based on the Charleston, and the music was closely related to the Charleston. However, the Black Bottom was mainly danced on the syncopated off-beat (a prototype for our modern tap dance). Originally, the Black Bottom was a solo challenge dance. Then, like the Charleston, it was eventually adapted into a couple’s dance. Perry Bradford’s lyrics for his song “The Original Black Bottom Dance” give instructions for the dance, and they reference the influences of The Charleston:

Hop down front and then you Doodle back,

Mooch to your left and then you Mooch to the right

Hands on your hips and do the Mess Around,

Break a Leg until you’re near the ground

Now that’s the Old Black Bottom Dance.

Now listen folks, open your ears,

This rhythm you will hear-

Charleston was on the afterbeat-

Old Black Bottom’ll make you shake your feet,

Believe me it’s a wow.

Now learn this dance somehow

Started in Georgia and it went to France

It’s got everybody in a trance

It’s a wing, that Old Black Bottom Dance.

(Stearns & Stearns, 1994, p. 111)

Video: The Black Bottom

· 1927: The Break-a-Way and the Charleston started to mix and formed the Lindy Hop

· 1st form of Swing Dance

The Break-a-Way was originally a syncopated two-step dance in which partners would break from a couple's hold, while maintaining contact with one hand, or they would breakaway completely from each other. They would perform a solo then come back together. The Lindy Hop featured acrobatic movements with many lifts. The “king” of the Break-a-Way was Shorty George Snowden during the mid-1920’s. He is shown in the following video as a member of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, a group formed by the bouncer of the Savoy Ballroom. Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers worked all over the United States, on stage and in movies. The following video is from the movie Hellzapoppin’ (1941):

Video: Lindy Hop

Dance director Bobby Connolly purposefully conceived the "Varsity Drag"—featured in the college-themed musical Good News (1927)—to become a dance fad. Incorporating Charleston-steps, Black Bottom elements and simple tap dancing, the Varsity Drag may well have been the first dance deliberately developed for a launch from stage to dance hall and living room. Connolly stated:

In the musical comedies upon which I am now at work, I am attempting to launch several dances which I feel will claim a goodly share of the public imagination, excess energy and time. The musical comedy stage aims to teach as well as please…This is an age of enthusiasm, speed and strenuous undertakings, and the popular dances merely reflect, or rather express, the predominating moods of life as it is lived today. . .The people of today are ever on the lookout for something new, and that gives dance creators their opportunity. (cited in Kislan, pp. 54, 173)

New shows opened in a continuous flow of fun and high entertainment. Expendable income was very much evidenced by the fact that shows considered “flops” with audiences and/or critics often ran for a year or more. Some examples of these flops are Hold Everything! (1928 – 408 performances) and Follow Thru (1929 – 401 performances).