African-American dance
[5] After the start of the slave trade in the 1500s, Africans brought their dances to North, Central, and South America, along with the Caribbean islands.
[6] The Greater Chesapeake area encompassing Virginia, Maryland, and much of North Carolina was the earliest and perhaps most influential location of the black-white cultural interchange that produced "African-American" dance.
The call and response dance forms that are popular among modern African-American dancers can trace their roots back to these locations.
African American slaves also used dance and music as part of their religious ceremonies and other social events in their community.
[8] The limited pictorial record indicates that the original African movements, which emphasized bending at the waist and hips, eventually faded away in favor of a more upright style, similar to European dances.
However, it has been argued that this change was not an adoption of the European style, but actually reflected the African practice of carrying heavy loads on the head, which requires a straight, upright spine.
[9] The cakewalk, for example, developed on plantations as a subtle mockery of the formal, mannered dancing practiced by slaveholding whites.
Notable entertainers included dancer/choreographer Aida Overton Walker, "The Queen of Cakewalk", and The Whitman Sisters, who ran a touring company considered 'an incubator for Black Talent,' especially dancers.
Tap dance, a fusion of Irish and African American movements, was made popular at this time by Black dancers, including Bill Bojangles Robinson, John Bubbles, and the Nicholas Brothers.
Shows from this era introduced dances like the Cakewalk, Juba, Pigeon Wing, and Possum Walk to more audiences.
[5] Just as the Harlem Renaissance saw the development of art, poetry, literature and theater in Harlem during the early 20th century, it also saw the development of a rich musical and dance life: clubs (Cotton Club), ballrooms (Savoy Ballroom), the home rent party and other black spaces as the birthplaces of new dances, theaters and the shift from vaudeville to local "shows" written and choreographed by African-American artists; theaters as public forums for popularizing African-American cultural dances.
Terms like "jazzin' it", "goose bumps", "in the groove", and "swing" began to be used not just by the African American performance community, but average Whites too.
[5] In the late 1960s, Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook created the Dance Theater of Harlem, and it quickly became a world-renowned African American ballet company.
Their efforts made great strides in erasing the color barrier in the field of dance, and especially in classical ballet.
KMEL was a radio station in San Francisco that was very popular throughout the different neighborhoods in the Bay Area, and they played music that was not super mainstream.
Hip-Hop dance became such an integral part of these communities, that different neighborhoods in the area would each have signature styles or techniques, and one could tell where someone was from just based on their moves.
Improvisation plays a key role in Breakdancing, as it lets people express themselves and their gut impulses, similar to the moves found in Spiritual African dance, as well as compete with others and show off their skills in the spur of the moment.
Cypher refers to the group of onlookers that gather around the breakdancing performers to cheer, diss, and just generally react to the competition.
Oftentimes, dance is used in a way to combat stereotypes, empower the dancers by breaking free of western and Eurocentric beauty standards, and help them work through generational racial trauma.
In urban settings that face a lot of gang violence, Breakdancing could be found as an alternative form of settling disputes.
It utilized the mind and body to compete against each other, and a clear winner could be found based on audience reactions, but it did not require any violence.
Popular black dance organizations are perfectly paired Gentlemen of Ballroom of Cleveland Master Dancers of Akron, OH.
Notable people included: Dance was and is an integral part of West African communal religious expression.
Dancing, especially as a group, became less frequent when African Americans joined more liturgical denominations such as Methodist and Catholic but was more likely maintained in Holiness, Baptist and Pentecostal churches.
