Blues dance

Mura Dehn used the term "The Blues" in her documentary The Spirit Moves, Part 1, as the sub-section title of Chapter II, referencing different dance styles.

[3][4] Slavery in the United States had a great deal of influence on African-American dance, as people from widely disparate African cultures were thrown together during enslavement.

[8] During the post-Reconstruction period of approximately 1875–1900,[10] as Jim Crow Laws were passed in the American South, dance steps began to lose their association with religion and spirituality and became thought of as purely secular.

[6] Dances in this era became associated with the expression of pleasure and sexuality with one's partner, and the importance of community was de-emphasized.

A local band consisting of three Black men with battered string instruments played a "haunting" song: "The dancers went wild.

"[13] Later, Handy described a crowd's enthusiastic response to his own band playing blues music in 1909: "In the office buildings about, white folks pricked up their ears.

[17] A tune called "Slow Drag Blues", composed by Snowden, was recorded c. 1915–19 by Dabney's Band.

"[19] Dancing to blues music was sometimes called "slow dragging", a term that was used by Black dancers in Chicago through the 1940s.

It is a slower, fluid, but highly rhythmic dance, involving lots of spins, lifts, and dips.

[21][22] In the Fish Tail, the movement of the buttocks forms a variety of figure eights, an element that originated in African dance.