At that point, Broadway shows featuring women began to include cakewalks, and grotesque dances became very popular across the country.

"[9] Estella Jones described nighttime parties with elaborate dress, some of which were attended by the slaveowners, who would judge the dancing and award cakes to the winners.

[11] Some secondhand accounts of the cakewalk describe it as a subtle mockery of the formal, mannered dancing practiced by slaveholding whites.

[21] The same book noted eyewitness reports of dances from South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria that bore a resemblance to the cakewalk, with no elaboration.

[22] In his book How to Tell a Story and Other Essays originally published in 1897, Mark Twain briefly mentions the cakewalk: [23] Our negroes in America have several ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites anywhere.

They hire a hall and bank the spectators' seats in rising tiers along the two sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free.

Many of the members of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration who were tasked with recording information about slave culture assumed that the cakewalk was simply frivolous entertainment.

This runs in opposition to the researchers' interest in slave spirituals and religious practices, where interviewees were often asked to demonstrate examples from those traditions.

"[26] An exhibit at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial featured black people singing folk songs and doing an old dance called the "chalk-line walk" in a plantation-like setting.

[3] In 1877, performer-showmen Harrigan and Hart produced "Walking for Dat Cake, An Exquisite Picture of Negro Life and Customs" as a feature sketch at New York's Theater Comique on lower Broadway.

[3] In the 1893 production of The Creole Show, which ran from 1889 to 1897,[29] Dora Dean[30] and her husband Charles E. Johnson were a hit with their specialty, a cakewalk danced as partners.

[32] The inclusion of women "made possible all sorts of improvisations in the Walk, and the original was soon changed into a grotesque dance" which became very popular across the country.

[3] A Grand Cakewalk was held in Madison Square Garden, the largest commercial venue in New York City, on February 17, 1892.

[33] The Illustrated London News carried an 1897 report of a cakewalk at a barn dance in Ashtabula, Ohio, written by an English woman traveler.

The French music hall singer and dancer Eugénie Fougère was filmed in 1899 in the rag-time cake-walk "Hello, Ma Baby", with which she made a sensation at the New York Theatre.

[41] The ambiguous "cake walk" became very popular quickly and for a few months in 1903, Paris was in the grip of a veritable 'cake-walk craze' (folie du cake-walk).

[43] The lyrics interconnected African and American dance, monkeys and epilepsy[43] – reflecting the racist and colonial attitudes that prevailed at the time.

[45] 1903 was the same year that both the cakewalk and ragtime music arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which may have influenced early styles of tango.

[47] Most cakewalk music is notated in 24 time signature with two alternate heavy beats per bar, giving it an oompah rhythm.

[49] The music was adopted into the works of various composers, including Robert Russell Bennett, John Philip Sousa, Claude Debussy and Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

[51] Although it featured more improvisation than the two-step, it was still very formal compared to later African-American dances such as the Charleston, Black Bottom and Lindy Hop.

[55] One version of the cakewalk is sometimes taught, performed and included in competitions within the Scottish-inspired Highland dance community, especially in the southern United States.