Module III - Social Dancing and Cultural Identity
February 15
The Jook Continuum - Social Dancing
Innovations on Black Broadway
Mid-term review
Intro
• Post Civil War, blacks began to leave for the north • Black migration north due to poor crops in south,
lynchings
• WWI industrial jobs in the North
• Migration to Harlem
Transition from Minstrelsy
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Jook Continuum - a major draw for young Negroes
• Church main social center with its ban on dancing• Jook Joints, dance joints for free blacks, where social
dances evolved• Dance Halls• Honky Tonks• After Hours – Buffet affairs• House Parties
Harlem Nightclubs and Ballrooms
• Savoy, Renaissance, Alhambra
• New dances included Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Shag, Suzi Q, Camel Walk, and Truckin
Jook Continuum
• Issues of identity -
• How did the jook joints help shape African-American identity?
• What is the jook continuim?
Social Dance Context
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Circumstances of slavery
• Blacks lived together and danced openly and in secret in their quarter a homogeneous environment decided African-American
• Post slavery - some blacks headed for nearest urban area, most stayed rural as share croppers
• Distinctions between family/community blurred because
of the constant slave trade
Emancipation- forced major changes in rural black life
• Families dispersed into separate living quarters
• Landowners still exerted control over their sharecropping work force
• Didn’t bear the burden of paying for housing or food
• African-Americans moved around the south, so did entertainers
Emancipation- forced major changes in rural black life
• Reconstruction, sacred and secular had separated,
• Benevelant societies arose to fill need for social events
• Churches became primary social gathering place
• Emancipation Day Celebration/Juneteenth Day -June 19
End of Reconstruction 1877
• Segregation entrenched vigilante violence • Lynchings were common, economic depression
African Americans Move North
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Jook Houses, Honky Tonks, After hours Joints
• Linked to peasant class African-American
• Night clubs that offered drinking, music, dancing and gambling, some prostitution
• Classic jook in small town, shoddy confines,
• First dance arena after emancipation nurtured the black regional culture
• Music provided by guitars in south, in north pianos predominant
• Dances - snake hips, charleston, skinny, funky butt, twist, slow drag, buzzard lope, black bottom, the itch fish tail and the
grind
Social dance Context
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Honky Tonks
• Urban versions of jook joints comes to refer to a kind of music
• Jelly Roll Morton - more up tempo suited many African-American dances
• Patrons differed - mostly laborers, railroad workers, loggers, not farmers
• Music more sophisticated, blues and early jazz dancing
• Honky Tonk dances were part of a cultural cycle
After hours Joints - more urban and upscale
• Called buffet houses because of variety of offerings included drugs, erotic shows, homosexual encounters
• Popular with entertainers and Pullmen porters – upper class blacks
• Dance styles responded to the fancier dress and costly hairdo’s People wanted to sweat only so much
• Dances became more upright, dance = sexuality and pleasure
• Partner dancing becomes more isolated and individual
The Black Bottom
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House Parties, responded to need to pay the rent
• Temporary events as the need arose
• Food, drink, dance and music, often live or from a Victola or radio
• Gambling, run by a pro-took a take 4-10%
• Rent parties even more intimate than jooks, again free of white eyes, Dances -charleston, shimmy shake etc, cutting up or embellishing vernacular steps was important
Roadshows in the South
• Three big ones - Plant and Tom shows
• In Old Kentucky, white with black musicians and dancers
• Friday night dance contests, on tour, anyone could enter
• Black Patti’s Troubadours
TOBA
• Theatre Owners Booking Association
• Tough on Black Actors
• A circuit for young talent to mature
• Bill Robinson, Eddie Rector, Pete Nugent, “if you couldn’t dance you were out instantly”
• Not a place to make money, but to belong, sense of community and to learn the business.
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Picks
• Black children who danced and song
• Picks backed up big white stars, often women like Sophie Tucker
• Picks were really child labor in show business
African-American vernacular dance
• Continual improvisation
• Propulsive rhythms
Shuffle Along
• 1921, Black Broadway hit that initiated the Harlem Renaissance
• Written by actor dancers Flourney Miller and Aubrey Lyles
• Lyricist/composer Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake
• Starred Florence Mills with young Josephine Baker in the chorus
• Included popular songs and chorus line dancing,
• Introduced tap dance to white audiences.
Shuffle Along
• Encouraged changes in all Musical theatre- especially toward chorus lines that could dance.
• Hard time getting show launched
• After NYC run – a huge hit and long tour – still faced resistance by unknown theatre producers
Chorus Line dancing
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Chorus Line dancing
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Chorus Line dancing
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Shuffle Along
• Main achievement, introduction of the strong 16 chorus girl line
• Show opened up opportunity for future black musicals and for black dancers and singers to emerge in white arena
• Negro vernacular dancing recognized as a significant influence for American dance
Running Wild - 1923
• Main achievement, making the Charleston the rage
• Introduced the Broadway version of the Charleston with a song “Charleston” that popularized it
• Actually 1st introduction in Liza – 1922
Savage Dance - A later sensation of Josephine Baker
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Chocolate Dandies, Dixie to Broadway
• Featured Josephine Baker, 1924, 96 shows this tour was smooth and successful
• Not the struggle for acceptance of Shuffle Along
• Reviews criticized the white Broadway themes and tendencies.
• This contributed to a lull in black musicals though mid 20s
• The dancing remained, had changed all future Broadway dance routines