DANCE

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, America was fertile ground for innovations in dance that had a pronounced influence on the form itself and contributed to the formation of national identity. The experimentation of female dancers initiated the modernist movement, and the evolution of the African American tradition of music and dance, from the period of slavery to emancipation, culminated in the explosive rhythm and movement of the Jazz Age. Dance signified transformations in class status and gender identity, and the form was a source of inspiration for writers during this period, which is evident in the influence of dance aesthetics on poetry and the significance of dance motifs in fiction.

The history of dance in America is comprised of many interwoven cultural strands. In the colonial period, figure dances, such as the minuet, waltz, quadrille, and English country dances, were imported from Europe. Each successive wave of immigration was accompanied by the music and dance of the respective Old World country—for example, the popular Irish jigs and the German schottische (polka). There was a social division among dancing styles that can be observed in the differences between the imported European figure dances performed at the society balls of the upper class, the folk dances of the immigrant class, and the intricate African American step dances. However, throughout the course of the nineteenth century, these boundaries began to dissolve. Square dancing, an amalgamation of various folk dances and European figure dances, evolved with the expansion to the West. Some of the square dances that developed in the South were accompanied by adaptations of African American slave songs; likewise, some Anglo-American fiddle chord variations were incorporated in African American music. Native American cultures are a notable exception to this hybridization. The indigenous populations of this country have a tradition of sacred dance and ritual that essentially remained separate and distinct.

CLASSICAL DANCE AND POETRY

There was not a tradition of classical dancing in America until the twentieth century; however, audiences were introduced to ballet in operatic productions and tours of European ballet companies. In 1840 Walt Whitman (1819–1892) saw Fanny Elsler (1810–1884), a British ballerina, when she toured the country. More than a half century later, in 1910, the next foreign ballerina crossed the shore. The prima ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) created a sensation because American audiences were finally able to view the virtuosity of a talented danseuse. Pavlova, whose dancing was a continuation of the aesthetics of the Romantic tradition, became the model for the ballerina. Serge Diaghilev's Russian company, Ballets Russe (with whom Pavlova occasionally performed) appeared in 1916 and 1917; the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky danced in the 1917 tour. The company's avant garde innovations in choreography, costume, and stage design influenced the modernist movement in literature in America and Europe.

In her autobiography, Isadora Duncan recalls how she introduced herself at one of her first New York auditions.

I bring you the dance. I bring you the idea that is going to revolutionise our entire epoch. Where have I discovered it? By the Pacific Ocean, by the waving pine-forests of Sierra Nevada. I have seen the ideal figure of youthful America dancing over the top of the Rockies. The supreme poet of our country is Walt Whitman. I have discovered the dance that is worthy of the poem of Walt Whitman. I am indeed the spiritual daughter of Walt Whitman. For the children of America I will create a new dance that will express America.

Duncan, My Life, p. 31.

American female dancers, however, had, for the most part, a more significant impact abroad than they did at home. In the syncretic interaction between dance and literature, two female dancers are significant: Loie Fuller (1862–1928) and Isadora Duncan (1877–1927). In fin de siècle Paris, Fuller created a fantastical effect onstage through her experimentations with lighting and her manipulation of yards of fabric. In fact, a special theater was constructed for her at the Paris World Fair in 1900. Auguste Rodin was one of her admirers, and she became a muse for several symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Anatole France. Duncan, a San Francisco native, revolutionized theatrical dance when she rejected the balletic tradition. She abandoned the restrictive costume, which consisted of corseted tutus and pointe shoes, and chose instead to dance barefoot in sheer flowing tunics that evoked ancient Greece. Enraptured by her northwestern homeland, the voluminous ocean and the massive pines, Duncan's movement embodied the expansive spirit of the country; indeed, her innovations ushered in the era of modern dance. She was also inspired by Whitman's poetry and, in fact, recited his poems to her American audiences during performances. For the poet, dance was an important metaphor that often provided the kinetic energy for his epic vision, most notably in Song of Myself (1881). Just as Whitman employed dance aesthetics in his poetry, so too did Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). In her poem, "I cannot dance upon my Toes—" (1862), balletic technique is a metaphor for the intellectual rigor of the poetic process. In one of Whitman's later poems, "Hands Round" (1876), dance aesthetics contribute to the overall structure of the poem.

At the outset of her career, Duncan exuberantly declared, "I am indeed the spiritual daughter of Walt Whitman. For the children of America I will create a new dance that will express America" (p. 31). European audiences responded enthusiastically to Duncan's performances; however, her dancing shocked the Puritan sensibility of American audiences, and she was coldly received in her 1909–1917 productions. Nonetheless, she enthralled many American artists who perceived her movement as emblematic of a new age. Duncan had a profound effect on Hart Crane, and she was an inspirational figure for his dance imagery in The Bridge (1927). Dance aesthetics continued to have a notable influence on modern poetry; in addition to Crane's poetry, the form is central to the works of T. S. Eliot, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams.

THEATRICAL DANCE AND NATURALISM

Because there was not a tradition of classical dance in the United States until the twentieth century, there was no distinction between high and low art in theatrical dance during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Stage dancing was a medley of tap dancing, toe dancing, acrobatics, pantomime, skirt dancing, and ballroom and interpretive dance performed in vaudeville acts, musical revues, minstrel shows, and saloon halls. This type of theatrical dance is depicted by the naturalist writer Stephen Crane (1871–1900) in Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893). Maggie is mesmerized by a dance hall production featuring a skirt dancer "attired in some half dozen skirts" (p. 26), a ventriloquist act, and an impromptu choral routine in which the performers mockingly imitate the movements of African slave dances.

During this period, female dancers and actresses were generally perceived as immoral; not only were they, for the most part, from the lower classes, but also the public display of the body smacked of impropriety. Nonetheless, the stage afforded many females from the lower classes, who were underpaid laborers in the factories and garment sweatshops in major cities, an opportunity to supplement their salaries in the hope of embarking on a new profession. However, these women often found themselves performing in dance halls and saloons, rather than in the theater. For example, in Maggie, a ballad singer, performing in a saloon in the Bowery district of New York, is finally able to rouse the enthusiasm of her male audience when, after each successive song, she reappears onstage wearing less clothing and her movements become increasingly more provocative. This precarious social positioning is also addressed by the naturalist writer Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945). In Sister Carrie (1900), the protagonist, Caroline Meeber, an impoverished young female from rural Illinois, relocates to Chicago where she is forced to contend with the perils of survival. She finds, albeit perhaps temporarily, an alternative to the street and her grueling factory job when she makes her way to the stage, where she struggles to gain a measure of independence and respectability.

SOCIAL DANCE AND REALISM/REGIONALISM

Social dance was more respectable than theatrical dance because it was considered a mark of gentility; in this regard, the form was integral to the socialization process of the upper class. Dance was a necessary requisite for the marriage market because much of the courtship ritual centered on the formalities of elite society balls. Dances such as the waltz, polka, and mazurka were carefully orchestrated throughout the course of the evening. Partners were arranged in advance, and the gentlemens' names were notated on the ladies' dance cards. It was crucial for guests to observe social decorum at these balls, such as the correct arrangement of partners and whether or not it was appropriate to "sit out" a dance, in order not to risk tarnishing their reputation. This turn-of-the-century aristocratic world is meticulously described in the realist novels of Edith Wharton (1862–1937) and Henry James (1843–1916). These social galas often became routine by the end of the season, and, in an effort to break up the monotony, tableaux vivants were sometimes presented. A tradition dating to seventeenth-century England, the tableaux is a silent enactment of a scene or painting by one or more individuals. In Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905), Lily Bart, a socialite who has been on the circuit for several years, makes a stunning impression costumed as an artist's model in a famous painting of the day and, through this performance, is able to recapture her charm and allure.

In regionalist narratives, as in the works of realist writers, dance signifies issues of class; however, issues of race predominate. George Washington Cable (1844–1925) depicts the Creole culture of New Orleans in his works. The celebration of Carnival, which originated with the early French settlers in Louisiana, influenced the rituals of society balls. In addition to social dancing, masquerade and costume are customary. Cable's novel, The Grandissimes (1880), opens with a Creole bal masque, an elegant soiree attended by guests who are attired in popular costumes of the period, such as commedia dell'arte and religious figures. The definition of Creole is complex and has been variously interpreted as a European born in the West Indies or the Gulf States, a descendant of an original French or Spanish settler in the Gulf States, or an individual of mixed European and African descent. However, the Creole community that Cable describes distinguished itself by excluding individuals of African descent, an exclusion that elucidates the intricacy of race in the formation of regional identity in the Deep South. Dance is central to this identity because it reinforces local customs. Kate Chopin (1851–1904), focuses on both the Creole and Cajun (Acadian French immigrants) cultures of the Deep South in her works. The Acadian community, like the Creole community, distinguished itself by excluding Americans, who were referred to by the term "white." This exclusion is integral to the socialization process; for example, in "At the 'Cadian Ball" (1892), the narrator emphatically declares that "Anyone who is white may go to a Cadian ball, but he must pay for his lemonade, his coffee and chicken gumbo and he must behave himself like a Cadian" (p. 1599).

Free people of color and recently emancipated slaves were forced to negotiate "the color divide" when they chose to settle in the North. Individuals of biracial or multiracial lineage often found themselves in a quixotic social position because class status was dependent on skin color. This positioning is eloquently depicted in the "The Wife of His Youth" (1899) by the regionalist writer's Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932). In the narrative, set in the North, the protagonist, Mr. Ryder, a biracial former slave who becomes economically affluent, plans to host a ball that he has arduously planned to imitate the high society balls of the white upper class. The event will "mark an epoch in the social history" (p. 1641) of the city because he and the light-colored blacks who belong to the social group the "Blue Veins" will be able to set themselves apart through the prestige and grandeur of this ball. Ryder explains that "we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black" (p. 1641). Ironically, the poignancy of this narrative is the omission of the ball; when the protagonist accidentally encounters his first wife, a former slave, on the day of the occasion, he chooses to introduce her to his guests rather than proceed with the planned event, thereby reclaiming his African heritage.

Issues of nationality and ethnicity, for the most part, elide issues of race in the establishment of the northern European immigrant communities in the North and the Midwest during this period; however, issues of race are a factor for some southern European immigrants in the Northeast and for Mexican immigrants in the Midwest and Southwest. For all of these various groups, cultural boundaries continue to be a source of anxiety, and the community dances that Willa Cather (1873–1947) intricately describes in her works elucidate the complexities of assimilation underlying this anxiety. In Song of the Lark (1915), the Scandinavian protagonist, Thea Kronenberg, becomes enthralled with the Mexican community in a small Colorado town when she attends a Mexican ball. Thea is impressed by the intimacy and refinement of the occasion, and she "could not help wondering whether the Mexicans had no jealousies or neighborly grudges as the people in Moonstone had" (p. 230). Cather captures the innocence and idealism that characterize the first generation of immigrants in the plains; nonetheless, she suggests that the inclusiveness of these Scandinavian communities fostered discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance.

In My Ántonia (1918), Cather conveys the popularity of social dance during this period. As the protagonist, Jim Burden, recounts his childhood in Nebraska he fondly remembers one of the best summers of his youth, the summer that he and his friends spent dancing. A dance pavilion was constructed so that the dance instructors who were visiting the town would have a place to teach. Itinerant dancing masters created a sensation upon their arrival in small western towns because of the professional training they provided the community. However, lack of formal training did not discourage pioneers and cowboys from dancing; in fact, almost any occasion, for example, a barn raising or a quilting session, was reason to dance. On the frontier, dances were spontaneous and unstructured, and it was the role of the caller to impose order and to remember the steps. In Song of the Lark, when Thea compares the graceful Mexican dances to the rowdy county dances with which she is familiar, she notes "for the square dances there was always the bawling voice of the caller, who was also the country auctioneer" (p. 229).

AFRICAN AMERICAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITION

The African American tradition of rhythm and movement was instrumental to the music and dance of the Jazz Age. Aside from New Orleans, where slaves were allowed to observe tribal rituals on Sunday afternoons in a designated area of the city, Congo Square, slaves in the rest of the country were prohibited from beating drums, an important African cultural custom, by the Slave Laws of 1740 because the ritual signified the threat of insurrection to white masters. This prohibition resulted in the substitution of bone clappers, hand clapping, and footbeats for drumbeats. The rhythmic offbeat timing of the clapping and stamping, which mimicked the drumbeats, eventually developed into the syncopation that characterizes the jazz sound. The footbeats evolved into complex step dances and gradually the form of tap dance emerged.

In the nineteenth century, minstrel shows, a combination of jokes, songs, and dances that featured white performers in blackface, were wildly popular. Black performers, aware that whites were profiting from this exploitation, produced their own shows, in which, they too appeared in blackface in order to satisfy the white audiences' expectations. As minstrel shows began to wane in popularity, an exhibition dance called the cakewalk was performed at the conclusion of the show. In the 1890s the cakewalk created a national dance craze that was transported to Europe. The cakewalk originated on plantations in the 1850s by slaves who were parodying the ceremonial promenades of their white masters. The white owners, unaware of the mockery, began to imitate the cake-walk themselves. The popularity of this dance set the trend for the appropriation of other steps from African American dances into mainstream social dance; between 1907 and 1914, the "animal dances"—for example, the Turkey Trot and Grizzly Bear—incorporated movements such as thrusting the head forward, hopping, and flapping the elbows. The Charleston, the quintessential dance of the Jazz Age, which is distinguished by the characteristic gestures of crossing and uncrossing the knees, is a variant of the juba dance, an African step dance.

By the 1920s the African American tradition of rhythmic syncopation was the dominant force in music and dance, and social dance in America was no longer influenced by European styles. The jazz sound and the accompanying dance movements were the catalyst for the liberation of a generation, and the writer responsible for immortalizing this generation, beginning with his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), is F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), who coined the term "the Jazz Age." The wealthy ingénues who populate his narratives, the "flappers" with their shortened skirts and bobbed hair, symbolized the free spirit of the era. In the early decades of the twentieth century, this generation was introduced to jazz in the clubs in the inner cities of Harlem and Chicago, sites of innovation in the form. Although jazz originated in New Orleans, many musicians relocated to the North in an attempt to escape the oppression of racial prejudice and discrimination. The brutal fact of segregation became a reality for black performers, regardless of the venues in which they performed, from the theatrical stage to the cabarets and clubs. For the Harlem Renaissance writers, jazz music, and dance did not necessarily provide a libidinous release; instead the form increasingly signified the social inequity of racial injustice. Claude McKay (1889–1948), the writer credited with initiating the Harlem Renaissance movement with his publication of Harlem Shadows (1922), addresses these issues in his poetry. In "The Harlem Dancer" (1917), dance is a metaphor for the marginalization of the African American race; in the poem, the kinetic imagery conveying the movements of the black female performer evokes a sense of disembodiment and alienation. In "The Lynching" (1919), the dance motif eerily signifies the frenetic diabolic energy of white supremacy: "And little lads, lynchers that were to be, / Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee" (p. 2085).

Just as African American dance engendered the fear of insurrection during the nineteenth century, so too did Native American dance. This fear was responsible for the massacre at Wounded Knee at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in 1890. Inspired by the visions of Wovoka, a Numa Indian (c. 1856–1932), many tribes in the region adopted the Ghost Dance religion. This religion, which had Christian overtones, espoused a new world order for Native Americans. Integral to the religion was the sacred ceremonial Ghost Dance, a communal round dance performed by tribal members through which they entered a trancelike state, thereby gaining access to the spirit world. Government Indian agents perceived the religion as a threat, and when the Native Americans refused to stop performing the Ghost Dance great violence ensued. In Native American orature, the Ghost Dance songs express the religious belief of a new world order in which, "A nation is coming, a nation is coming / The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe" (Mooney, p. 1789). Interestingly, there was a tradition of religious ecstatic dance in the colonization process of the United States. Like the Native Americans, a Protestant sect, the Shakers or Shaking Quakers, believed that dance was the medium for access to the spiritual world. This belief was antithetical to that of the Puritans, who denounced dance.

Sadly, during the course of the nineteenth century, the stage became the vehicle for the exploitation of both Native and African Americans because ritual dance was reinvented as spectacle in commercial venues, such as the aforementioned minstrel shows and Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The evolution of dance during the 1870–1920 period clearly signifies national tensions related to issues of race and ethnicity, as well as conflicted identifications across lines of class and race. During the 1920s, national dance was characterized by popular forms: the dances of the Jazz Age and the innovations in ballroom dances such as the foxtrot, waltz, and tango.

See alsoMusic; Theater; Wounded Knee

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Works

Cable, George Washington. The Grandissimes; A Story of Creole Life. 1880. New York: Sagamore Press, 1957.

Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. 1918. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1932.

Cather, Willa. The Song of The Lark. 1915. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932.

Chesnutt, Charles W. "The Wife of His Youth." 1899. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Chopin, Kate. "At the 'Cadian Ball." 1892. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Crane, Hart. "The Bridge." 1927. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, and Other New York Writings. 1893. New York: Modern Library, 2001.

Dickinson, Emily. "I cannot dance upon my toes." 1862. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Drieser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. 1900. New York: Penguin, 1981.

Duncan, Isadora. My Life. New York: Horace Liveright, 1927.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. 1920. New York: Scribners, 1960.

McKay, Claude. "The Harlem Dancer." 1917. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

McKay, Claude. "The Lynching." 1919. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Mooney, James. The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. 1896. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 1876. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.

Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. 1905. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

Whitman, Walt. "Hands Round." 1876. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. 1881. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003.

Secondary Works

Doolittle, Lisa, and Heather Elton. "Medicine of the Brave: A Look at the Changing Role of Dance in Native Culture from the Buffalo Days to the Modern Powwow." In Moving History / Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, edited by Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, pp. 114–127. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

Kraus, Richard. History of the Dance in Art and Education. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Lomax, M. A. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. New York: Macmillan, 1923.

Rodgers, Audrey T. The Universal Drum: Dance Imagery in the Poetry of Eliot, Crane, Roethke, and Williams. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979.

Sommer, Sally. "Dance: II. Social Dance." In The Reader's Companion to American History, edited by Eric Foner and John A. Garraty. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

Siegel, Marcia B. "Dance: I. Theatrical Dance." In The Reader's Companion to American History, edited by Eric Foner and John A. Garraty. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

Elizabeth Miller Lewis