Jazz Dance History in America

as researched by Bob Boross

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THE AMERICAN VERNCULAR

The observation of "Negro" dancing by whites led to a stereotype of the dancing Negro slave. Whites began to blacken their faces with burnt cork in order to imitate the Negro dancer. In 1767, well before the Revolutionary War, the New York Journal reported a "Negro Dance in Character" being performed. In 1799, the "Song of a Negro Boy" was performed in Boston. One of America's first professional dancers, John Durang, described parts of his dancing in 1789 as containing "shuffles," a vernacular movement. The first acclaimed imitation of Negro dancing was by Thomas Rice in 1828. His dance, the "Jump Jim Crow," was a duplication of the movement of a crippled slave, and became a world wide sensation. This dance set the groundwork for an era of American entertainment based on the gross stereotype of the dancing Negro.

Prior to the Civil War, professional dancing was primarily done by whites - with the exception of William Henry Lane. Known as Master Juba, Lane was a freeborn slave judged to be the best dancer in the world. He inhabited the poor Five Points District in Manhattan, where Irish immigrants mixed with Negroes. His dancing was a combination of Irish jig dancing and African rhythm. The Stearns feel that he was adding the elusive element of "swing" to the rhythmic pattern and thus distinguishing himself from more common dancers. Master Juba's fame was international, and he was instrumental in popularizing American Negro vernacular dance throughout the world.

Minstrelsy was the most popular form of entertainment in America from 1845-1900, and it greatly increased the influence of African-American dance on American life. The Minstrel show was a group of up to fifty performers who travelled from town to town in a show that portrayed the Negro as either a slow, shuffling idiot or a sharply dressed dandy. A minstrel show had three parts. In the first, the performers (all male) sat in a semi-circle facing the audience and engaged in comic banter led by a dignified "interlocutor" and two "endmen." The second section, or "olio," was a succession of singing, acting and dance acts. The final section, the "afterpiece", was an extravaganza by the entire cast that was a burlesque of a serious drama of the times. Both the first and third sections normally ended with a "walkaround", where performers would individually travel downstage in solo dance tricks and then circle around to the back to start another display. The minstrel show figured prominently in spreading vernacular dances like the cakewalk, the essence, and jig dancing on a wide scale.