Introduction

Introduction In the late 1970s, when the field of popular entertainment was struggling for legitimacy, noted performance studies scholar Brooks McNamara made a plea to historians to examine not only the "greatest achievements" of performance history, but those so-called "lesser" forms, sometimes hidden in the recesses of culture where scholars had seldom tread. "The fact that performance in a culture during a given period is certainly no less than the sum of its parts," McNamara writes, "is a concept that has often been misunderstood or blithely ignored in favor of the traditionally tidy view which sorts out and underlines so-called great moments in the- atre history" (McNamara 1978,7). Similarly, in this special theme issue of Dance Research Journal, we aim to bring social, vernacular, and popular dance forms into the foreground and make palpable their connection to the rich tradition of popular performance history. By explor- ing the spectrum of performance forms in any culture, McNamara suggests, we can unlock clues to that "culture's most fundamental concerns" (7). One of the fascinating aspects about the category of social dance itself is the variety of styles it encompasses and the continually fluid interchange among what we call social, vernacular, and popular dances. Although we associate social dance with what people do, as recreation, in clubs, dance halls, and other meeting spots, there is enormous variation in styles, level of expertise, and professionalism. Today, as our essays reveal, social and popular dance exists on a continuum from the purely recreational to more theatrical and theatricalized styles. The question of nomenclature is an important, and sometimes vexing, one. Barbara Cohen- Stratyner, our co-editor for this volume, addresses this issue in her brief essay "Contexts and Definitions" and tackles the often thorny, sometimes contested distinctions among the terms social, vernacular, popular, and folk dance. Cohen-Stratyner looks at the question of context as an important element in understanding the function of social dances; she also draws our attention to issues of class as well as cultural biases that have often shaped our thinking about these dance forms. Social dance finds us where we live. It not only absorbs and reflects daily life, but it can shape, inform, and influence social patterns and habits and cultural discourse. It can trigger transformation of the self or promote adherence to the group; our essays illuminate how this occurs. Because social and popular dance forms tend to be so intricately embedded in the cultures of which they are a part, it stands to reason that several of our authors should focus on a host of social issues revealed by these dances: personal and national identity, race, sexuality, and politics. Race and racial issues, in particular, figure prominently in this collection. Certainly, to discuss American social, vernacular, and popular forms (the focus of this collection) means talk- ing about African-American dance and dance forms. As dance theorist Brenda Dixon Gottschild says, of what she calls the Africanist presence in dance, "Like electricity through the wires, we draw from it all the time, but few of us are aware of its source" (1996, 23). Some essays specifically address omissions (or distortions) of racial issues within dance scholarship and the social and popular dance world itself; others discuss the rich interchange and overlap between and among cultures—African American, white, Latino (in ballroom, breakdance, jazz 33/2 (Winter 2001/02) Dance Research Journal Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 27 Sep 2021 at 03:42:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0149767700006392 dance, among other forms)—in order to explore the history and development of specific styles. In fact, style—in addition to social dance's role in culture—has emerged as another cen- tral focus of this collection. Questions of style take on an important dimension in a form such as social dance, where steps and dances are continually recycled, borrowed, and recombined. In a symbiotic relationship, vernacular and theatrical stage forms float back and forth, feeding and informing one another, often giving rise to yet new forms. Constance Valis Hill looks at jazz choreographer Jack Cole's highly popular 1947 dance Sing, Sing, Sing that transformed the Lindy Hop into a stylized, choreographed form. "More than a step," Valis Hill writes, "the jitterbug was a style, a state of mind: a violent, even frenzied athleticism." In her dynamic choreographic analysis, Valis Hill describes the eclecticism of Cole's style that combined steps from the Lindy Hop and other African-American based vernacular forms, East Indian dance technique, and the rhythms of bebop, to forge a new postwar style of modern jazz dance. In another essay addressing African-American vernacular forms, Jonathan Jackson traces the role of improvisation as a key aesthetic framework in understanding the formation of black vernacular dance forms, from the Lindy Hop to breakdancing to voguing. Drawing on socio- logical theory as well as issues of style and form, Jackson illuminates how aesthetics are wed- ded to specific creative processes that grow out of a culture's values and traditions. As Jackson notes, improvisation in African-American vernacular dance is a "particular kind of choreo- graphing enacted within the ritual moment of [the] actions." Other essays in this issue are influenced by additional analytical and methodological approaches, drawing on ethnography, anthropology, history, gender studies, and critical race theory. In her New Historicist reading of the Trianon ballroom, Lisa Doolittle uncovers the meanings of ballroom dance culture as it existed in Western Canada prior to World War U. Surprisingly, as Doolittle notes, in the 1930s and 1940s there was a dance hall for about every four thousand inhabitants within the small towns of southern Alberta. Mass social dancing became "a crucial territory for staging of choreographies of community cultural values." How, Doolittle asks, can we recreate this time and "best research and write about corporeal and kinesthetic memory?" Her method of inquiry involves an interdisciplinary-based and inter- textual reading that includes cross-generational interviews (including "lessons" with eighty- year-old former social dancers), along with archival research and personal memoirs, to access this forgotten culture. Sally Sommer turns to anthropologist Victor Turner, intertwining his concept of commu- nitas with a detailed analysis of style to mine the Underground-House-dance landscape. House dancing, a highly popular form of club dancing consisting of synchronized bodies engaged in nonstop music, balances individuality with a strong sense of community through competition, improvisational play, and humor, along with "hard dancing." In an illustration of social dance's capacity for both transformation and subversion Sommer notes, "[b]ecause it creates alternative structures, it revitalizes, and, as it moves away from the norm, it also moves towards a new condition. It asserts a promise. It also poses a threat." Essays by Juliet McMains and Eric Usner engage critical theory to explore two additional contemporary dance subcultures and the reasons for their appeal. McMains coins the term "brownface," an allusion to blackface minstrelsy, to reveal how representations of "Latin- ness" are advanced in Dancesport, a highly stylized form of competitive ballroom dancing. In an analysis informed by the politics of race and class, McMains—a professional ballroom Dance Research Journal 33/2 (Winter 2001/02) Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 27 Sep 2021 at 03:42:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0149767700006392 dancer herself—illustrates how a sexualized, exoticized image and stereotype of Latin dance propels the Dancesport industry, even down to the ubiquitous brown tanning cream, and how both the Latin- and African-American roots of these ballroom dances ironically become obscured in the process. In his piece on the revival of swing dance in Southern California, Eric Usner looks at the intersections of race, nostalgia, and popular culture. Usner explains how the largely white, young (teens and twenties), middle-class population that forms the neo-swing subculture, draws on popular media representations of the swing era as a predominantly white, homogenous phenomenon and uses those images to bolster its own white, ethnic identity. One important aspect he raises is the meaning of nostalgia in accounting for the neo-swing dance resurgence. Luc Sante has said that nostalgia can be "a yearning for order, constancy, safety, and community" (1991, xi); for neo-swing youth, nostalgia is indeed both an homage to a former time and its vibrant dancing as well as an escape to an idealized, less complex past. Our final essays, on graffiti and masculinity in hip hop dance in film, are complementary pieces representing two fresh voices of a younger generation immersed in hip hop culture. Strikingly, both essays—which emerged from classes with dance historian and critic Sally Sommer—focus on shifts in style as breakdance and graffiti (its visual cousin) moved from their vernacular roots into mainstream culture. Jennifer Lutz interviews graffiti artist Bio, of TATS CRU, who now paints commissioned murals for record companies, corporate advertis- ers, and community organizations. Like graffiti, hip hop has deep political, socio-economic, and cultural roots. Sara LaBoskey reviews the hip hop dance phenomenon as it was first cap- tured in various popular films of the 1980s, such as Tony Silver's Style Wars, to its prolifera- tion in 1990s music videos. But despite its transformations in various media representations, La Boskey suggests, breakdance remains a forceful expression of heterosexual masculinity.

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