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 theatre 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

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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. Our Dialogues section is intended to raise issues and present questions relevant to historians and scholars thinking and writing about social and vernacular dance. In that spirit, we offer Barbara Stratyner's definitional essay here; while such an essay might typically be posi- tioned at the beginning of the volume, we thought it fitting to include it here, as a coda, to rethink some of the traditional boundaries that have typically surrounded these terms. We also feature a piece by Terry Monaghan that looks solely at the Lindy Hop and its rich history as both a vernacular and staged dance. Monaghan asks us to fully consider the importance of the Lindy Hop as a seminal, American dance form. Our reviews by Thomas DeFrantz, Linda Tomko, Michael Dinwiddie, Tim Lawrence, and Anita Gonzalez are of books in the social and popular dance arena; readers will find that several of the issues addressed in these reviews res- onate with those of the main essays. The range of material in social dance, both historical and contemporary, is far-reaching, and obviously no one single theme issue can claim to survey such an expanse of forms and styles. We received a wide array of material, more than we could hope to publish in one issue, and in the interests of bringing coherence to this volume, we decided to focus exclusively on American social and popular dance, primarily from the mid-century to the present. Still to be explored, for example, are other historical forms of social dance as well as the many cross- cultural variants of social, vernacular, and popular forms that have migrated and taken root globally. But this is for a future collection. We see this issue of DRJ as another step toward documenting a variety of American social dance practices to consider how they intersect with the fabric of social life itself. In spotlighting social dance in this way, we hope to inform, raise

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Works Cited Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 1996. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. McNamara, Brooks. 1978. "The Invisible Theatre: The Folk and Festival Tradition in America." In Theatre Byways: Essays in Honor of Claude L. Shaver. Edited by CJ Stevens and Joseph Aurbach, 6-16. New Orlean, LA: Polyanthos, Inc. Sante, Luc. 1991. Low Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

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