Blues Dance - African-American Vernacular and Other Dances

African-American Vernacular and Other Dances

The Ballroom as named by Mura Dehn in her documentary (today referred to as Ballrooming) was a slow dance done by Lindy Hoppers at the Savoy Ballroom to Blues music. It satisfied a Harlem need for a slower, fluid, but highly rhythmic dance with expressive body movements which could not be facilitated by the upright stance of European ballroom dances.

The Fish Tail is a movement in which the buttocks form a variety of figure eights by weaving out, back, and up. Although the Fish Tail came from Africa, it was considered obscene when dancing in the European fashion with one arm around a partner's waist. The African dance disdains bodily contact.

The Funky Butt, Squat, Fish Tail, and Mooche are all performed with hip movements. Similar dances were popular in New York City by 1913. When dancers at the Jungles Casino-"officially a dancing school" "got tired of two-steps and schottiches...they'd yell: 'let's go back home!'...'Let's do a set'...or 'Now put us in the alley!' I did my Mule Walk or 'Gut Stomp' for these country dances.", according to pianist James P. Johnson . "The dancers were from the Deep South."

Funky Butt - "Well, you know the women sometimes pulled up their dresses to show their pretty petticoats-fine linen with crocheted edges-and that's what happened in the Funky Butt.... When (Big)Sue arrived at my father's tonk, people would yell..."Do the Funky Butt, Baby!" As soon as she got high and happy, that's what she'd do, pulling up her skirts and grinding her rear end like an alligator crawling up a bank."

The Slow Drag in its various forms was first documented during, and danced to the music of, the ragtime era.

Snake Hips is a movement in which the knees are moved forward and back, first one knee then the other, while keeping the feet together. As in Ball the Jack, in which the knees are held together, this results in a rotation of the hips.

The Strut is similar to, or even "virtually indistinguishable" from dances seen in South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria. Strutting was often associated with cakewalking. "You had a lot of strut in the Cakewalk-lots of fellows walked like that just for notoriety-and they could really show off." "George "Bon Bon" Walker was the greatest of the strutters, and the way he promenaded and pranced was something to see," and was "the man who turned the Strut into the Cakewalk."

Blues dances as a genre have been said to share a certain aesthetic:

• An athletic and grounded body posture and movement, characterized by the weight being held on the balls of the feet, the knees bent, the hips pushed back, and the chest forward.

• An asymmetry and polyphonic look/feel to the body, characterized by an equality of body parts. No limb or part has precedence, but they all work together both in a simultaneous and serialized fashion. The focus and weight shifting moves through various parts of the body; poly-centric.

• Rhythmic movement. Not just a single rhythm being used in/with the body, multiple meters or rhythms are used. Articulated movement in the torso (chest, rib cage, pelvis, butt) identifying and emphasizing different rhythms.

• Improvisation between dancers and on their own movements. Based on the rhythm section of the band.

• A drawing of the beats, dancing in the space between the beats, pushing and pulling creating a sense of tension both in the body and the body moving through space, while remaining loose and relaxed.