During the cultural and social transitions that transpired in the 1920s, dance became very popular in American society. In the late 1920s dance clubs grew to be very prevalent increasing the popularity of dance music of all types. These clubs also held competitions for professional dancers, who came together to show off new moves. The contests led to a widespread advent of new dance crazes. One of the most prominent dances that came out of the 1920s was the Charleston.
The Charleston was based on the musical styles
of African-Americans including the blues.
Exact origins of the dance are not known, but are said to go back to a
group of African-Americans who were from Charleston, South Carolina. The
Charleston involved fast foot movements and arm swaying. It was performed to ragtime jazz music that
had a fast 4/4 measure beat and syncopated rhythm. The dance was easily adaptable as it could be performed with a partner or by a single person. While the dance had been in existence in African-American communities since the early 1900s, it was not until the 1920s that it became a wide-spread epidemic. The style rose immensely popular in 1923 when it appeared in a Broadway musical entitled Runnin’ Wild.
In addition to the Charleston, several other dances became apart of American culture including the Lindy hop and the Black Bottom. The Lindy Hop was introduced in Harlem, New York as jazz music was dominating and blended types of dance ranging from tap, breakaway, and the Charleston. This dance style fused together many different techniques and combined different solo and partner dance skills. A dancer in the 1920s named "Shorty" George Snowden said about the dance, "We used to call the basic step the
Hop long before Lindbergh did his hop
across the Atlantic. It had been around a long time and some people began to
call it the Lindbergh Hop after 1927, although it didn't last. Then, during the
marathon at Manhattan Casino, I got tired of the same old steps and cut loose
with a breakaway." The Black Bottom dance has origins in New Orleans at the beginning of the 20th century . The movements and rhythms in the dance are based off African American dancing. It was brought back to surface in New York in a theater production called Dinah in 1924. While the dances introduced in the 1920s included partner dancing, it offered a new perspective from the "classical" dancing that was prevalent before this period. Solo dancing became more popular and partner dances changed in that they did not move in unison, their movements could be very different from one another.
As the Great Depression hit America, a human
endurance challenge arouse in the form of Dance Marathons or Walkathons. Participants in this contest were required to
dance for hours in a completion for prize money. According to Carol Martin in her book about
these marathons, “In their heyday, dance marathons were among America’s most
widely attended and controversial forms of live entertainment. The business
employed an estimated 20,000 people as promoters, masters of ceremonies, floor
judges, trainers, nurses and contestants" (Martin). Those who attended the marathons were charged a 25-cent admission fee to
watch the dancers compete for what could be days. These competitions were targeted to those during the Great Depression as audiences could come and watch the tired competitors and feel pity for them instead of their own financial situations.
Overall, dance played a major role in the 1920s. The music surrounding those dances that were made popular during this decade including the Charleston, Black Bottom, and the Lindy Hop, influenced both this time period and continues to be apart of our culture today. The emergence of these dances into popular culture and the competitions that were sponsored by dance clubs can are responsible for the importance of dance clubs and influenced our own cultural dance customs today.
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Works Cited
Martin, Carol J.. Dance marathons
performing American culture of the 1920sand 1930s. Jackson, Miss.:
University Press of Mississippi, 1994. Print.
Stearns, Marshall Winslow. Jazz
dance: the story of American vernacular dance. New York: Da Capo Press,
1994. Print.
