History of Black Dace/ Black Dance vs. White Dance

Within in the article, The history of Black Dance, Shantella Sherman surveys a brief analysis of dance within African American identity and popular culture, and discusses how the two intersect (often with the former lending itself directly to dominant American popular culture”.
Sherman addresses the significance of dance as a preserver of culture and identity for African’s enslaved in America. She touches upon the totalizing nature of slavocracies in America, and how the extent of control and regulation imposed upon the enslaved by their “master” in an attempt to strip their identity, (thus maintaining full control over their perceived property) included the prohibition of dance. However, this assertion neglected to recognize the strength and tenacity of the human spirit. While many parts of their culture faded within the restrictions of their new environment, enslaved Africans often reacted creatively, masking and encoding much of their identities in language, dance and various other practices. As Sherman discuses, the gliding of feet and the movement of hips and torsos in defiance to the prohibitions imposed upon them are clear example of such disguises. However, I think it’s important to recognize how such behaviors of rebellion are not restricted to dance. I guess this is an obvious assertion given the nature of slavery. And while I don’t want to get off topic, I think it’s an important aside that deserves further context and discussion.
Dance is one of the many expressions of independence and autonomy protected and guarded through slavery. As dance is a vestige of an African identity and history largely lost to the pressures of assimilation, as too was language, literature, music, and spirituality. I find it interesting that it is these practices that become racialized, canonized and polarized from a dominant white culture, who’s power, politically and socially, allow it to not need definition. Segolla points to this when she struggles to define white dance.
Dance is a language of sorts. It is expressive, communicative and holds deep cultural value. As a language, it also holds legitimacy to its owners that provide them with an identity. However, it also holds a certain amount of power. Within the American landscape, black identity is often wrestled with many versions of itself. To draw from Dubios’s double consciousness, there is a power struggle both socially and internally that attempts to reconcile a cohesive and uniform identity. Alvin Ailey is an intriguing example of this in which his aesthetics are familiar to black culture, but are actually taken from European technique. Yet he is this premier example of black dance. Why is this? Is it a reverse black face? …im getting off topic. I guess the point I was trying to make was examining this dichotomy of white and black culture in America, in regards to dance, and how our definitions of them are based on structures of power and dominance. As what it means to be black in America is increasingly more vast, that point of reference is now much more broader and harder to define. As Segolla later cites, “Trying to define exactly what black dance is limits out ability to appreciate how extensive the African Diaspora is…”Because the intersections of black cultural and white cultural expressions (and more extensively, the intersections of black identity) are so frequent and ambiguous at times. However, I believe that due to the racialized history of this nation, such categorizations will continue.