What is black dance?

The article by Sagolla and Lisa Jo tries to address the question ‘What is Black Dance?’ but after reading it, I noticed that you can’t really define black dance. Firstly, the article points out that most, if not all dance in America is descendant on black dance or borrows heavily on black dance. For example, all ballet since the work of George Balanchine contains an Africanist presence.

Secondly, what is currently considered black dance is a kind of dance that has been morphed over the years and integrated with White dance to make it more appealing to white viewers, as is put by Donald Byrd, ‘these dances were invented by African Americans and then cleaned up into dance forms that could be done by whites.’ As it is, the best we can do is to describe a dance as having Black or White qualities.

Finally, I agree with what Reggie Wilson says… that we should focus more on ‘How people outside of the U.S. view black dance’ instead of trying to get a specific answer on ‘what is black dance’ since all dances in the U.S. are intertwined with black dance.

Anthony
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