History Of Black Dance

I found the first article, "The History of Black Dance" to be informative but I was disappointed  by its lack of cohesion. The author attempted a large feat when she tried to summarize the history of black dance in only three pages.  She jumped from topic to topic with out paying attention to any one of the subjects she was trying to address.  One thing I enjoyed about the article was when she wrote about how American pop culture had stereotypical views of black dance.  This made me think that attempting to coin the term "black dance" is a very delicate thing, as putting any sort of label on an art form will probably turn it into a stereotype. If a person is dancing aren't they in some sort of a way just expressing themselves...if this is true I think it is hard to categorize a form of self-expression into a term as broad as "black dance". This is where the second article caught my eye. The writer quotes "in order to meaningfully describe what black dance is one must first ask the question 'what is white dance?'.  It appears at first, with the use of this quote, that Brown is saying Black dance could not exist with out white dance. I thought that that was a strange comparison because shouldn't dance be something that anyone despite differences of ethnicity or nationality? Also why was it not compared to other dances like asian dance? 

Thinking about dance stereotypes also made me realize that I had my own dance stereotypes. When the articles started talking about white dance I immediately thought of a chubby middle-aged guy doing the white man's overbite and dancing with no rhythm. Because of this I especially enjoyed when the writer spent time describing some more accurate differences between "black dance" and "white dance".

One thing both articles didn't really talk about was music. In my opinion music is the best way to define differences and show influences in black and white dance.  I know I dance differently when "black" vs. "white" music comes on and I follow the descriptions of the stereotypes of black and white dance depending on the music. 

Ele Woods. 

Dance 163-A