What Stuckey greatly emphasizes in this article is the cultural, social, and psychological importance dance holds for Africans and for the slaves that came to America.  He speaks of how "Their determination to dance, despite possible punishment, in some measure restored the body's place in spiritual terms, and in that sense was an act of physical renewal as well."  He also writes about how no other group of workers had such an important place in their society for dance.  After reflecting upon this, I realized this is true, as I could think of no other group of people with dance so thoroughly integrated into every aspect of its culture.  I also found it interesting that this commitment to dance transgressed religious boundaries, and as the slaves were increasingly exposed to Christianity, they integrated the spirituality into their dances.

Even though early dances of the slaves were receptive to new inputs, white Christian culture rejected the dances entirely.  While the African culture revered sexual relations as creative and beautiful and incorporated these ideas into their dance, whites could not comprehend this view and scorned it as profane.

Beyond this conflict, there was vast resistance on the part of the white Christian community to the Ring Shout.  The varied shouts and dances were incomprehensible to the whites, and complex to denounce as one unified form.  As such, Stuckey writes that the Ring Shout was a pivot from which all other dance sprung: "It was a dance that seemed to generate change, possibly because, as with African art generally, the great constant is change, improvisation being its motor." I found it interesting how this sense of change developed over time into jazz.  Even though there is some ambiguity as to the chronology of jazz dance and the dances of dance halls, what remained constant was change - improvisation was carried through.