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Dance Confiscation And Fusion In Term Paper

Black dance performer Norma Savoy documents that this happened in the form, technique and structure in black ballroom dancing. Savoy specifically expresses her fears over loss of control over the form to whites who would appropriate them (ibid., 13). Fusion is the combination of the two disparate above cultures. As documented above, the development of the Lindy Hop during the Harlem Renaissance is typical of this. At this time, millions of southern blacks migrated to northern cities where Afro-American dance fused with white ballroom dancing, especially in dance halls such as the Savoy Theater. On the white side of dialectic, we can find a European-American dancer such as Ernie Smith. He remarked that the Lindy was a black dance even though it was danced by whites because it arose from black culture and experience. However, as Smith documents, as it came into white ballrooms, it was no longer a "cool" dance but became jerky and something different: the Jitterbug. While form and technique...

Neither the Lindy or the Jitterbug were exclusively black or white. Rather, they were related and came from the fusion of the cultures (ibid., 14).
Conclusion

In this short essay, we considered the dynamic between confiscation and fusion in the development of modern dance. Confiscation and fusion have produced examples such as the Jitterbug and the Lindy during the Harlem Renaissance where non-European and European dance came together to form the foundations of a uniquely American modern dance in form, technique and structure. This fusion, though consensual inspired admiration and yet fear simultaneously, a fear and admiration that plays itself out in the cultural conflict as a whole and in the blending that happens in dance.

Works Cited

Rogers, R.A. (1998). A dialogics of rhythm: Dance and the performance of cultural conflict. The Howard Journal of Communications, 9, 5-27.

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Works Cited

Rogers, R.A. (1998). A dialogics of rhythm: Dance and the performance of cultural conflict. The Howard Journal of Communications, 9, 5-27.
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