Finding the Seam

This was a productive week. Although I did not run as much as I would have liked, I did get a lot of writing done, and the quality of said writing seems to be pretty darn high. As an added bonus, I think I have found my smoking gun.



As you, faithful reader, know, I contend that the Waltz became the sine qua non of ballroom dancing at/around the turn of the century, in response to the increased popularity of African American dance and musical forms. When I look at the popular ballroom dances of today, mostly what I see is a variation of the Waltz - yes, even in the latin categories. Or, more correctly, I see that these dances have all been through a filter that makes them look more like Waltz than anything else.



This week, while tracking down some more information on Allan Dodworth, a dancing master in NYC in the 19th century, I came across a mention of an organization, the American Society of Professors of Dance. They organized in the 1870s, and incorporated in New York in 1883. Every year, they held an annual meeting, and every year the NYTimes or the Washington Post managed to print something about their agenda. Some years more, some less, but from 1883 - 1918, I have been able to track the broad strokes of this association.



In 1922 they re-appear as the American Society of Teachers of Dance (A move to be more like the British teacher's group, the Imperial STD? Likely.), but 1922 is really beyond the scope of my study. It is telling, however, that the organization has such continuity, particularly in light of their principles. They were formed in reaction to the dwindling popularity of set dances -- quadrilles, lancers, germans, what you probably think of as "folk dancing" if you think of it at all, which, exepting when you read this blog, you probably dont -- in favor of "round" dances, like the Waltz, two-step, polka, etc; what you know today, broadly speaking, as ballroom dances. Partners go around the room together, in a counterclockwise direction, yada yada yada. The problem for the dance teachers is that round dances like these are WAY easier to learn and perform, they require far less by way of skill and dedication to master -- you can learn them from a friend, and have fun doing them. What to do? They are going to be out of a job if things keep moving in that direction. . . This is the 1880s. They aim at Standardization of performance as a way of job security -- making everyone everywhere dance in the same way. Sound familiar? Well, maybe not to you, but ask a ballroom dancer that you know if they could go anywhere and dance with anyone, and odds are they would say yes -- dancing is that standardized today. Common knowledge, really. Please, don't bother me with such trivial distractions!



Anyway. By 1900, the ASPD have far worse problems than the popularity of the Waltz or two-step. No one dances the waltz anymore, they are all into this crazy new fad, Ragtime. Long story short (too late!) they go to war against it, ban the music from their halls, and try to get people to dance properly. And the model they hold up, the standard to which everyone they instruct must aspire? You guessed it -- the Waltz. Boo-yah. Knocked out 15 pages this week on these folks, and there's more to come. That's chapter two nearly in the bag, and with luck I'll bring it in only 2 weeks behind my anticipated schedule.



On a sadder note, I got my first rejection letter today. Ok, yes, thank you Landru, its not my first rejection letter EVAR. But for the current job hunt, we can scratch the Jesuits of Scranton off our list of prospective employers.



Ran 10.12 miles today, 92 minutes. Rock Creek Park is really quite loverly!

Get down with L O C

One of the interesting thing about being a researcher is finding out when people have made stuff up. This has happened twice now, and this time I was able to track down what happened. Makes for an interesting story (for a given value of interesting, mind you).


Chapter one of my dissertation is about the Cakewalk. Accordingly, I have looked at many different scholarly articles that have dealt with the subject previously. One such article produced this picture, of a "contraband ball" during the siege of Vicksburg. The author attributed the picture to Harper's Weekly newspaper, and gave the date for publication as 1863 and the page number as 337. The text underneath the picture was fairly important to the author's argument:


"The negroes (sic)preserve all their African fondness for music and dancing, and in the modified form which they have assumed here have given rise to negro dancing and melodies in our theatres, a form of amusement which has enriched many. But the colored people should be seen in one of their own balls to enjoy the reality. The character of the music and the dance, the strange gradation of colors, from the sooty black of the pure breed to those creatures, fair and beautiful, whose position among their darker brethren shows the brutal cruelty of their male ancestors for generations, who begot them to degrade them, and who had this for years been putting white blood into slavery. There is in these balls one thing which cannot fail to impress any observer. Coming as they all do from a degraded and oppressed class, the negroes assume nevertheless, in their intercourse with each other, as far as they can, the manners and language of the best classes in society. There is often a grotesque exaggeration, indeed, but there is an appreciation of refinement and an endeavor to attain it which we seldom see in the same class of whites."


Now, that might not trip any bells for y'all. The siege of Vicksburg was in 1863, however, and that seems mighty early for someone to be claiming that their dancing and melodies have influenced white theater. Not impossible, mind you, but . . . early. So, I decided to take a look at the actual paper itself, to see if there was something else going on. And guess what? Page #337 of Harper's Weekly 1863 does not have this picture. Nor does Harper's Weekly for 1862, or 1864. A little digging (Praise Google!) did turn the image up in an 1896 book, "Frank Leslie's Famous Leaders and Battle Scenes of the Civil War," published by Mrs. Frank Leslie. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly was a big competitor of Harper's during the Civil War, and hey! That's where the original woodcut was published, on January 30th, 1864.


This quote fits very nicely into the picture I am building in my research, and so I have been hanging a fair amount of weight on it. One thing I learned in my master's research is to always get a look at the original document, if you can. And, the Library of Congress has both the newspaper and the book on microform, so yesterday I hied my way downtown. You have to have a researchers' card to get into the LOC, but as it happens I do have one, and so I strolled on into the Jefferson building, hit the main reading room, and went to work.


The original woodcut? Check. Problem though, the only print under that picture is "A New Year's Day Contraband Ball and Vicksburg, Miss." Nothing else. The text that my original reference attributed to 1863 was actually first published, as far as I can ascertain, in 1896. Which context gives it a VERY different meaning, so now I have to go back and include that into my chapter. Which is cool, the quote still says interesting things about the people who wrote it -- speaking to my argument that whites read the performances of blacks through the lens of their own expectations, rather than trying to understand what African American performance meant within their own culture. No doubt you will be hearing more about that argument if you keep reading . . .



If nothing else, this experience shows me how . . . problematic it is to take other scholar's work at face value, particularly regarding stuff that happened 150 years ago. How did that person mis-attribute both the source and the date? I don't know. Harper's is certainly a plausible place for such a woodcut to have been published. Maybe they were just lazy? Maybe they didn't HAVE the source, but running an image like that without a source wouldn't have been any good, so they just threw something out there, assuming that no one would notice? And there is another lesson - eventually, someone is going to notice.