Hunched low to the ground, flat feet pounding the earth with rhythmic intensity as they moved counterclockwise in a circle, a group of men and women wearing the drab, tattered, everyday clothes of southern plantation field hands danced. Their only musical accompaniment was the crisp sound of their hands clapping time and the low, guttural rhythms rumbling in their throats. They had no audience. They danced for themselves and one another. It was the end of a day spent picking somebody else's cotton, cleaning somebody else's house, caring for other folks' children. This was their time to come together and thank God they had survived another day.
Every part of their bodies danced, from their shuffling feet and bent knees to their churning hips and undulating spines, swinging arms, and shimmying shoulders. Even their necks bent like reeds to balance heads rolling from shoulder to shoulder before pulling upright to reveal faces filled with the joy and the ecstasy of dance.
Former slave Silvia King, speaking to an interviewer from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, recalled how she and other slaves on a Texas plantation used to sneak to attend church in the woods, far from the watchful eyes of whites: "Black folks 'ud git off, down in de crick bottom, er in a thicket, an' sing an' shout an' pray. Don't know why but de w'ite folks sho' didn't like dem ring shouts de cullud folks had. De folks git in er ring an' sing an' dance, an' shout; de dance is jes' kinder shuffle, den hit gits faster an' faster as dey gits wa'amed up; an' dey moans an' shouts, an' sings, an' dance. Some ob 'em gits 'zausted an' dey drop out, an' de ring gits closer. Sometimes dey sing an' shout all night, but at der brake ob day, de nigger gotter git ter de cabin an' git 'bout he buiziness fer de day. De w'ite folks say de ring shout make de nigger loose he haid an' dat he git all 'cited up an' be good fer nuffin' fer a week."
King was describing the "Ring Shout," one of the many dances performed by African slaves that writer Ralph Ellison called "America's first choreography." These dances were part of an unbroken chain connecting the rich cultural heritage of the slaves' African villages to 17th-century southern plantations or Congo Square in New Orleans; later to smoke-filled southern juke joints and urban honky-tonks, dance halls, and Jazz Age night spots; and finally to the contemporary concert dance stage.
Africans in America have always danced, even before they set foot on the shores of the Western Hemisphere. During the years of the European slave trade, over 40 million shackled Africans were herded into the cramped damp holds of ships and spirited across the Atlantic. On the way, they were forced to "dance" on deck. In his 18th-century book, AN ACCOUNT OF THE SLAVE TRADE ON THE COAST OF AFRICA, Alexander Falconbridge, the surgeon on a number of slave ships, described the brutal practice known as "dancing the slaves" and the merciless cat-o'-nine-tails floggings awaiting those who moved too slowly.
Find more Research info:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/freetodance/behind/behind_slaveships.html
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