What Is The Historical Context Of The Jitterbug

Dance is more than time, Space, and energy. People have this perceived connotation that dance is just visual art depicted from movements in the body. This is true that dance is a form of visual entertainment, but when looking at the sociocultural lens, dance has far more reasoning. Whether these reasons were to free oneself from oppression, or creating a community where one felt safe, social dance was a way for people to express emotion and create identity. As social dance evolved, these different cultural identities were exposed to one another. Appropriation and borrowing of Aesthetics were being seen. This was observed in the social dance form called the jitterbug. This dance was created during the great migration and Harlem Renaissance,

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, blacks were slaves to the white people. This oppression would hurt them during the Harlem Renaissance. During the Renaissance, Blacks migrated to Harlem New York. This so-called revival of the blacks, wasn’t a revival because whites just stole black’s artistic ideas and appropriated them to make it their own. Blacks had no say because they were inferior to the whites. This played similarly in the historical context of the Jitterbug. The Jitterbug was created during the time of World War II. During the war, many African Americans were either forced to enlist, or wanted to escape rural poverty, and forced labor. When they were enlisted, they were still segregated and forced to do most menial labor. There had no say because they were going against the upward mobility of whites. After the war, Blacks came back to the country and realized they were still not granted full rights. Some black’s lefts farm job and others went to cities in search of new opportunities. This intensified the great migration. The Great Migration was a movement of millions of African Americans to rural areas. This occurred during the time of the Harlem Renaissance; an era of artistic explosion. The influx of African American open the doors to a different culture whites were not familiar with. Since the black American communities were under a lot of racial tensions with the white communities, so they adopted their own forms of culture and dance. This new culture, and way of expressing themselves, was seen in their dance styles. At the time, dance was already a big thing in white culture. African American’s brought new dance styles that were foreign to most white people. Whites were used to more formal, upright partnered dancing. Blacks introduced a freer flow, curvilinear, lower to the ground, aesthetic. The new styles of dance emerging from the African American communities caused an