Every Friday and Saturday night during the 1930s and 1940s in southern Alberta everybody danced, or so the story goes. And that is about as far as “the story” goes. Serious considerations of popular dancing are largely absent from existing historical records of this time and place, despite the apparent omnipresence of dancing in so many people's lives. Social dancing happened on a large scale at a pivotal time for community formation in Canada's West, when profound social changes occurred as the Depression gave way to World War II. What was going on besides and through and because of all that dancing? And how to investigate such an ephemeral phenomenon?

Today, I can still stand in the Trianon Ballroom in Lethbridge, Alberta's third largest city and the center of the region I will discuss here. The Trianon first opened its doors as a dance hall in 1931 and ceased operating in 1961. In the 1930s and 1940s literally hundreds of little Trianon-like halls graced small Canadian prairie towns, although most of these dance halls have since disappeared. In Lethbridge alone, four major dancing establishments were packed with patrons dancing to live bands on as many as three nights a week, the YMCA offered hostess dances for military personnel, the Kiwanis club gave teen dances every Friday night, and one could dance at the Masonic Hall and in local hotels (Viel 1998, 24).

1947 was the year Jack Cole created Sing, Sing, Sing to the recording made famous by “King of Swing” Benny Goodman and his Big Band. “[We] kicked, spun, slammed and slid on our knees for seven minutes in true Jack Cole style,” said Rod Alexander about the dance performed by the Jack Cole Dancers when it premiered in New York at the Latin Quarter (Loney 1984, 85). “Everyone came off the floor, gasped, and threw up. It was a ball-breaker, a number that asked the impossible,” remembered Buzz Miller (Miller 1992). Described by critics as “a dance in the style of Harlem” (Martin 1947) and “a primitive dance of primitive ecstasy” (Terry 1947b), Sing, Sing, Sing was a stylized Lindy Hop, or jitterbug, that popular swing-era social dance that flung and flipped partners into “breakaway” solos and daring “air” steps. More than a step, the jitterbug was a style, a state of mind: a violent, even frenzied athleticism made it hazardous, exciting, sexual, cathartic; the jitterbugger became synonymous with the “hepcat,” a swing addict. Sing, Sing, Sing, however, was not a pat reproduction of the jitterbug. Cole had captured and distilled its energetic spirit. He codified its movement, disciplined its form, tamed and readied it for the stage.

The excellent body of literature on African-American (or black) expressive culture often refers to the importance of improvisation in black vernacular dancing. In their discussion of key precepts upon which black vernacular dancing is based, Marshall and Jean Stearns explain that dance in the African diaspora “places great importance upon improvisation, satirical and otherwise, allowing freedom for individual expression; this characteristic makes for flexibility and aids the evolution and diffusion of other African characteristics” (1968, 15). Jacqui Malone notes that black vernacular dancing is “an additive process…a way of experimenting with new ideas; that mindset is Africa's most important contribution to the Western Hemisphere” (1996, 33). She goes on to declare:

The overwhelming stench of alcohol hovers in the hotel bathroom as my dance partner lathers a fourth layer of brown body paint onto my belly. “You have to learn how to apply your tan properly,” he admonishes sternly as I squirm under the sting of chemicals burning my skin. After rejecting twelve self-tanning products, I have finally found one that stains my fair skin dark enough for me to “pass” as a professional Latin dancesport competitor. Dancesport refers to a highly stylized version of ballroom dancing performed in competition circuits across the United States, Europe, and Asia. International Style Dancesport encompasses both the standard category, comprised of dances most readily associated with aristocratic ballrooms (e.g., waltzes and foxtrots), and the Latin division. Among the many rituals I scoff at in this sport I love to hate is the mandate that any competitor who wishes to be taken seriously must cover his or her body with brown paint. At twenty-seven dollars a bottle, the German made PROFI-TAN-Intensive-Latin-Color is my product of choice. After three generous coats of the bronze elixir have absorbed into my skin, my “brownface” is complete, and I am ready to withstand an entire evening of competition cha-chas.

The media attention surrounding Raves in the last couple of years has brought the subject of nightlife and dancing to the foreground of American consciousness. Yet even as dancing and nightlife were enjoying renewed popularity, a national crackdown on clubs was taking place. Almost concurrently, and partly in response to the crackdown, a nostalgia movement arose among the new generation of clubbers for the Utopian ethos of the 1970s and 1980s “Underground-House” scene. These new “Househeads” yearned for the carefully cultivated constructs of the “family,” the “vibe,” and the distinctive styles of House music and dancing—all of which they were attempting to recreate in their parties in 2001. Since the September 11 terrorist attack and its devastating aftershocks, the longing for a safer, golden past has intensified. As eloquently demonstrated by the tremendous popularity during the Depression of escapist movies, in hard times people seek good times and the reassurance of nonviolent congregations.

During the fall of 2000, I met with Bio, a thirty-four-year-old writer from the Bronx, at his studio in Hunt's Point. He was once the embodiment of the graffiti hero, a young vandal, illegally bombing New York subway's No. 6 IRT line as part of the Tough and Talented (or TATS) CRU. “We started at the height of the scene,” he reminisces in an interview with Mhari Saito. “There was so much painting going on, with everyone talking to each other” (Saito 1996, 2). But things began to change under the heavy fist of the city's antigraffiti campaigns. With the advent of the new paint-resistant metal subway cars, or “ding-dongs,” in 1987, TATS CRU and other writers were driven out of the subway and above ground. Rather than living the myth of the New York graffiti writer, committing beautiful acts of transgression against social law and accepted order, Bio was forced to give up the struggle.

In 1995, Bio and two lifelong friends, BG 183 and Nicer, transformed their graffiti into a commercial enterprise, marketing their skills to private interests and corporate advertisers. The three writers refounded (and renamed) their group as Top Artistic Talent's Cm, Inc., now an advertising agency commissioned to create graffiti for business murals and billboards, rap music backdrops, and video sets. In the past decade, the group's transition has proved financially successful. They have painted fifty murals for Coca-Cola throughout the New York area and are working on a project for the House of Seagram's. Local churches, schools, and individuals also hire the agency to create public murals and memorial walls (plate 1).

For B-boys and B-girls in the South Bronx in the early 1980s, this type of event was common. This cardboard square became a haven for self-expression and hope, a source of life. Within these rings of familiar faces, young black and Latino teenagers, almost exclusively male, used breakdance—in Nelson George's words “a serious game, a form of urban vernacular dance” (George 1985, 83)—to earn respect and authority in a neighborhood that provoked feelings of insignificance and hopelessness. Hip hop dance, George continues, “symbolizes hope for the future…. As Fab Five Freddy puts it…what's at stake is a guy's honor and his position in the street. Which is all you have. That's what makes it so important, that's what makes it feel so good” (George 1985, 111). For male teenagers growing up in poor, dangerous neighborhoods, the desire to become someone, to overcome and make it out as a somebody is a powerful drive.

Bronx teenagers found their voices through their bodies. They built up and perfected a large vocabulary of hip hop moves to communicate a wide variety of emotions and messages. Each move merged with the next to create a fluid, poetic language. From the inception of the hip hop culture, and persisting through its various eras—”Old School to the New School through gangsta rap to the latest innovators” (Bing 1998, 58)—hip hop dance has provided the arena for the expression and affirmation of masculinity. Built into this artistry is competition and domination, sexuality and libido, and hero worship.