"
Imagine, amid the grey serge of wartime France, a tribe of youngsters with all the colourful decadence of punks or teddy boys. Wearing zoot suits cut off at the knee (the better to show off their brightly coloured socks), with hair sculpted into grand quiffs, and shoes with triple-height soles - looking like glam-rock footwear 30 years early - these were the kids who would lay the foundations of nightclubbing. Ladies and gentlemen,
les Zazous."
[more inside]
posted by Paragon
on Feb 8, 2010 -
15 comments
I'm no dancer, but I'm fascinated by the
Dance History Archives. The
index of dance styles is comprehensive, and the individual entries provide everything from history to related music links. (
Jitterbug,
May Pole,
The Watusi) There's a short
glossary, an
index of dancers, a voluptuous section on
burlesque (including some
great NSFW
pictures), an archive of
posters (
Josephine Baker!), and so much
more. The list of
Dancer Related Celebrities is pretty extensive (
Fred Astaire,
Rita Hayworth), although there's no
Jennifer Grey, so I guess Baby got put in a corner after all.
posted by OmieWise
on Feb 24, 2006 -
17 comments
Electro-funk is a often overlooked genre of dance music that is very influential for many genres of dance music that came around it and after it, including Hip-Hop, Dance, Disco, Electric Boogie, Freestyle, Techno and Drum and Bass.
One of the most prominent Electro-Funk DJs was
Greg Wilson, who has set up
electrofunkroots.co.uk to document the
history and
influence of Electro-Funk. Wilson
interviews Quentin Leo Cook, (a.k.a.
Norman Cook, a.k.a.
Fatboy Slim) on Cook's impressions of Electro-Funk and how it has influenced him as a music producer and DJ.
Wilson has also provided a
personal history and
retrospective mix of top Electro-Funk songs to
A Guy Called Gerald for
Samurai.fm.
posted by gen
on Nov 29, 2005 -
27 comments
Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut; snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man’s fingers on the tambourine. Dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooded legs, two wire legs, two spring legs–all sorts of legs and no legs–what is this to him? And in what walk of life, or dance of life does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him, when, having danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling for something to drink, with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable sound!Dancing Across The Color Line. In 1842, Charles Dickens came to New York City, where initally, he was wined, dined and theatrically entertained by the upper crust. Afterwards, he then went slumming and soon saw
William Henry Lane, aka
Master Juba, a man of whose dancing a number of historians say is where
tap dance began, step lively in a cellar in the neighborhood called Five Points--the very same neighborhood creatively misrepresented recently by one Martin Scorcese in
Gangs of New York. The dance he did was known as Pattin' Juba and the first time it's rhythm--which we think of as the
Bo Diddley beat--was used on a sound recording was in 1952, when Red Saunders and his Orchestra, with Dolores Hawkins and and the Hambone Kids recorded
Hambone.
Continued within
posted by y2karl
on Apr 4, 2005 -
3 comments
