Gandy Dancers is a fascinating and inspiring look at the music made by the African-American workers in the south who maintained railroad tracks, "lining up" the tracks manually. This hard work required synchronized effort, and the rhythm came from improvised songs. The film features a group of retired Gandy dancers talking about and demonstrating the songs they sang and the work they did.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Nov 12, 2008 - 18 comments

How to dance at a rave. People dancing to house music. The Detroit Jit vs. Chicago Juke. The history of the Detroit Jit on popular dance show The Scene from the 80's. 80's legends the Funkateers doing their thing to Wordy Rappinghood. Compare them to the New York City Breakers. [more inside]
posted by Unicorn on the cob on Nov 19, 2007 - 69 comments

Photographs of the dancers, actresses, cafe-life figures and prostitutes who were the subjects of Toulouse Lautrec's paintings, including such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, "La Goulue" (Louise Weber; remember this?), and Jane Avril, who was the model for this last, iconic, Lautrec poster. View pages of the art matched up with photos, here, here, and here, and go to this page to rummage around in even more collections that include photos of Lautrec, his friends and family, street and location scenes, and lots of other tidbits. [Spanish language site; NUDITY]
posted by taz on Jul 5, 2007 - 10 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

Doris Eaton Travis. Doris Eaton returned to Broadway 87 years after her premiere. Her film debut was only 84 years ago. She wrote her award-winning autobiography when she was only 99.
posted by dances_with_sneetches on Apr 16, 2005 - 3 comments