Appalachian Dance

Abstract

This book employs twenty-five years' worth of rich interviews with black and white Virginians, Tennesseeans, and Kentuckians to explore the evolution and social uses of dance in each region. It analyzes how issues as disparate as industrialization around coal, race relations, and the 1970s folk revival profoundly influenced freestyle clogging and other dance forms. The book then reveals how African Americans and Native Americans, as well as European immigrants drawn to the timber mills and coal fields, added to local dance vocabularies. By placing each community in its sociopolitical and economic context, the book explores how the formal and stylistic nuances found in Appalachian dance reflect the beliefs, shared understandings, and experiences of the community at large. The book examines the dynamism of Appalachian dance traditions and the creativity involved in their evolution. Focusing on six dance communities, the book documents the experience of dancing as people have enjoyed it, or continue to enjoy it. It also explores the dance communities' divergent responses to social change, including industrialization, as well as the use of dance for community development.