Improvisation in African-American Vernacular Dancing

Abstract

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: All African American social dances allow for some degree of improvisation, even in the performance of such relatively controlled line dances as the Madison and the stroll of the fifties…the idea of executing any dance exactly like someone else is usually not valued…. Black idiomatic dancers always improvise with intent—they compose on the spot—with the success of the improvisations depending on the mastery of nuances and the elements of craft called for by the idiom. (33–34)