Dance Images

There are many wonderful images of dancers and dance musicians that I wish I could have included in Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics. Here are some of my favorites. They illustrate Set Dances (reels, square dances, etc.), the Ring Shout and Cakewalk, Step Dancing (buckdancing, flatfooting, and clogging), Team Clogging, and Dance Musicians.

Set Dances (reels, square dances, etc.)

"The Wedding Dance" – Peasant dance in Netherlands
(Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1566)

“La leçon de danse” – The Dancing Lesson
(Anonymous, France, 17th c.)
Black dancing master with a Pochette ("kit violin")
(W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University)

English Country Dance
John Playford's The Dancing Master, 1698
(Library of Congress, Music Division)

"La Danse Ronde – Circular Dance of the Canadians"
(George Heriot, 1807)

"Minuet of the Canadians"
(George Heriot, 1807)
Dance with white fiddler accompanied by
white and black tambourine players

"A Country Dance, Upper Canada" – Six-handed reel, c. 1840
(Charles William Jefferys, 1869–1951)

"The Virginia Reel"
(Harper’s Weekly, 1875)
Black fiddler provides music for a Virginia Reel at
an antebellum ball in the 1850s

Quadrille at Enfield, New York (1872) accompanied with fiddle and piano
(Personal collection)

"Lynchburg (Virginia) Negro Dance" (Lewis Miller, 1853)
European-style dances accompanied by
fiddle, banjo, and bones
(The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Richard M. Kain in memory of George Hay Kain)

“Recreation Evening at Community School Under Direction of WPA Recreational Supervisor” (in suit and tie)
Coffee County, Alabama (1939)
Northern back-to-back Do-si-do
(photo: Marion Post Wolcott, Library of Congress)

Square Dance at Bascom Lamer Lunsford’s home in Madison County, NC (1960s)

The Ring Shout and the Cakewalk

The Ring Shout (Georgia, c. 1930s)
(Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

“Walking for the Cake” – African American cakewalk
(Leisure Hour 38, 1889)

Step Dancing (buckdancing, flatfooting, and clogging)

"The Old Plantation"
Black dancers accompanied by banjo and rhythm
(attributed to John Rose, Beaufort County, SC, c. 1790)
(The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller)

"Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride"
(William Sidney Mount, 1830)
Black fiddler plays at a house dance for white dancers
Bequest of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815–1865. Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dancing on the Barn Floor
(William Sidney Mount 1831)

Clog Dancing Made Easy (1874)

Team Clogging

Bent Creek Square Dance Team at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, Asheville, NC (c. 1942)

Soco Gap Square Dance Team at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, NC (1940s)
(photo courtesy: Joe Sam Queen)

Precision Clogging (early 1960s)
James Kesterson (front right) and the Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers, Henderson County, NC
(from: Seeger, Talking Feet)

Green Grass Cloggers at Union Grove (NC) Fiddlers Convention (1973)

The Green Grass Cloggers
Greenville, North Carolina (early 1970s)
(left to right: Rodney Sutton, Toni Jordan, Dudley Culp)

Dance Musicians

“Fiddling His Way”

(Eastman Johnson, 1866)
Black fiddler entertains a rural white family

Flatboat Fiddler
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (April 1880)

“The Musicale, Barber Shop”
Integrated musical ensemble in a barber shop
Trenton Falls, New York
(Thomas Hicks, 1866)

“Skyland Orchestra” (c. 1900)
Black dance musicians at a summer resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
(from: George Freeman. Pollock, Skyland: The Heart of the Shenandoah National Park)