• Acknowledgements


• Preface


• Introduction


• 1. Let's Go Back Home: The Slow Drag, Black Migration, and the Birth of Black Harlem


• 2. A Colorful Nightmare: Immigrant Ragtime Dancing as Participatory Minstrelsy


• 3. The Ugly Duckling: The Refinement of Ragtime Dancing and the Mass Marketing of Modern Social Dance


• 4. The Eclipse: Modern Ballroom Dancing, Bodily Code Switching, and the Harlem Renaissance


• 5. Ragtime Legacies: Appropriation, Authenticity, and Opportunity


• Conclusion

Danielle Robinson is a dance scholar who researches the cross-cultural movement of Afro-diasporic popular dances within the Americas. She is an associate professor at York University's School of Arts, Media, Performance, and Design and currently coordinates the MA program in Communication and Culture.

Modern Moves examines the movement of social dances between black and white cultural groups and immigrant and migrant communities during the early twentieth century. It focuses on Manhattan, a Black Atlantic capital into which diverse people and dances flowed and intermingled, and out of which new dances were marketed globally.