Great video! I am a professional magician and love magic history and was reading about a dance team early 20th century that worked with one of my favorite old school magicians and they specialize in Buck and Wing dance. I had no idea what it was until now, thank you!
Thanks for a very interesting commentary & demonstration. Prior to viewing this video, I hadn't connected historically Black Greek letter fraternity & sorority steppin' to 19th century Buck dances. Buck dancing seems also to be a source of foot stomping routines that once were informal recreational activities for (mostly) Black girls & now are being incorporated into some pre-university mainstream cheerleading routines. Those 2 movement arts also may incorporate body patting (pattin Juba).
The buck also looks like it's a part of stepping in this video, where in a Brazilian Samba video I watched. It reminded me of tap dancing. I think that dancing is an art form that derives from war tact drills. As we see in Kapil Aria. However, many tribes would celebrate before going to war and after returning to war. Also, the formations and breathing tact's that can also be practiced in dances, seem to interconnect the art form of both dances and war. For instance many of the break dancers said many of thier dance moves were influenced by Martial Arts movies that were huge in the late 70's early 80's. Then you have Taichi or Judo which practices animal mm movements, then again with moves like the Snake oreven Duck walking which Chuck Berry would also do. Thanks for this video.
@kalynch1196, yes! You are right. The Kid n' Play was from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was a fan of Kid n' Play. My grade school slumber parties did indeed feature this dance and the Running Man (another late 1980s or 20th century dance). Thank you for pointing this out and thank you for watching!
Interesting. I've never seen "wing dancing" described in terms of arm movements, but rather as movements of the feet. I'd love to know where DeFrantz found his descriptions of wing dancing. Thanks for the demo!
I linked to your video on this to my radio show about folk music. From Tasmania, called "The Naked Folks" on Edge Radio on 99.3FM, Hobart. you can podcast it if you like. Free! Just wanted to say thank you.
Very cool, thank you. I see origins of swing in there. But where is blues dancing in all of this? I heard that blues dancing came originally out of the late 1880s to early 1890s.
Hi! "Blues dancing" is an umbrella term for multiple styles of dance done to blues music, just as "swing dancing" is an umbrella term. The earthy, grounded movement common to all blues dances can be connected to buck dancing, and the polycentrism and asymmetry (the "jankiness" and broken shapes) can be connected to wing dancing. You'll see aspects of this in shake blues, black bottom, mooche, grinds, snake hips...And then you get more footwork oriented blues dances, such as "struttin'," which still values the earthy weightedness of buck dancing but arguably has some elements of the jig.
@@BlueNoteSD👍 much more accurate answer than I ever hear. Blues isn't "A" dance, it's a musical style that many dances/movements evolved to. Exception being the 1926 English ballroom variant of very Slow Fox Trot known a "the blues" since it was created for that express purpose.
Is there any chance of getting the captions corrected on this video, so that it is more accessible? I would love to show it in my class, but can't if the captions are inaccurate!
More like Locking instead of Popping, although these two dances were intertwined in their origins, they diverge more and more past time when Locking remains its original Funk but Popping became more and more inclusive to other music genres.
😂.... I'm not familiar with "buck" style tap, but not surprised that it exists. With the exception of the competition - based dance forms (eg modern Irish dance as opposed to traditional figures) an classical ballet all dance forms freely evolve and are greatly affected by geographical location/ cultural influences. with upbeats and downbeats, tap dancers of an advanced level should also be able to dance across the beat alternating between rhythms...I read there this thing in flamenco.. this is a bit random but somewhat related to beats. There's this dance called " sevillanas" I'm sure its a 4/4 piece of music. The choreography is across the bar in a 6/8 count (eg step touch step touch, swing foot behind), and the casanet rhythm go in a 3/4 rhythm on top of this (pi ta ri - a ri - a) it's crazy... One last thing about tap notes - some tap syllable call a " toe heel" a "ball heel" (and similarly, "heel ball" instead of "heel toe")
Yes I have a small booklet on cakewalks from the ragtime era. I think they have a copy of it at the Jerome Robbins library at Lincoln center New York City in special collections on the third floor. I would check worldcat though, sometimes I confuse research trips that long ago. The only other place that it could be would be at Harvard's Houghton library. I could send you some pics of it, if you're still interested and not likely to do a research trip.
Buck and wing is a tap technique and the term comes from tap dancing. And a jig is from Irish clogging, a jig was a "step" (a combination) When the early African-Americans met the Irish doing jigs tap dancing was formed. Buck and wing has "hoofing" time steps that include wings, wings are very difficult advanced tap steps that involves doing a shuffle on the supporting leg. Doing so creates a wing type movement. Look up Bill Robinson, or Buck and Bubbles, or Steve Condos, also Gregory Hines, he often ended his act with several wings, and you can find Gregory Hines discussing the history of tap on TH-cam or read the 'History of Tap' by Beverly Fletcher. I am disappointed a Duke Professor did not even mention tap when talking about Buck and Wing, and jigs and what you did mention was not accurate to the actual terms.
If you look at current videos of people dancing tabanka and kuduro, you'll see connections to both buck and wing dances in the heavy stomping as well as the flapping of knees and elbows as well!
I'm curious as to why the discussion of the history of these dances is limited to their development in America rather than their historical roots in Africa
Vanessa Bartley because they dont originate in africa, theyre developed when slaves came jn contact with white indentured servants of scotch irish, irish, cornish and other northern europeans cultures.
Dr. Frazier is a Dance Curator who actually does that. You might want to follow her work to see what she is doing. I don't think she is connected to this guy. I know she reached out to him several years ago when she was a Smithsonian scholar....
I know it's fashionable to credit EVERYTHING to African-Americans, but they did NOT create these dances, or ragtime, or jazz. To label them African-American dances is very very misleading.
@@leticiamartin5113 Why did it HAVE to be a single community? Like most things it's complex. Western European functional harmony, African rhythmic patterns, primarily. Dance forms, again, primarily, European, also had a large influence. But I'm just skimming the surface here.
@@yidilin7181 Well let's see -- the Waltz is part of American dance history. Did that come from Africa. Antecedents to modern tap are largely from Irish traditions filtered through dances both white and black. Other dances go back much further into European history. Like American music does. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
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Great video! I am a professional magician and love magic history and was reading about a dance team early 20th century that worked with one of my favorite old school magicians and they specialize in Buck and Wing dance. I had no idea what it was until now, thank you!
Wow that was a huge amount of info to pack into 2:50. Very Good Video.
I very much want to audit his classes at Duke. Fascinating.
Wow, so cool someone is cross trained in both African/American history and dance!
Thanks for a very interesting commentary & demonstration.
Prior to viewing this video, I hadn't connected historically Black Greek letter fraternity & sorority steppin' to 19th century Buck dances. Buck dancing seems also to be a source of foot stomping routines that once were informal recreational activities for (mostly) Black girls & now are being incorporated into some pre-university mainstream cheerleading routines. Those 2 movement arts also may incorporate body patting (pattin Juba).
Very informative, very helpful -- I understand the source of these styles much better now! Thank you.
The buck also looks like it's a part of stepping in this video, where in a Brazilian Samba video I watched. It reminded me of tap dancing.
I think that dancing is an art form that derives from war tact drills.
As we see in Kapil Aria. However, many tribes would celebrate before going to war and after returning to war. Also, the formations and breathing tact's that can also be practiced in dances, seem to interconnect the art form of both dances and war.
For instance many of the break dancers said many of thier dance moves were influenced by Martial Arts movies that were huge in the late 70's early 80's. Then you have Taichi or Judo which practices animal mm movements, then again with moves like the Snake oreven Duck walking which Chuck Berry would also do.
Thanks for this video.
Great presentation.
@kalynch1196, an annotation was added at ~2:24 to show that the Kid n' Play is from the 20th century, not the 21st. Thank you!
Wow. Thank you. You answered a ton of questions for me.
I cannot believe this is still up. Screen recorded and shared.
@kalynch1196, yes! You are right. The Kid n' Play was from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was a fan of Kid n' Play. My grade school slumber parties did indeed feature this dance and the Running Man (another late 1980s or 20th century dance). Thank you for pointing this out and thank you for watching!
This brings true to the words that there is nothing new under the sun
Interesting. I've never seen "wing dancing" described in terms of arm movements, but rather as movements of the feet. I'd love to know where DeFrantz found his descriptions of wing dancing. Thanks for the demo!
Yeah! I agree- People still do versions of the Wing in currently.
This was very informative! Thank you!
I linked to your video on this to my radio show about folk music. From Tasmania, called "The Naked Folks" on Edge Radio on 99.3FM, Hobart. you can podcast it if you like. Free!
Just wanted to say thank you.
I absolutely loved this!
Very cool, thank you. I see origins of swing in there. But where is blues dancing in all of this? I heard that blues dancing came originally out of the late 1880s to early 1890s.
Hi! "Blues dancing" is an umbrella term for multiple styles of dance done to blues music, just as "swing dancing" is an umbrella term. The earthy, grounded movement common to all blues dances can be connected to buck dancing, and the polycentrism and asymmetry (the "jankiness" and broken shapes) can be connected to wing dancing. You'll see aspects of this in shake blues, black bottom, mooche, grinds, snake hips...And then you get more footwork oriented blues dances, such as "struttin'," which still values the earthy weightedness of buck dancing but arguably has some elements of the jig.
Blue Note San Diego Wow! Thank you!
@@BlueNoteSD👍 much more accurate answer than I ever hear. Blues isn't "A" dance, it's a musical style that many dances/movements evolved to. Exception being the 1926 English ballroom variant of very Slow Fox Trot known a "the blues" since it was created for that express purpose.
Thank you, very informative
Is there any chance of getting the captions corrected on this video, so that it is more accessible? I would love to show it in my class, but can't if the captions are inaccurate!
Thanks for the request! The captions are now updated.
@@dukeuniversity Thank you, much appreciated!
i love this. thank you,
More like Locking instead of Popping, although these two dances were intertwined in their origins, they diverge more and more past time when Locking remains its original Funk but Popping became more and more inclusive to other music genres.
😂.... I'm not familiar with "buck" style tap, but not surprised that it exists. With the exception of the competition - based dance forms (eg modern Irish dance as opposed to traditional figures) an classical ballet all dance forms freely evolve and are greatly affected by geographical location/ cultural influences. with upbeats and downbeats, tap dancers of an advanced level should also be able to dance across the beat alternating between rhythms...I read there this thing in flamenco.. this is a bit random but somewhat related to beats. There's this dance called " sevillanas" I'm sure its a 4/4 piece of music. The choreography is across the bar in a 6/8 count (eg step touch step touch, swing foot behind), and the casanet rhythm go in a 3/4 rhythm on top of this (pi ta ri - a ri - a) it's crazy... One last thing about tap notes - some tap syllable call a " toe heel" a "ball heel" (and similarly, "heel ball" instead of "heel toe")
Wing dance I heard was the thing. Later rock and roll came and changed the whole thing.
Mr. DeFrantz, I'm looking for written descriptions of how to perform the various 19th century cake walk dance steps. Is there such a thing?
Yes I have a small booklet on cakewalks from the ragtime era. I think they have a copy of it at the Jerome Robbins library at Lincoln center New York City in special collections on the third floor.
I would check worldcat though, sometimes I confuse research trips that long ago. The only other place that it could be would be at Harvard's Houghton library.
I could send you some pics of it, if you're still interested and not likely to do a research trip.
Buck and wing is a tap technique and the term comes from tap dancing. And a jig is from Irish clogging, a jig was a "step" (a combination) When the early African-Americans met the Irish doing jigs tap dancing was formed. Buck and wing has "hoofing" time steps that include wings, wings are very difficult advanced tap steps that involves doing a shuffle on the supporting leg. Doing so creates a wing type movement. Look up Bill Robinson, or Buck and Bubbles, or Steve Condos, also Gregory Hines, he often ended his act with several wings, and you can find Gregory Hines discussing the history of tap on TH-cam or read the 'History of Tap' by Beverly Fletcher. I am disappointed a Duke Professor did not even mention tap when talking about Buck and Wing, and jigs and what you did mention was not accurate to the actual terms.
thanks for you input. it clarified things for me for my dance class
I wonder the correlation to African dances?
+Chioma Aso African seems like the Buck type he briefly touched on: lots of percusion and un-grounding.
If you look at current videos of people dancing tabanka and kuduro, you'll see connections to both buck and wing dances in the heavy stomping as well as the flapping of knees and elbows as well!
Cool!
Basically origin of step dancing can be traced to these dances
I'm curious as to why the discussion of the history of these dances is limited to their development in America rather than their historical roots in Africa
Vanessa Bartley because they dont originate in africa, theyre developed when slaves came jn contact with white indentured servants of scotch irish, irish, cornish and other northern europeans cultures.
@@huntersmith6304 Exactly, like Zaouli!!! Maybe you've heard of Scota, the worst African's daughter aka Scotland?!
Dr. Frazier is a Dance Curator who actually does that. You might want to follow her work to see what she is doing. I don't think she is connected to this guy. I know she reached out to him several years ago when she was a Smithsonian scholar....
@@huntersmith6304lies!
😂😂😂😂
Asians
why on earth would you wear those shoes
Defunded
I know it's fashionable to credit EVERYTHING to African-Americans, but they did NOT create these dances, or ragtime, or jazz. To label them African-American dances is very very misleading.
So, according to your information, what was the community responsible for the creation of jazz?
@@leticiamartin5113 Why did it HAVE to be a single community? Like most things it's complex. Western European functional harmony, African rhythmic patterns, primarily. Dance forms, again, primarily, European, also had a large influence. But I'm just skimming the surface here.
@@LazlosPlane Hi, you might need to study more about American dance history.
@@yidilin7181 Well let's see -- the Waltz is part of American dance history. Did that come from Africa. Antecedents to modern tap are largely from Irish traditions filtered through dances both white and black. Other dances go back much further into European history. Like American music does. Correct me if I'm wrong here.