Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader

By Julie Malnig, editor

(University of Illinois Press, 2008)

Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, edited by Gallatin School of Individualized Study professor Julie Malnig, explores a broad range of social and popular dances—those performed by the public in gathering places such as ballrooms, cabarets, nightclubs, dance halls, discotheques, and the street—from the 18th century to the present day.
    The book considers the styles of social and popular dance that developed as a result of the rich fusions of West African, African American, Euro-American, and Latin American forms of dance within the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean, and analyzes these dances within their wider social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Malnig also describes the way in which social dance became popularized in different theatrical mediums, such as the musical theatre of the 1920s and MTV of the 1980s and 90s. The essays, which examine dances from the Virginia Jig to the Lindy Hop to Mambo to Cajun dance, emphasize several methodological approaches, among them ethnography, anthropology, gender studies, and critical race theory.