Buck Dancing

 

If you're not from the Appalachians, you may not know about Buck Dancing. Here's an old gentleman demonstrating. 

 

3 comments:

J Melcher said...

I have heard the expression "buck and wing".

Is there a relationship, I wonder. Search Engine question, I suppose...

Grim said...

Weirdly, given that those are both tap-styles of dancing and both early styles at that, I'm not sure they're closely related. Buck Dancing is a mountain style, with few arm motions in the manner of Celtic dance; Buck-and-Wing is an African American style as I understand it. As such it wouldn't have belonged to the mountains, which were unfit for cotton production, but was subject to a much broader audience and popularity.

J Melcher said...

If "Buck" alone has few arm movements then adding wild arm gestures to the retained and various foot/leg styles would seem to call for a two part name: one for the retained part and one for the new part. Buck for the legs, Wing for the arms.

https://www.britannica.com/art/tap-dance#ref205307

Tap originated in the United States through the fusion of several ethnic percussive dances, primarily West African sacred and secular step dances (gioube) and Scottish, Irish, and English clog dances, hornpipes, and jigs. Until the last few decades of the 20th century, it was believed that enslaved Africans and Irish indentured servants had observed each other’s dances on Southern plantations and that tap dancing was born from this contact. In the late 20th century, however, researchers suggested that tap instead was nurtured in such urban environments as the Five Points District in New York City, where a variety of ethnic groups lived side by side under crowded conditions and in constant contact with the distinctly urban rhythms and syncopations of the machine age. ...
buck-and-wing dancing (a fast and flashy dance usually done in wooden-soled shoes and combining Irish clogging styles, high kicks, and complex African rhythms and steps such as the shuffle and slide;


Seems to me as if city slickers were doin' some "cultural appropriation" of rural artistry, there.

On the division between the mountain rednecks and the plantation workforce -- I'm reminded of the relation between English "Borderer" accents and modern Ebonics. It seems to me a lot more cross over than many moderns would like to admit.