Buck Dancing [1]
Buck Dancing
See also: Clogging [2]; Step Dancing [3].
Buck dancing is a folk dance [4] that originated among African Americans [5] during the era of slavery. It was largely associated with the North Carolina Piedmont [6] and, later, with the blues [7]. The original buck dance, or "buck and wing," referred to a specific step performed by solo dancers, usually men; today the term encompasses a broad variety of improvisational dance steps.
In contemporary usage, "buck dancing" often refers to a variety of solo step dancing to fiddle-based music [8] done by dancers primarily in the Southern Appalachians. Among North Carolinians, buck dancing is differentiated from clogging [2] and flatfooting by the use of steps higher off the floor, a straight and relatively immobile torso, and emphasis on steps that put the dancer on his or her toes rather than heels.
Reference:
Mike Seeger and Ruth Pershing, Talking Feet: Buck, Flatfoot, and Tap: Solo Southern Dance of the Appalachian, Piedmont, and Blue Ridge Mountain Regions (1992).
Additional Resources:
Emmylou Harris: Buck Dancing, YouTube video, 3:28, posted by 1000Magicians, Oct 13, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsIBS0l7Hqg [9] (accessed October 11, 2012).
Driggs, Jeff. "A Brief History of Clog Dancing." Doubletoe Times Magazine. http://www.doubletoe.com/history.htm [10](accessed October 11, 2012).
Bradley, Sandra Lee. "The Social Context of Buck Dancing in North Carolina in the 1940s [11]." M.S. Thesis, University of Washington. Seattle, Wash. 1978.
Image Credits:
Duke University Professor Thomas F. DeFrantz: Buck, Wing & Jig. Duke University on YouTube. http://youtu.be/A34OD4eA17o [12] (accessed February 9, 2015).
1 January 2006 | Baker, Bruce E.