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In this essay, Yvonne Daniel highlights the necessity of employing appropriate terminology when discussing African dance forms - terminology that distinguishes dance forms based on geographical, social, and stylistic histories. Daniel provides an analysis of Afro-Cuban dance categories while bridging to similar dance traditions found throughout the Caribbean and Afro-Latin America. Daniel offers a pluralistic typography of African and Diaspora dance forms and allows a more precise legacy representation. She concludes with a set of recommendations for the mentoring of African Dance performers, researchers, and Performing Arts communities.

Xiomarita Pérez discusses the Dominican son, its dance, how to teach it, and the characteristics of dance and personal style that mark a true Dominican sonero. The Dominican son descends from the Cuban son, but the dance and music have developed locally. To the son's irresistible rhythms and lilting guitar, the soneros, urban people who have developed a subculture that stresses elegance, dance with grace and great style, hips moving to the lilt, men taking breaks for elaborate footwork or inventive body shifts, women and men partnering as one. Pérez, who teaches son (among other dances) in Santo Domingo, emphasizes rhythm and the elegance of son and the sonero.

This chapter focuses on individual dance styles and the relationships between discourses about Latinidad and Latino bodies that inform dancing fans moving to the beat of Nor-tec. It attempts to show how different Nor-tec dance styles allow different communities to reconcile outside discourses of representation with their own notions of self-identity and their own cosmopolitan aspirations with the commodified desires that hegemonic libidinal economies impose on them.

The notion of transculturation is key to understanding the many intertribal, interracial, and intergenerational exchanges-- including the attendance of indigenous peoples from across the Americas--that take place at powwow in the United States and Canada. Chapter 5 explores this concept by examining the sites at which transcultural exchanges are most prevalent: the Grand Entry, the “intertribal,” and the Tiny Tots dance category. The body actions and regalia involved in traditional men’s and women’s dance styles and substyles are analyzed, and gender issues are also considered.

This chapter offers a brief overview of jazz dance styles. Styles that are defined include authentic jazz dance, tap dance, club jazz dance, jazz-influenced dance, rhythm-generated jazz dance, theatrical jazz dance, Afro-Carribean jazz dance, Broadway jazz dance, classical jazz dance, commercial jazz dance, concert jazz dance, contemporary jazz dance, Latin jazz dance, lyrical jazz dance, pop jazz dance, West-coast jazz dance, vernacular jazz dance, hip-hop dance, funk, and street jazz dance. Styles are grouped in a way that suggests shared roots and aesthetic principals. Readers are encouraged to refer to this section as a glossary but to keep in mind that many of the styles fall into more than one category and can even overlap with other styles in its group.

This chapter on powwow history introduces “polychronic genealogy”––a term that emerges from Native American concepts of space and time. Sundry performative actions and performance practices and the concept of the ongoing force of Iruska, “fire power,” and can be traced to colonial––and most likely pre-Columbian––dance societies. Utilizing archival and oral records to track the sources of powwow performance, Axtmann discusses the transcultural features apparent in powwow development among the Plains Indians as well as among eastern tribes. These shared features include the circular dance floor; the spectacle of entrance parades; dancers’ embodiment of animals, birds, and insects in gesture and regalia; and the recurrence of specific vignettes, such as the Eagle Dance Ceremony. Chapter 2 also juxtaposes the Omaha Hethushka–Grass Dance society of centuries ago with today’s grass dance style.

This chapter examines the role of of cultural exchange in the evolution of old time dancing and the creation of a new style in dance in the coal town of Dante in Russell County, Virginia. It begins with a historical background on the Cumberland Plateau and the town of Dante as well as the community's transition from farming to coal mining. It then discusses the impact of social and economic factors, including the interaction among local residents, African American southerners, and European immigrants, on Dante's dance traditions. It also looks at the exchange of dance ideas that took place in venues like Mr. Perry's Sweet Shop, along with the ways that dancing forged connections among African American communities in the coalfields. Finally, it explores changes in the old time dancing in Dante, citing the role played by the values embedded in the movement of the old and new dances and to people's beliefs about community, change, and the individual's relationship to it.

In this interlude, the author reflects on her experience of dancing the last waltz of the evening with Leo, a retired physician who also happens to be her neighbor. She describes Leo as one of her favorite partners in ballroom dance. He has a somewhat unique, syncretic salsa dance style. As he and the author were dancing the last waltz of the night, David played a vocal number. She sang along, and Leo didn't seem to mind. The author claims that while dancing with Leo, she experienced a pleasurable moment of just disappearing, as is often the case when she smooth dances with him. She was awakened by the closing refrains of the song. As she moved toward him and they were poised together, they turned as one entity. They continued to turn together as the final cadence of the song sounded.