Babylon girls : black women performers and the shaping of the modern Jayna Brown

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Jayna, 1966- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American women entertainers--Biography.

African Americans in the performing arts.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 339 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2008.

Summary:

"Babylon Girls is a groundbreaking cultural history of the African American women who performed in variety shows - chorus lines, burlesque revues, cabaret acts, and the like - between 1890 and 1945. Through a consideration of the gestures, costuming, vocal techniques, and stagecraft developed by African American singers and dancers, Jayna Brown explains how these women shaped the movement and style of an emerging urban popular culture. In an era of U.S. and British imperialism, these women challenged and played with constructions of race, gender, and the body as they moved across stages and geographic space. They pioneered dance movements including the cakewalk, the shimmy, and the Charleston - black dances by which the "New Woman" defined herself. These early-twentieth-century performers brought these dances with them as they toured across the United States and around the world, becoming cosmopolitan subjects more widely traveled than many of their audiences"--Book cover.

Contents:

Introduction

1. "Little Black Me" : The Touring Picaninny Choruses

2. Letting the Flesh Fly : Topsy, time, Torture, and Transfiguration

3. "Egyptian Beauties" and "Creole Queens" : The Performance of City and Empire on the Fin-de-Siécle Black Burlesque Stage

4. The cakewalk business

5. Everybody's Doing It : Social Dance, Segregation, and the New Body

6. Babylon Girls : Primitivist Modernism, Anti-modernism, and Black Chorus Line Dancers

7. Translocations : Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, and Valaida Snow

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-332) and index.

Theatre Library Association George Freedley Memorial Award, 2009.

Local Notes:

Pennsylvania Abolition Society Complimentary Collection.

Other Format:

Online version: Brown, Jayna, 1966- Babylon girls.

ISBN:

9780822341338

0822341336

9780822341574

0822341573

OCLC:

213375889