Dancing in the English style : consumption, Americanisation and national identity in Britain, 1918-50 / Allison Abra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Abra, Allison, author.

Series:

Studies in popular culture (Manchester, England)

Studies in popular culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dance--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Dance.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 287 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Popular dance in Britain fundamentally transformed in the early 1920s. This book explores the development, experience and cultural representation of popular dance in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. The specific focus is on two distinct yet occasionally overlapping commercial producers: the dance profession and the dance hall industry. The strong foreign, and increasingly American, influences on dancing directly connected this cultural form with questions about the autonomy and identity of the British nation. The book uses dancing as a lens through which to better understand broader historical processes of popular cultural production and consumption, and national identity construction. The first part of the book focuses on the efforts of dancing's producers to construct a standardised style and experience for British dancing, and the response to those efforts by consumers. These interactions determined which dances would find success in Britain, and how and where they would be performed. The second part demonstrates how these interactions between dancing's producers and consumers constructed, circulated, embodied, but also commodified, ideologies of gender, class, race and nation. The dance profession transformed the steps and figures of foreign dances like the foxtrot and tango into what became known as the 'English style' of ballroom dancing. The dance hall industry launched a series of novelty dances, such as the Lambeth Walk, that were celebrated for their British origins and character, and marketed the wartime dance floor as a site of patriotism and resistance.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

General editor’s foreword

Introduction

1 Dancing mad! The modernisation of popular dance

2 Who makes new dances? The dance profession and the evolution of style

3 At the palais: the dance hall industry and the standardisation of experience

4 The dance evil: gender, sexuality and the representation of popular dance

5 English style: foreign culture, race and the Anglicisation of popular dance

6 Doing the Lambeth Walk: novelty dances and the commodification of the nation

7 Dancing democracy in wartime Britain

8 The ‘infernal jitterbug’ and the transformation of popular dance

Epilogue: Come dancing – popular dance in post-war Britain

Select bibliography

Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 24 Apr 2026).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 266-276) and index.

ISBN:

9781526105950

1526105950

9781526128218

1526128217

9781526105943

1526105942

OCLC:

1119659486