A Nation of Realtors: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle-Class (review)

instruction songs that teach European Americans how to dance to black music while Veta Goler discusses blues aesthetics in Diane McIntyre’s lifelong collaboration with jazz artists. The anthology concludes with a history section that excavates information about under-documented African American artists: Asadata Dafora, Margot Webb and Harold Norton, Katherine Dunham, and the New York Negro Ballet. Manning takes a different approach to social activism within dance. Whereas most critical studies of modern dance focus on primarily white choreographers with a nod towards including African American artists, Manning integrates the histories of black and white dance in modern America. Her carefully crafted writing describes continuity and change in the “staging of blackness and whiteness during the period when the term ‘Negro Dance’ was in common usage” (xxiv). Her book discusses some of the same African American artists as the De Frantz volume, however the strength of the writing is the way that it illuminates the complexities of race, culture, and artistic production. Because she includes white (and other) artists, she places the work of the African American artists within a wider social and historical context. Manning thematically groups her material around political approaches to content. For example, the first chapter “Danced Spirituals,” describes the work of black and white choreographers who were inspired by African American spirituals. It includes close readings of performances by Edna Guy and Helmsley Winfield as well as Ted Shawn and Helen Tamiris. What is unique about Manning’s approach to chronicling these dance works is her consideration of text, venue, audience response, and artistic intent. Her reflection on each of these diverse elements allows her to astutely analyze the political implications of the performances. The chapter “Dancing Left” is particularly interesting in this respect. During the 1930s, both the Worker’s Dance League (a consortium of leftist dancers) and the Federal Theatre Project produced dance projects about the underclass. Only the Federal Theatre Project however, supported African American dance productions. Manning notes that “When African American performers linked dances of the Black Atlantic to dances of social protest, Martin [a New York Times dance critic] and his peers hardly took notice” (101). She then delves into the complexity of shifting racial landscapes by describing a 1991 reconstruction How Long Brethren by African American choreographer Dianne McIntyre. Manning confronts the reader with the irony of having a protest dance by white Jewish choreographer Helen Tamiris’ reconstructed 55 years later by a choreographer who would not have been recognized when the dance first created. Through nuanced writings that include multiple critical outlooks, Manning is able to bring politics to dance history. The two books Modern Dance, Negro Dance by Susan Manning and Dancing Many Drums by Tommy DeFrantz offer alternative perspectives about African American dance in the twentieth century and make strong contributions to academic understandings about how dance speaks to American societies. State University of New York at New Paltz Anita Gonzalez