Dance

In the 17th and 18th centuries colonial dance featured a variety of forms, origins, and purposes. Colonial dance contained significant CLASS and ethnic divisions, as the wealthy European gentry (or landed aristocracy), poorer colonial laborers, enslaved Africans, and Native Americans each danced according to the rhythms of their unique cultural and ethnic heritages.

Wealthy white colonists enjoyed emulating distinctly European dance forms, often hiring formal dance instructors knowledgeable about popular European dances and purchasing elaborate musical instruments with which to accompany their dances. Despite a burgeoning colonial culture of dance—often developed through the integration of ethnic and distinctly colonial techniques—it nevertheless remained fashionable for wealthier colonists to dance in strictly European forms. The colonial gentry danced in their opulent homes for smaller audiences; most often women and young girls danced to demonstrate skills befitting their social and economic class. Outside the private sphere the colonial elite enjoyed formal public dances (such as dances following theater performances), where elite couples would perform their well-practiced formal dances before an audience. Wealthy colonists attempted to maintain their social standing in part through their solitary claim on formal European dance forms.

Poorer European colonists enjoyed dancing without the strict form and structure often followed by their “betters.” Unable to purchase expensive instruments, the less well-to-do colonists danced to the accompaniment of “Jew’s harps” and homemade instruments, such as flutelike wind instruments. The average colonist enjoyed community dances that avoided the strict formality of traditional dance, instead opting to dance in free-form jigs, hornpipes, and reels. The latter involved a blend of individual dancing interspersed with individual dancers weaving figure eights around other solitary and stationary dancers.

Nevertheless, these sharp class divisions did not endure indefinitely. The early 18th century welcomed the advent of dance writing, such as John Essex’s The Dancing-Master: or the Art of Dancing Explained (London, 1725). This new writing technique allowed authors to record specific dance steps. Although dance writing did not immediately integrate the upper - and lower-class colonial dance experience, it loosened a portion of the colonial elite’s stranglehold on the knowledge of fashionable European dance.

For slaves, 17th - and 18th-century dances enhanced African cultural identity and provided an expressive outlet for an oppressed segment of colonial society. Enslaved Africans used dance to celebrate, socialize, worship, pray, and relax. African dances often conjoined the spiritual and secular experience. African culture manifested through unique dances thrived in the American colonies. One African dance, the “Ring Dance,” featured barefoot men and women encircled, dancing rhythmically to the sound of their shuffling feet, clapping hands, and collective voice. In a concrete manner, African dance fostered a vibrant culture of resistance fueled by dance’s capacity to nurture unique cultural and ethnic heritages.

Similar to the African-American dance experience, Native American dance sustained indigenous culture. Archaeological evidence and Native American oral history demonstrate that dance was an integral component in virtually all Native American tribes long before the European arrival. During colonial times Native American dance continued to have widespread spiritual and cultural significance, including celebration, religious prayer, courting rituals, and controlling or harmonizing with nature. These dances featured a vast array of forms, as Native Americans danced to the sounds of their unique regional and tribal voices, drums, and rattles. By retaining important cultural and spiritual practices, dance sustained a vibrant Native American culture throughout the colonial period.

Further reading: Reginald Laubin, Indian Dances of North America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977); Maureen Needham, I See America Dancing: Selected Readings, 1685-2000 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002).

—Christopher Rodi

Dare, Virginia (b. 1587) settler

Virginia Dare was the first English child born in North America. Daughter of Ananias Dare, a bricklayer, and Eleanor Dare, daughter of John White, the governor of the fledgling Roanoke colony, Virginia was born in August 1587. The presence of women and children in the 1587 Roanoke colony signaled a fundamental shift in English strategy to populate the island, moving from a military privateering base to an effort to establish a more permanent colony with families as a stabilizing force. Unfortunately, the 1587 group was destined to become the famous “Lost Colony” of Roanoke. When Governor White left the colony to return to England for supplies shortly after Virginia’s birth, the arrival of the Spanish Armada off the English coast delayed his return until 1590. When he finally reached the site of the settlement, White discovered an abandoned fort and indications that the settlers had moved to a nearby island. The colonists were never found, however, and their fate remains a mystery.

Further reading: Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman & Allan-held, 1984).

—Melanie Perreault