Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
White Screens, Black Dance: Race and Masculinity in the United States at Midcentury

White Screens, Black Dance: Race and Masculinity in the United States at Midcentury

Krayenbuhl, Pamela

Paperback

DanceFilm StudiesMusic Reference

ISBN10: 0197699081
ISBN13: 9780197699089
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Jul 30 2025
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.87
Height: 0.65 Width: 6.16 Depth: 9.13
Language: English
White Screens, Black Dance analyzes the film and television dances of male screen stars in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. Unpacking the complex physical and visual codes performed by four case studies--the Nicholas Brothers, Gene Kelly, Elvis Presley, and Sammy Davis, Jr.--it argues that each employs Black (Africanist) dance and movement vocabularies in distinct ways, all using them to construct shifting models of masculinity over the course of their careers. In so doing, this book theorizes a practice of appropriation called blackbodying, whereby non-Black performers use Black dance and movement styles without using blackface makeup. Applying methodologies from both film and media studies and dance studies, it offers an interdisciplinary reading of these men's star texts and their screen-dances throughout the midcentury period.

To best understand the nuances of their performances, White Screens, Black Dance considers not only the ever-changing, often ambiguous and contradictory signifiers of racial and gender identity from the 1940s-1960s, but also the ways that class, and the differing industrial and visual environments of Hollywood film vs. broadcast television, further shape how all five men danced their masculinities for the camera(s). It ultimately reveals how these resultant midcentury masculinities have continued to influence danced masculinity ever since.

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