African American dance: a complex history / Thomas F. DeFrantz -- Christian conversion and the challenge of dance / P. Sterling Stuckey -- Dance and identity politics in American Negro vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters, 1900-1935 / Nadine A. George -- Awkward moves: dance lessons from the 1940s / Marya Annette McQuirter -- (Up)Staging the primitive: Pearl Primus and "the Negro problem" in American dance / Richard C. Green -- African dance in New York City / Marcia E. Heard and Mansa K. Mussa -- From "Messin' around" to "Funky Western civilization": the rise and fall of dance instruction songs / Sally Bances and John F. Szwed -- "Moves on top of blues": Dianne McIntyre's blues aesthetic / Veta Goler -- Kykunkor, or the witch woman: an African opera in America, 1934 / Maureen Needham -- Between two eras: "Norton and Margot" in the Afro-American entertainment world / Brenda Dixon Gottschild -- Katherine Dunham's Southland: protest in the face of repression / Constance Valis Hill -- The New York Negro Ballet in Great Britain / Dawn Lille Horwitz.