The popularity and profile of African dance have exploded across the African diaspora in the last fifty years. Hot Feet and Social Change presents traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and contemporary artists, teachers, and scholars telling some of the thousands of stories lived and learned by people in the field. Concentrating on eight major cities in the United States, the essays challenges myths about African dance while demonstrating its power to awaken identity, self-worth, and community respect. These voices of experience share personal accounts of living African traditions, their first encounters with and ultimate embrace of dance, and what teaching African-based dance has meant to them and their communities. Throughout, the editors alert readers to established and ongoing research, and provide links to critical contributions by African and Caribbean dance experts.

Contributors: Ausettua Amor Amenkum, Abby Carlozzo, Steven Cornelius, Yvonne Daniel, Charles "Chuck" Davis, Esailama G. A. Diouf, Indira Etwaroo, Habib Iddrisu, Julie B. Johnson, C. Kemal Nance, Halifu Osumare, Amaniyea Payne, William Serrano-Franklin, and Kariamu Welsh

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Foreword: The Bantaba! Initiation of Purpose Preface Introduction: When, Where, and How We Enter PART I: HOT FEET AND LOCAL HISTORIES SAUCE!: Conjuring the African Dream in America through Dance Dance Rooted in the Movements of Bedford-Stuyvesant: Two Choreographers, One Aesthetic Tradition From Warm-up to Dobale in Philadelphia: Embodying "Community" Meaning in a West African Dance Class PART II: THE ELDERS' WORK AND WORKS Ago! Ame!: Baba Chuck Speaks! The "Gospel" of Memory: Inscribed Bodies in the African Diaspora Kankouran West African Dance Company, Washington, D.C. Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago: 1972–2018 and Still Thriving Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective: In the City and a Prison of New Orleans "The Fierce Freedom of Their Souls": Activism of African Dance in the Oakland Bay Area The African Choreographer's Envisioning Mentoring Notes on African Diaspora Dance Styles and Continuity PART III: PERPETUAL MOTION IN THE AESTHETICS OF AFRICA Embodying Rhythm: Improvisation as Agency in African Dance From Village to International Stage: Baamaaya and the Politics of Adaptation Men Walk in Parallel!: Dancing in Chuck Davis's "Paths" Selected Bibliography Contributors Index Back cover |"An intriguing collection of stories about the origins and purposes of African dance . . . Hot Feet and Social Change, is a strong resource." —African Studies Quarterly
"The collection is generally well conceived and will surely provide inspiration for the dance world." —Choice
"Many of the authors are themselves the sources of both dance traditions created within the last decades and of significant studies about them. This work is unprecedented and, thanks to its insider perspectives, only possible as the editors have constructed it."—Sheila S. Walker, editor of African Roots, American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas
|Kariamu Welsh is Professor Emerita of Dance at Temple University. Her books include Umfundalai: An African Dance Technique. Esailama G. A. Diouf is the founding director of Bisemi Foundation Inc. and the Arts and Culture Consultant at the San Francisco Foundation. Yvonne Daniel is Professor Emerita of Dance and Afro-American Studies at Smith College. Her books include Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé and Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship.