Night’s Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins
By: Yael Tamar Lewin

Dancer Janet Collins, born in New Orleans in 1917 and raised in Los Angeles, soared high over the color line as the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. Night’s Dancer chronicles the life of this extraordinary and elusive woman, who became a unique concert dance soloist as well as a black trailblazer in the white world of classical ballet. During her career, Collins endured an era in which racial bias prevailed, and subsequently prevented her from appearing in the South. Nonetheless, her brilliant performances transformed the way black dancers were viewed in ballet. The book begins with an unfinished memoir written by Collins in which she gives a captivating account of her childhood and young adult years, including her rejection by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Dance scholar Yaël Tamar Lewin then picks up the thread of Collins’s story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with Collins and her family, friends, and colleagues to explore Collins’s development as a dancer, choreographer, and painter, Lewin gives us a profoundly moving portrait of an artist of indomitable spirit.

Dance in Hispanic Cultures; Vol. 3
By: Daniel Lewis
Published by: Harwood Academic Publishers 1994

The papers in this collection focuses on dance themes in nations and populations related by language, history and customs to Spain and Latin America and explores the social, religious, anthropological, folkloric and political roles which dance has played in Hispanic cultures. Vibrant dance life in Spain, Central and South America, the Philippines, New York and Miami attests to the very strength of the current that dance in Hispanic culture continues to offer. The essays examine such topics as new Latin dance, cosmic imagery in the religious dances of Seville's Golden Age, Fanny Elssler in Havana, Don Quixote in the 20th century as a mirror for choreographers, Bronislave Nikinska's Bolero, the Hispanic influence on Leonide Massine, Carlos Chavez's Aztec ballets, Spanish dance in multinational performances 500 years ago, and Carmen Amaya's Flamenco dance in South American vaudeville.

The Black Tradition in American Dance
By: Richard A. Long, Joe Nash

Chronicles the achievements of noted black dancers and choreographers, combining the observations of contemporary critics with a definitive history of African-American dance, from the early minstrels through the dance dramas of Asadata Dafora and modern companies.

A Girl Named Misty: The True Story of Misty Copeland
By: Kelly Starling Lyons

A Girl Named Misty describes the defining moments that made up her childhood and adolescence with full-color illustrations throughout. In addition to stories and facts about Misty's upbringing and accomplishments, the book includes a timeline and a glossary, plus a profile of a noteworthy and contemporary American girl following in Misty's graceful footsteps to lead the way for African American women in the arts.

Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance
By Jacqui Malone

Steppin' on the Blues explores not only the meaning of dance in African American life but also the ways in which music, song, and dance are interrelated in African American culture. Dance as it has emanated from the black community is a pervasive, vital, and distinctive form of expression--its movements speak eloquently of African American values and aesthetics. Beyond that it has been, finally, one of the most important means of cultural survival.

Stomping the Blues
By: Albert Murray

Hemsley Winfield: Modern Dance Pioneer, A Biography
By: Nelson D Neal, Ed.D.

This is a biography about the life and career of Hemsley Winfield, the first African American modern dancer, director, and choreographer. He was a modern dance pioneer, along with his contemporaries, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. The author, Dr. Nelson D. Neal is the authority on Hemsley Winfield having researched him for 28 years. He has 4 publications, 2 internet articles, a web page and 10 presentations about the life and career of Hemsley Winfield.

Hemsley Winfield: The Forgotten Pioneer of Modern Dance: An Annotated Bibliography, 2nd ed.
By: Nelson D Neal, Ed.D.

Second edition of the annotated bibliography of African American modern dance pioneer, Hemsley Winfield. It has 511 annotations and 31 images, some that have never been published before. Winfield was a contemporary of Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. His career was cut short when he died, January 15,1934 of pneumonia. He was only 26. He had many notable performances including dancing as the Congo Witch Doctor in The Emperor Jones opera at the Metropolitan Opera House and was the first African American contracted for a major role there. He founded, directed, choreographed, and danced with his company The New Negro Art Theatre Dance Group throughout New York city and surrounding states.

African Dance in Ghana: Contemporary Transformations Paperback
By: Francis Nii-Yartey

In eight chapters, Professor Francis Nii-Yartey guides the reader through the history of dance in Ghana and West Africa: from the traditional dances at special occasions to contemporary performances in Ghana and elsewhere. The book is illustrated with photos, sketches and explanatory diagrams. African Dance in Ghana: Contemporary Transformations is not only aimed at students of African dance, but also anyone who wants to discover the rich dance traditions of Ghana.

Fighting For Honor: History of African Martial Arts Traditions in the Atlantic World
By: T.J. Desch Obi
Published by: South Carolina University Press

The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture. In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline. Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Obi's investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves
By: Halifu Osumare

Asserting that hip hop culture has become another locus of postmodernity, Osumare explores the intricacies of this phenomenon from the beginning of the Twenty-First century, tracing the aesthetic and socio-political path of the currency of hip hop across the globe.

Black Choreographers Moving: A National Dialogue
By: Halifu Osumare, Julinda Lewis-Ferguson

The panels and papers in this anthology were presented at the first conference devoted to Black dance, held in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1989. The most interesting debate focuses on the definition of an Afro-American aesthetic. Brenda Dixon ties the responsive patterns of dance movements to the deliberate asymmetry that characterizes the visual arts in Africa; Osumare argues that African-American dance continues an African tradition of functionalism in art. The arguments over the relationship between criticism and black dance apparently grew quite heated, although the discussions prove inconclusive. This intriguing exploration of the links between art and ethnicity has become an ongoing series: A second festival was held in 1991, and a third is slated for 1992.

Dancing in Blackness. A Memoir: The Life and Times of Halifu Osumare
By: Halifu Osumare
Published by: University Press of Florida

Dancing in Blackness is a professional dancer's personal journey over four decades, across three continents and twenty-three countries, and through defining moments in the story of black dance in America. In this memoir, Halifu Osumare reflects on what blackness and dance have meant to her life and international career.

African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond
By: John O. Perpener

Advances the study of pioneering black dancers by providing biographical and historical information on a group of artists who worked during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to legitimize dance of the African diaspora. This title sets these seminal artists and their innovations in the contexts of African-American culture and American modern dance.

America Dancing: From the Cakewalk to the Moonwalk
By: Megan Pugh

Using the stories of tapper Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, ballet and Broadway choreographer Agnes de Mille, choreographer Paul Taylor, and Michael Jackson, Megan Pugh shows how freedom—that nebulous, contested American ideal—emerges as a genre-defining aesthetic. In Pugh’s account, ballerinas mingle with slumming thrill-seekers, and hoedowns show up on elite opera house stages. Steps invented by slaves on antebellum plantations captivate the British royalty and the Parisian avant-garde. Dances were better boundary crossers than their dancers, however, and the issues of race and class that haunt everyday life shadow American dance as well. Deftly narrated, America Dancing demonstrates the centrality of dance in American art, life, and identity, taking us to watershed moments when the nation worked out a sense of itself through public movement.