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Early 1800s Music and Dance Extravaganza!
Scholars and performers will celebrate a new book about Black and Irish competitive dancers in early-19th-century New York City.
Stony Brook University professor April Masten, author of the new book Diamond and Juba: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing (U. of Illinois Press), and other experts will discuss the lives of two antebellum dancers and perform works related to their careers: Irish American John Diamond (c. 1823–1857) and African American William Henry Lane (1825–c. 1852), known as Juba. Diamond and Juba became internationally famous as competitors in the art and sport of challenge dancing, which was born from Black-Irish social interaction in antebellum New York’s dockside markets, taverns, and theaters. Promoted as a masculine art with ties to boxing, it featured prolific gambling, hefty purses, and championship belts, yet also included women competitors, cross-dressing, and blackface. Its practitioners’ astonishing jigs drew huge audiences across northeastern port cities, along Mississippi Valley circus routes, and into England’s provincial music halls. Masten’s study of Diamond and Juba’s rivalry and parallel careers offers a rare glimpse into Black and immigrant strivings in an expanding nation keen for talent yet divided by prejudice.
The evening’s scholars and performers, in addition to April Masten, will include cultural historian John Reddick; dancer, actor, and scholar DeWitt Fleming Jr. performing Black-Irish tap dance; legendary fiddle player Gabe Terracciano; instrumentalist and singer Hubby Jenkins playing old-time banjo; and vocalist, musician, and writer Christina Britton Conroy.
Masten’s book will be available for sale and signing at the event, which will be followed by a reception with refreshments.
Wednesday, December 10
6:30–8:00 pm
Middle Church
50 E. 7th Street, New York, NY 10003
Cover design by Jason R. Gabbert
“Bravo Dick!_welt the flure!!_foot about!!!” From “The Hedge School,” Designed & Etched by W. H. Brooke, A.R.H.A., Dublin, Published by Wm. Curry Jun.r & Co. Marsh, 1830.
Excerpt from Georgia Champions playbill, Portland, Maine, June 18 [1845]. Box 7, Folder-Juba, Mins., Box 7 (H-K), Playbills-Companies, Minstrels, Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
William Sydney Mount, Dance of the Haymakers, 1845. Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages.
Detail from Royal Vauxhall Gardens Poster, 1848. Harvard Theatre Collection.