ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the impact of performers from the African Diaspora on nineteenth-century theatrical entertainment in North America and Europe. Dance historian Marian Hannah Winters has claimed that he was the "most influential single performer of nineteenth century American dance. African American music had little impact in nineteenth-century Germany and the same was true of France until 1892, when the song 'Tha-ma-ra-Boum-di-he arrived. For most African Americans in the 1870s, minstrelsy remained the only option of earning a living performing in the theatre. In the early twentieth century, blackface was absorbed into variety theatres and, later, blackface emerged in film – in the first talkie, indeed, starring Al Jolson. Twentieth-century tap dancing owes a debt to Master Juba, and W. T. Lhamon has shown that many of the dance moves made by black dancers of the 1980s and '90s, including Michael Jackson, can be directly related to minstrel show dance steps.
