Dance

Dance in the Americas, broadly speaking, evolved as dance traditions brought by enslaved Africans selectively absorbed European influences. The original crucible for the hybrid dances born in the Americas were the Caribbean islands where from the early 1500s the dancing of enslaved peoples, largely from Western and Central Africa, began to encounter that of European colonizers, mainly from Spain, France, Portugal, and Britain. Alarmed by reports of mounting pro-Nazi sympathy throughout South America, and intent on strengthening US relations in the region, in 1941 the US State Department sponsored a troupe of dancers, the American Ballet Caravan, on a South American tour during which it showed off the Americana ballets and Balanchine’s choreography. Dance trends have spread across the Americas via commercial entertainment for centuries, with touring dance troupes, dramatic stage productions, Wild West shows, and vaudeville acts displaying a vast variety of movement styles.