ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two specific instances in which jazz and dance were linked with the expression of black British identities. It chapter shows that studying jazz and dance in cafes and ballrooms, and not only in the canonical heyday of the relationship between the two forms, is crucial to appreciating the social functions of jazz in different communities. Indeed, jazz can provide both musicians and dancers with the potential to construct new styles as expressions of individual and collective identities: Popular dancing is an extremely important cultural activity, for bodily movement is a kind of repository for social and individual identity. The dancing body engages the cultural inscripting of self and the pursuit of pleasure, dancing events are key sites in the working and reworking of racial, class and gender boundaries. The development of scenes can be broadly characterized by a shift from the peripheries towards the mainstream, mediated by the culture industry.
