I decided to talk about the Charleston. The Charleston is a dance that was named after the city Charleston, South Carolina. The dance went with a song that came out in 1923 called the Charleston by James P. Johnson. This song was first heard in the Broadway show Runnin’ Wild. This song was one of the most popular songs of the decade.When people think about the Charleston they usually connect it to “white flappers” (or young women who drank excessively and dressed in revealing clothes like really short skirts. They are kind of like what we call a stripper or maybe a prostitute today.) These women would sometimes do the dance alone or together as a way to kind of make fun of, or mock people who favored the Prohibition amendment. These people were also called the “drys”.At first the dance was basically just twisting your feet. This happened in a kind of a slow and lazy way. When the dance got to Harlem a new version was created which now made it a fast paced dance with kicking. Tap shoes were eventually added to this as well.Even though the dance had similar parts of a “Negro dance”, it was ultimately aimed to get the interest of everyone it could.How to Dance the Charleston
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