country has been almost absolute. For generations the "buck and wing" and
the "stop-time" dances, which are strictly Negro, have been familiar to
American theatre audiences. A few years ago the public discovered the
"turkey trot," the "eagle rock," "ballin' the jack," and several other
varieties that started the modern dance craze. These dances were quickly
followed by the "tango," a dance originated by the Negroes of Cuba and
later transplanted to South America. (This fact is attested by no less
authority than Vincente Blasco Ibañez in his "Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse.") Half the floor space in the country was then turned over to
dancing, and highly paid exponents sprang up everywhere. The most noted,
Mr. Vernon Castle, and, by the way, an Englishman, never danced except to
the music of a colored band, and he never failed to state to his audiences
that most of his dances had long been done by "your colored people," as he
put it.

Any one who witnesses a musical production in which there is dancing
cannot fail to notice the Negro stamp on all the movements; a stamp which
even the great vogue of Russian dances that swept the country about the
time of the popular dance craze could not affect. That peculiar swaying of
the shoulders which you see done everywhere by the blond girls of the
chorus is nothing more than a movement from the Negro dance referred to
above, the "eagle rock." Occasionally the movement takes on a suggestion
of the, now outlawed, "shimmy."

As for Ragtime, I go straight to the statement that it is the one
artistic production by which America is known the world over. It has been
all-conquering. Everywhere it is hailed as "American music."

For a dozen years or so there has been a steady tendency to divorce
Ragtime from the Negro; in fact, to take from him the credit of having