By all accounts, we are again in the midst of a “dance craze,“ a cultural moment when a wide swath of people—most remarkably, white middle-class youth—embrace the ability to communicate and coordinate using little loops of codified gesture. As with prior crazes, the phenomenon is inseparable from new media: the craze of the 1910s, with its scandalous “animal dances” and ragtime rhythms, was abetted by dance manuals, silent films, and a new public culture of dancing;1 the Twist-era explosion of solo/group dances in the early 1960s spread via television programs, such as American Bandstand;2 and the current craze of the late 2010s—promulgating such re-branded moves as the Floss,...
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2019
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