Answer:
Dance was an integral part of daily life among African American slaves. Observations of slave culture, particularly on the Southern plantation, yield evidence of a layering of traditional African tribal dance practices shared, blended, and reinvented in the New World. For this reason, dance practices among African American slaves represent a narrative of resistance and survival. In (1972), Lynne Fauley Emery discusses the slave owners' practice of what they called "dancing the slaves." This activity occurred on board the ships transporting the slaves from Africa to America, the voyage American history records as the Middle Passage. She notes, "Dancing was encouraged for economic reasons; slaves who had been exercised looked better and brought a higher price" (Emery 1972, p. 6). Noting the physiological benefits of exercise, slave owners forced slaves to exercise to maintain their health. Alexander Falconridge, a white surgeon on board one of the slave ships, recalled "Exercise being deemed necessary for the preservation of [the slaves' health], they are sometime obliged to dance, when the weather will permit their coming on deck. If they go about it reluctantly, they are flogged" (Emery 1972, p. 8). "Dancing the slaves" continued beyond the slave ships, permeating America's Southern plantation culture.
On the plantations, slave owners forced slaves to dance "under the lash," both for economic reasons and for entertainment. Slaves were danced to maintain a healthy appearance, though, given the often-meager conditions in which they lived, they appeared anything but. Emery concludes, "[The African slave] danced not for love, nor for joy, nor religious celebration [as he had done in his native African home]; he danced in answer to the whip. He danced for survival" (1972, p. 12). Dancing provided a mask for what were sad, dismal living conditions, despite the slaves' happy and healthy façades. The process of "dancing the slaves" demonstrates the way slave owners made negative a practice that, for many African slaves, had been culturally redeeming. But many slaves were able to recast many of these same movements in a positive light simply by using similar movements and gestures to create a common language and use it for the good of community and culture-building.
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