The black bottom is a dance which became popular in the 1920s—the Roaring Twenties, also known as the Jazz Age, and the era of the flapper. It was danced solo or by couples.
Black bottom, jazz dance combining shoulder and hip movements, danced by African Americans in the U.S. South as early as 1907. In a modified version it became a national craze after its appearance in a 1926 Broadway musical. The black bottom exhibited a number of features derived from the aesthetics of African dance, most notably syncopated rhythms, bent knees, crouched torsos, and hip and pelvic movements. Along with the Charleston, another dance that was popular in the 1920s, the black bottom helped shatter the dominance of couple dancing. Although people may have continued to dance opposite each other in pairs, they no longer held each other or danced in unison, and it was perfectly permissible for the dancer to dance singly.
Originating among African Americans in the rural South, the black bottom eventually was adopted by mainstream American culture and became a national craze in the 1920s.[1] The dance was most famously performed by Ann Pennington, a star of the Ziegfeld Follies, who performed it in a Broadway revue staged by Ziegfeld's rival George White in 1926.
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