Ragtime Dance Craze (Turkey Trot, Grizzly Bear)
Poet involved
What happened
The early 1910s saw a massive public fad for exuberant and physically daring ragtime dances such as the Turkey Trot, Grizzly Bear, and Bunny Hug. These dances, often performed to the new syncopated rhythms of ragtime music, were considered scandalous and even 'animalistic' by moral guardians, who saw them as a threat to social decency. The craze was a major facet of youth culture and represented a break from the rigid social conventions of the Victorian era, helping to liberate dance and social interaction.
Literary impact
The ragtime dance craze, with its raw energy and defiance of tradition, paralleled and influenced the modernist poetic revolution. The new rhythms and social freedoms of the age found echoes in the works of poets like Vachel Lindsay, who sought to capture American vernacular speech and syncopation in his verse. The cultural upheaval surrounding these dances was part of the broader 'revolt against Victorianism' that modern poets navigated and expressed.
Source: Utah State University Library
