Beacon Press: Feel the Floor
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Feel the Floor

Restoring the Life and Legacy of Jazz Choreographer Buddy Bradley

Author: Maureen Footer

“ . . . An urgent offering that brings forward [Buddy] Bradley’s unlikely achievement as an African American dance artist . . . A triumph of research and compassion.”
—Dr. Thomas De Frantz, author of Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance

The first biography of the deeply influential and unjustly overlooked Black choreographer and dancer Buddy Bradley

Buddy Bradley is the most influential dancer and choreographer almost no one’s ever heard of. He brought the rhythms and style of Black movement, from tap to vernacular jazz dance, first into white theatrical spaces, then into the movies, and finally into ballet. But for years, as a Black choreographer in America, his work went uncredited.

Feel the Floor is the first biography of the brilliant choreographer who rose from poverty to indelibly reshape theatrical and concert dance in the 20th century. By resurrecting this critical artist and tracing his jazz-infused influence on white performing stages, cultural historian Maureen Footer reveals the overlooked role of Black people in the history of Euro-American dance.

Footer uncovers how Bradley’s Africanist-inflected choreography revitalized Broadway in the 1920s and took London’s West End by storm in the 1930s. His impact surfaces not only the aesthetic of rising ballet choreographers George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton, but it also paved the way for the likes of Jerome Robbins in the 1950s.

A feat of exhaustive research and timely reclamation, Footer rewrites the history of Euro-American dance to show how Bradley’s contributions still reverberate in Broadway theaters and Balanchine ballets to this day.
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Feel the Floor

ISBN: 978-080704524-4
 Publication Date: 5/12/2026
 Size:6 x 9 Inches (US)
Price:  $36.00
Format: 
Not Yet Published
Will Ship On: May 2026
(Backorder policy)
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