The career of Norton and Margot, a ballroom dance team whose work was thwarted by the racial tenets of the era, serves as the barometer of the times and acts as the tour guide on this excursion through the worlds of African American vaudeville, black and white America during the swing era, the European touring circuit, and pre-Civil Rights era racial etiquette.
"Here is a... scholarship possessing funk, rigor and style... It is as sensuous as the artists she describes, employs a zigzagging, swinging approach to her topic and provides a useful guide in our ongoing struggle against the sands of invisibalisation."
BILL T. JONES, CHOREOGRAPHER"A rare and gifted writer, a gem of a cultural portraitist... she teaches us all how to write about dance, the cool and the hot, mind and motion, making it clear how black dance centers self-realization and the moral education of the world."
ROBERT FARRIS THOMPSON, TRUMBULL PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF ART, YALE UNIVERSITY
"With insight and honesty, the author reveals careers limited by racial oppression in the pre-Civil Rights-era US."
CHOICE
