THE JUBA PROJECT
Featured Performers and Documents
Parsing the Documents
Witness to Juba
The following links arrange a selection of eyewitness accounts that describe Juba on his tour to England and Scotland in 1848-9. The accounts are accompanied by commentary wherever it seemed valuable. For full citations of all transcriptions, search the database.
There is a large piece of silk in the New York Public Library's Dance Collection that was created as a souvenir programme in 1848, in commemoration of Juba's long run at Vauxhall Gardens. The silk has printed on it dozens of excerpted descriptions of Juba. A recent argument contends that the silk is a remnant of a press campaign that encouraged reviewers to attempt to describe him, in competition with the well-known attempt by Charles Dickens, used in the advertising [Note]. That is the first question, of course: are these descriptions spontaneous and heartfelt, or are they examples of a purchased or manipulated review, or 'puffery'? They seem far too intricate for half-hearted puffery, as you will see.
Wild Abandon, Whole-body Dancing, Contortion and Sudden Change
