American Dance: A Black-White Pas de Deux : Historian Brenda Dixon explains to a UC Irvine audience how African-American forms have roots in slavery and how they’ve influenced popular steps and trends in this country.

Knees bent, feet planted firmly on the floor, hips and torso undulating, dance historian Brenda Dixon demonstrated an early form of tap dance developed by slaves who had been forbidden to perform their own “pagan, evil” movements.

“There’s an African-American saying that goes, ‘Watch out sister, how you step . . . your feet might cross and your soul be lost,’ ” Dixon said Thursday at UC Irvine.

“Blacks were safe (from owners’ reprisals) as long as they didn’t cross their feet or leap. Ironically, the prohibition by white Christian plantation owners against African dance was actually the means by which new dance forms evolved. It’s an incredible story example of the survival of the human spirit,” she said.

Dixon, associate professor of dance at Philadelphia’s Temple University, gave a slide lecture about the influence of African and African-American dance on American social dance, focusing on the swing era of the 1930s and ‘40s.

Nevertheless, elements of black dance could be seen in social forms long before the 20th Century, said Dixon, 49, speaking as part of the UCI Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture Series featuring minorities and women from various disciplines. The former modern dancer and choreographer animated her talk with energetic dance demonstrations.

Kicking bent legs high and arching her back, she said that the vigorous “cakewalk,” which she identified as “the first African-American dance to become popular nationwide,” also harks back to slavery times.

“It was originally a plantation dance in which African-Americans parodied and travestied the pretentious strutting style of plantation owners who were imitating European aristocrats,” she said. By the 1890s, “the irony had come full circle. The cakewalking whites were imitating African-Americans imitating whites.”

Dixon said the cultural cross-fertilization was clearly evident by the ‘20s through such nationally popular dances as the shimmy, the Charleston, the black bottom and others, all directly linked to black cultures. Such dances, she said, “were taken out of (black) enclaves, whether they originated in the U.S., Brazil, Cuba or Martinique, refined and transformed into modes acceptable to white America.”

Black entertainers of the 1920s, including then-newcomer Josephine Baker and Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, achieved nationwide fame and made major contributions to American dance.

“Bojangles brought tap dance up on its toes” by dancing mostly on the tips of his feet rather than with a heel-toe motion, Dixon said. “You can see it in his movies,” in which he often starred opposite Shirley Temple. “We’re getting the tap (sounds) from the toes.”

In the ‘30s and ‘40s, lesser-known performers left an indelible mark on swing forms such as the Lindy, the shag and the jitterbug. Out for pleasure at such famous nightclubs as the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, they were often booked into professional Lindy dance “crews,” or troupes, such as Whyte’s Hopping Maniacs, Dixon said.

Blacks also extended the social-dance repertoire with “an ability to do that which was considered awkward,” said Dixon, showing a slide of one couple at the Savoy doing a “bad mambo” with their knees bent and thrown wide apart. Instead of reiterating the “ramrod straight” style of white Americans, they weren’t afraid to sensuously shift their hips and torsos with asymmetrical movements recalling African rhythms and steps.

Though black dance resurfaced as a cultural force in the 1960s, it was less influential for a time after the swing era, said Dixon, who spoke to a racially mixed audience of about 40 in the 400-seat Crystal Cove Auditorium. Nevertheless, before the ‘40s ended, it may have made another enduring impact on mainstream dance through one of the country’s greatest ballet choreographers: George Balanchine.

Balanchine, shown by Dixon in a slide with three black Broadway dancers, worked as rehearsal assistant to pioneering black choreographer Katherine Dunham on the 1940 musical “Cabin in the Sky.” Balanchine evidently gleaned a thing or two from the experience.

“I believe that his Americanization of ballet involved a use of African-American influences,” she said. “After all, what could be more American? You can barely talk about American dance without talking about African-American dance.”