Swing Time

Originally inspired by Smith’s connection to musical theater and Black dancers, Swing Time is both an ode to the history of Black performance and a critique of the ways in which this art has been appropriated or dismissed by white institutions and societies. Smith revives Black artists forgotten or ignored by history, analyzing important figures. For example, Bill Robinson, who performed under the stage name Bojangles, was a beloved American tap dancer best known for appearing in films throughout the 1930s, inspiring countless Black performers. After starting his career in vaudeville, a form of theater featuring farcical sketches and musical numbers, Robinson transformed tap form from a flat-footed to a tip-toeing style. However, the iconic Bojangles died penniless, highlighting the fact that even a famous Black performer could be sidelined when white society had enough of them. The novel also celebrates Jeni LeGon, another Black dancer in the 1930s and 40s, who was relegated to bit parts in films starring white people, used as a racist trope despite the exciting novelty of her dance form. In the novel, when Tracey uses Jeni LeGon’s choreography for her theater school audition, the professionals there don’t recognize the iconic movements—a scene that plays out how white institutions have widely ignored Jeni LeGon’s impact on the history of Black performance. Smith also includes careful analysis of Michael Jackson, whose ever-evolving dance moves riveted the world, but whose changing skin color and morphing identity complicate the narrator’s admiration.

Historical racism looms over the development of Black performance. The narrator’s beloved movie musicals include several scenes of white performers putting on blackface, theatrical make-up that demeans and caricatures Black people. Blackface and its close relative minstrelsy were hugely popular forms of theater, emphasizing white society’s desire to see Black people dehumanized and degraded. In developing blackface, white performers codified what it meant to be white in juxtaposition with absurd and over-done mockery of Black life: For many white audience members, blackface exaggerations became reified as realistic Black bodies, prolonging racist stereotypes and tropes. The blackface in the narrator’s beloved films highlights the lack of representation for a Black girl looking for dancers—however uncomfortable the narrator is watching blackface, she has few other choices of cultural production.

The novel connects the unsubtle appropriation of Black culture that was historical blackface with harder to define, but no less insidious, modern-day variants. For instance, Aimee appropriates Gambian culture, dance, and style to seem inclusive, open-minded, and a hero to the African community. The appropriation of Black art is not a thing of the past—it is a racist cycle that continues in Smith’s contemporary world.