Roadhouse
cootch dance to a jazzy "What Kind of Man Is This" shows off Kenneth Roberson's limber choreography, though it's unwise to have the choir dance when first singing the number straight: A prim, choir-robed rendition followed by hot high-stepping would better convey a sense of Ray's "Sunday morning and Saturday night" gospel/R&B fusion.
(20) Serving as a "fantasy space or screen" onto which male and female audience members alike could simultaneously project their desires, their misogyny and racism, and their own reimaginations of self, these scantily clad "cootch"-dancing women were propelled into mainstream American culture and quickly engaged by managers of entertainment venues across the country as "Little Egypt" dancers.
(24) Each Salome dancer carefully drew iconography and other elements from Strauss's opera and Wilde's play; each also employed the techniques and traditions of the pseudo-Oriental cootch dancers.
The act also attempted to distinguish itself from its cootch dance predecessors: Allan and Hoffmann were both known--at least in the press--for their respectability, artistry, and aesthetics, and both were careful to distance themselves and their dances from Eastern, Oriental images even as they enacted them.