Something in the Way She Moves: Dancing Women from Salome to Madonna

With heroines like Josephine Baker, Colette, Isadora Duncan, and the cancaneuses of the Moulin Rouge, this is far from a conventional history.Rich with both fascinating anecdotes (such as the New Jersey girl picked up by the police for dancing the very sexy turkey trot one day during the Roaring Twenties), and astonishing facts (the first geishas were men), Something in the Way She Moves shows us the world of dance and sex through women's eyes. Best-selling author Wendy Buonaventura brings us from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where immigrants created the delicious tango, to Paris and the bawdy, leggy cancan dancers of the Moulin Rouge, to New York, where struggling African-Americans cakewalked, Charlestoned, and shimmied into the public eye, creating "jazz dance" (originally--and tellingly--called "jass" dance). This is a book for lovers of dance and lovers of history alike, and an engrossing introduction to a slightly seamy side of a cultural legacy.