Welcome to the Routine Rewind series on the Diamond Dolls blog!

We will be taking a look back at some of our past routines and giving them a historical and cultural context covering things from song inspirations, artist highlights, discussing the origins of the dance styles, and more. Join us on the first of every month right here to follow this new series.

This month we are taking a look back at the inspiration behind a few of our routines that feature music and dancing from the 1920’s and the famous cultural characters - the flapper.

**Birth of Jazz**

*The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra, 1921: During the Jazz Age, popular music included current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes - Photo from Lumen Learning*

Following World War I, large numbers of jazz musicians migrated from New Orleans to major northern cities such as Chicago and New York, leading to a wider dispersal of jazz as different styles developed in different cities. As the 1920s progressed, jazz rose in popularity and helped to generate a cultural shift. Because of its popularity in speakeasies, illegal nightclubs where alcohol was sold during Prohibition, and its proliferation due to the emergence of more advanced recording devices, jazz became very popular in a short amount of time, with stars including Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Chick Webb. Several famous entertainment venues such as the Apollo Theater and the Cotton Club came to epitomize the Jazz Age.

African-American jazz was played more frequently on urban radio stations than on their suburban counterparts. Young people of the 1920s were influenced by jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations, a rebellion that went hand-in-hand with fads such as the bold fashion statements of the flappers and new radio concerts.

Dances such as the Charleston, developed by African Americans, instantly became popular among different demographics, including among young white people. With the introduction of large-scale radio broadcasts in 1922, Americans were able to experience different styles of music without physically visiting a jazz club. Through its broadcasts and concerts, the radio provided Americans with a trendy new avenue for exploring unfamiliar cultural experiences from the comfort of their living rooms. The most popular type of radio show was a “potter palm,” an amateur concert and big-band jazz performance broadcast from New York and Chicago.

**What is a “Flapper”?**

Photo Source: Google Images

No cultural symbol of the 1920s is more recognizable than the flapper. A young woman with a short “bob” hairstyle, cigarette dangling from her painted lips, dancing to a live jazz band. Flappers romped through the Roaring Twenties, enjoying the new freedoms ushered in by the end of the First World War and the dawn of a new era of prosperity, urbanism and consumerism.

Flappers wore their skirts shorter so they could show off their legs and ankles—but also so they could dance. They particularly loved the Charleston, a 1920s dance craze involving waving arms and fast-moving feet that had been pioneered by African Americans, first in the South and later in Harlem.

Dancing proved challenging in traditional women’s fashion, not only with long dresses, but also traditional corsets that tightly bound a woman’s midsection and accentuated her waist. Around 1923, French designer Coco Chanel introduced what became known as the “garçonne look,” featuring not just high hemlines but dropped or nonexistent waistlines and straight, sleeveless tops. With lighter and more flexible undergarments that created a straight, slim silhouette, this new design allowed women to dance freely.

**Fashion Myth Busting**

*An unidentified woman dances at a party in a still from the film, 'The Great Gatsby,' directed by Elliott Nugent, 1949. Paramount / Getty Images*

“Fringe [was] not the most common thing you saw in the 1920s. That would be beadwork or embroidery,” says Beverley Birks, a vintage dealer and exhibition curator who’s worked with 1920s clothing for nearly 50 years. “The garçon look was in, so while the ’20s showed a lot of body, the emphasis was not on the bust or the hips. The skirts were short, but they only rose to knee-length. They didn’t rise beyond there.”

“Hollywood began mining the 1920s in the 1950s, and in order to make it work, they adapted the costuming of the period to look more like what people were actually wearing in the ’50s,” explains Jeanine Basinger, a film historian and the chair of Wesleyan University’s film department. The period setting, Basinger says, was less about what the ’20s were and more about what they weren’t: post-WWII. “The war was a shadow over film at the time, and to take the ’20s as a setting lifted that burden off.”

So straight-cut chemise dresses got nipped waists and thinner straps, with hemlines adjusted to hit just below the knee. Solid bright colors exploited the possibilities of Technicolor, erasing a refined ’20s palette that included nuanced shades like burnt sienna, grass green, muted lilac, and dusty rose. Most of these films were musicals, making movement paramount in costuming, and nothing from the ’20s moves better than fringe. Just look at the frenetic “Broadway Melody” sequence from Singin’ In the Rain: Gene Kelly waltzes around a series of New York tableaux, surrounded by dozens of beaming women wearing spaghetti-strap dresses in vivid pink, yellow, orange, and blue, their every wiggle amplified by rows of long fringe. The energy is infectious.

Twenties fringe, in contrast, was woven into a dense knit from innumerable silk fibers. Multiplied across enough rows to cover a dress, it quickly surpassed 25 pounds and tangled easily — hardly ideal for a Charleston. When it did appear, it tended to be in moderation, Mears says. “Designers, particularly Madame Vionnet, used fringe as a decorative element to help a garment drape correctly.” Aesthetics were secondary to the structural function that fringe offered, of weighting the grain of fabric in a particular direction.

Focus on
Women in Jazz:
Adelaide Hall

*Photo from Harlem World Magazine*

Adelaide Hall made her debut in 1921 as part of the chorus in the pioneering African American Broadway musical ‘Shuffle Along’. In 1926 she toured parts of Europe, including Austria, Scandinavia, Berlin and the Soviet Union, as a star in the musical Chocolate Kiddies. In 1927 she met the famous jazz musician Duke Ellington, who immediately recognised her talents. She went on to record several songs with Ellington and his orchestra, their most famous being Creole Love Call. Adelaide became one of the early pioneers of Jazz featured at the famous Cotton Club. She rose to further fame when, after the death of Florence Mills, she joined the musical Blackbirds of 1928.

Between 1926 and 1936, Adelaide married Bert Hicks, a merchant seaman from Trinidad. In the early 1930s, the couple were forced to migrate to Paris after moving to an all-white neighbourhood in Larchmont, Westchester County, New York and suffering racist abuse. They stayed in Paris for three years where Adelaide starred in Moulin Rouge and Lido before moving to England and becoming a British national.

In the 1930s Adelaide featured in several theatre productions, including Brown Buddies on Broadway, toured as a solo artist and featured in films such as All Coloured Vaudeville Show. In 1938, she was featured in The Sun Never Sets in London and established her own radio programme. She continued to record songs into the 1970s which featured on local radio stations including Hull and East Yorkshire.

During the Second World War, Adelaide travelled to battle zones to entertain the troops. After the global conflict had ended, she toured Britain arriving in Hull in the spring of 1948. In April, the Hull Daily Mail advertised that the jazz singer who had ‘brightened many a West End show’ was to perform at the Tivoli theatre. She brought with her an exciting bill of talented entertainers which delighted spectators. They included the Lamonte and Julie Trio, Len Clifford and Freda known as “the bright spark and his flame,” comedian Jack E. Raymond, acrobats Keefe Brothers and Annette, the ventriloquist Tattersall, and dancers Jimmy Kidd and June. Although, contemporary commentaries on this event are sparse, it is probable that local audiences enjoyed a fantastic evening of entertainment.