Hearing the dance: Learning the community aesthetics of rhythm/jazz tap

This dissertation contributes to discussion about the intersection between structure and agency. Tap dance festivals act as educational systems for building principled knowledge considered here the foundation for creating cultural practices. Rhythm/Jazz tap dancing is a cultural world that can tell us something about how people perceive and define themselves collectively and historically; about how community boundaries are defined by its members and others in cultural production; and about the variety of resources available to members for creating practices that reflect community principles. Aesthetics are communal principles that guide the cultural production of the Rhythm/Jazz tap community, but learning the community's aesthetics is not just a matter of copying the social onto the body. An identity as a percussive tap dancer is performed as a style which contributes to community aesthetics, but is also an artistic signature of the performer.;This project offers a methodological contribution to expand the definition of participant observation. Knowledge that is constructed, reproduced, and changed in sociocultural activities---in tap dance classes and in jams---has the potential to construct community. The principled knowledge of aesthetics produce judgment about what is appropriate action. An aesthetic is thus formed in practice. Ethnographers who learn the cultural practices of the community embody the local practices, and are socialized into the principled knowledge of the community. Thus, the ethnographer 'learns how to become' a legitimate participant in the community as a process of ethnography.;Percussive dancers accept, interpret, and transform communal aesthetics while they display their personal styles. But innovation does not occur out of context. There is a basis for how a dancer creates movements and rhythm that is historically and socially constructed. There is a history behind the moment of creativity, and there are limits to the amount of innovation that is acceptable and still represents the community aesthetics. Individuals reinterpret the history, values and practices of the community using or rejecting the repertoire of cultural resources available to them, placing old perceptions and practices at risk to innovate new ones. Cultural practice is thus a structured improvisation.*.;*This dissertation includes a CD that is multimedia (contains text and other applications not available in printed format). The CD requires the following system applications: Windows 95 or higher; Windows MediaPlayer or RealPlayer.