Juba!

New York’s Five Points neighborhood was a rough place in the 1840s, but it was home to an ambitious young dancer named William Henry Lane, who became known to history as Master Juba.  The multicultural melting pot where Juba found himself provided the raw material for his rousing performances, which featured techniques from African, Irish, English, and Caribbean dance.

  

Walter Dean Myers - a master of contemporary urban fiction and so much else – has given us a fine book.  The sense of place and time is wonderfully well-rendered, especially the depictions of cultural interplay among people of various ethnicities. But best of all, the sections where Juba describes the creative process as he develops his dancefloor art will be appreciated by anyone who has ever made, written, sung, played, or danced something beautiful.