Juanita Pitts

Abstract This chapter begins by detailing a rare film sequence of African American rhythm tap dancer Juanita Pitts dancing in a suit. Although the historical record shows that Pitts was certainly not the only skilled woman of her time to perform in a suit, twenty-first century viewers are inclined to deem Pitts an anomaly and interpret her clothes, shoes, style of dancing, and demeanor as atypical for a female dancer of her time. The chapter then looks at biases that construct a “male center of gravity” and erase women from the official histories of tap. Providing a sketch of her career, it offers an analysis of the footage of Juanita Pitts to understand what it can reveal about battles over meaning at the intersections of race, gender, and rhythm tap. The chapter proposes the concept of the “aesthetic of the class act” to examine meanings embedded in her suit and performance style that illuminate her expressions of African American culture. Ultimately, it uses Joan Wallach Scott’s construct of four elements that delineate gender—culturally available symbols; social institutions and organizations that participate in the process of gender construction; normative concepts that typically take the form of fixed binary opposition; and personal identity—as tools to better investigate the performance of gender in tap dance.