page_title: Fancy dance
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Fancy dance / History
caption_attribution_description: Description: Gombey dancers from Bermuda perform during the 2001 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall. Creator/Photographer: Harold Dorwin Medium: Medium unknown Geography: USA Date: 2001 Persistent URL: [1] Repository: Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage/Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections Accession number: 2001-5964
context_page_description: Fancy dance, Pan-Indian dancing, Fancy Feather or Fancy War Dance is a style of dance some believe was originally created by members of the Ponca tribe in the 1920s and 1930s, in an attempt to preserve their culture and religion. It is loosely based on the War dance. Fancy dance was considered appropriate to be performed for visitors to reservations and at "Wild West" shows. But today, fancy dancers can be seen at many powwows across the nation and even the world.
context_section_description: Native American dances, the practices of medicine men, and religious ceremonies were banned by White authorities with the promulgation of the “Rules for Indian Courts” on April 10, 1883.  As in many oppressed cultures, the ceremonies simply went underground to avoid detection by the authorities. Tribes created new dances that could legally be danced in public. Kiowa and Comanches created new styles of dance regalia in the 1930s that included long-johns with bells attached to the knee up to the waist, two small arm bustles with white fluff, two bustles with white down, beadwork harnesses, and some feathers, and the roach being tall and usually with fluffs. This regalia would be incorporated into the fancy dance.
  The fancy dance was developed after 1928, when the Ponca Tribe built their own dance arena in White Eagle, Oklahoma. Two young Ponca boys are specifically credited with developing the fast-paced dance that the audiences loved. One of the boys was the grandfather of Parrish Williams, a Ponca roadman. The Wild West shows popularized the dance. Gus McDonald (Ponca) was the first World Champion Fancy War Dancer.
  The intertribal powwow circuit was established in the early 20th century, spreading across the Southern Plains. The Kiowa held contest powwows as early at 1918. Among Kiowa, fancy dancing was incorporated into the O-ho-mah Society. Contest powwows became an important source of income during the Great Depression. Professional fancy dancers of the 1930s included Chester Lefthand (Arapaho), Stephen Mopope (Kiowa), Dennis Rough Face (Ponca), and George "Woogie" Watchetaker (Comanche).  In the 1940s, Elmer Sugar Brown added back flips to his fancy dancing and Gus McDonald added both cartwheels and splits.
  In the late 1930s, women began fancy dancing, wearing the same regalia as men. By the 1940s, women's fancy dancing was well established. Shalah Rowlen (Sac and Fox) fancy danced with her sisters, wearing bustles, in the early 1940s. Women's fancy dancing declined in the 1950s, but in the 1960s and 1970s, the dance came back as the women's fancy shawl dance.
  Despite its name, derived from an African language, the Gombey dancers of Bermuda appear to owe more to Algonquian traditions, thanks to hundreds of Native Americans sent to Bermuda as slaves during the Seventeenth Century. Their modern costume is completely reliant on materials that would have been difficult or impossible to obtain in Bermuda during the Seventeenth and  Eighteenth Centuries, including the tailfeathers of the Asian peacock that adorn the head dress. Feathers of native birds perhaps once were used to adorn a simpler, but still colourful costume. Their dance was clearly once a war dance, using tomahawk and bow and arrow, and the steps were recognised by Wampanoag dancers after the Wampanoag and Pequots began a series of Reconnection festivals with Bermudians in 2000.
caption: Gombey dancers at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2001.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3750", "Image ImageLength": "2460", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "Gombey dancers from Bermuda perform during the 2001 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall.", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2008:05:19 13:50:10", "Image Artist": "Harold Dorwin", "Image ExifOffset": "396", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "534", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6773", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3750", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2460"}