The Ickey Shuffle and the Dirty Bird: African American Improvisational Dance in the Endzone
In the year 2000, the National Football League (NFL) mandated that there could be no excessive celebration. This mandate established policies that restricted celebratory dances in the endzone or displays of bragging on the field. The NFL believed that such displays are time wasting and inflammatory. I argue that endzone dances extend a tradition of African American improvisational dance practices. Swaggering and non-verbal bragging are inherent in the form of endzone dancing, similar to the posturing that happened in early days of breaking and continues in hip-hop dance today. Just as the innovative solo tap or hip-hop performer works to have a unique style and series of movements, the endzone dance is unique to each player.
Obviously, improvisation is a critical element of African and African-American forms of expressions; one need only think of jazz music, wordplay and signifying, tap dance, and b-boying. In fact, Jean and Marshall Stearns state in Jazz Dance, which was groundbreaking at the time of its publication and continues to be highly respected, that dance in the African diaspora “places great importance upon improvisation, satirical and otherwise, allowing freedom for individual expression; this characteristic makes for flexibility and aids the evolution and diffusion of other African characteristics. (1)” In Steppin’ on the Blues, dance scholar Jacqui Malone suggests that improvisation “is an additive process…a way of experimenting with new ideas; that mindset is Africa’s most important contribution to the Western Hemisphere. (2)”
The contribution to Western culture is made explicit in Jonathan David Jackson’s essay “Improvisation on African-American Vernacular Dance.” Jackson sets out to provide an aesthetic framework from which to analyze the practice of black vernacular dancing. He, along with an increasing number of other dance scholars like Susan Leigh Foster in Dances That Describe Themselves, and in the collection of essays edited by David Gere and Ann Cooper Albright in Taken By Surprise: The Dance Improvisation Reader, argues that improvisation is choreography. Jacqui Malone states that “Black idiomatic dancers always improvise with intent – they compose on the spot – with the success of the improvisations depending on the mastery of nuances and the elements of craft called for by the idiom. (3)” This contention contradicts earlier notions of dance improvisation put forth primarily by white choreographers and scholars. Earlier notions suggest that improvisation is a means to finding choreography or that the improvisation means making up the dancing as one goes along. This trivializes the choreographic and compositional choice that the dancer makes as he or she improvises. Tapper Savion Glover foregrounds the intentional blurring of choreography and improvisation in his own work by touring a performance titled Improvography. While this more complex notion of improvisation is not new to scholars of other forms of African-influenced traditions, like jazz music, it is a relatively new argument for considering dance – long dominated by a white-centric viewpoint.
Jackson’s essay, published in Dance Research Journal, considers instances of African American improvisation in what he terms “their originating social contexts” such as nightclubs, cabarets, and rent parties (4). From there he expands his field to include the concert dance stage, films, and videos. From my perspective, the fields into which Jackson expands can be even further extended. He looks for dance in places one expects to see dance. For example, dance, improvisational or otherwise, has come to be expected in music videos for MTV or VH-1. I would contend that the very same deliberate choreographic choices about improvisational movement and the nuanced intent behind that dancing can also be seen in a less expected site, on the football field. There is ample anecdotal evidence about the practicing of the craft of the improvisatory endzone dancing. For example, in an interview with the Detroit News, African-American football player, Scotty Anderson, of the Detroit Lions stated, “I've got to work on my steps. (5)”
In 2002, sports writer Matt Coldagelli wrote:
“There’s more to the end zone dance than meets the eye. It has evolved and improved over the years, comparable to the forward pass and just as integral. As times have changed, players have come up with new and creative ways to party. (6)”
His statement raises three key points with regard to potential complexity of endzone dances in football. While the overall tone of the piece, titled “Lords of the Dance,” is flip, and concerned with fandom of University of Illinois’s Big Ten football team, it does focus on the most important thing to me – the dancing. By proposing that football has evolved – which suggests an improvement to the form – and that dance is an essential element of football, and finally that the players themselves are behind the innovation, it is easy to find the connection between endzone dancing and improvisational dance. What Coldagelli doesn’t address in his essay is that most of the players who receive credit – and blame – for bringing innovation to the celebratory aspects of endzone dancing are African American.
Individual innovation in celebration and endzone dances is well documented. For example, Jay Ulfelder reported in the Baltimore City Paper, “New York Giants wide receiver Homer Jones was the first to spike the ball in the 1960s; wide receiver Elmo Wright of the University of Houston was credited with creating the end-zone dance around 1970. In the three decades since, pro football has been replete with black athletes who stick in our minds not just because of their play, but because of their riffs on the theme of celebration. (7)”
Various endzone dances have been named, sometimes describing the action such as the Spike. The Spike, perhaps the most familiar, occurs when the ball is placed in the endzone after touchdown completion, through the legs, over the head etc. The so-called Ickey Shuffle takes its name from its creator, Bengals runningback Elbert Woods, started in the late 1980s. It combined a shuffle with a fancy handjive. The Lambeau Leap calls for the player to leap into the stands with enthusiasm. In 1999, the Rams choreographed a team dance called “The Bob and Weave.” This dance, “involved everybody crouching around the ball and rocking back and forth, arms dangling. (8)” (The League fined them $150,000. for doing it.) And finally, “The Dirty Bird. One of the all-time best end zone dances, the Dirty Bird was the brainchild of Atlanta RB Jamal Anderson during the Falcons' 1998 run to the Super Bowl. It consists of hopping back and forth while making wings out of your arms and flapping them (in rhythm, mind you). Add a head shake if the mood is right. (9)”
The NFL mandate, or first official prohibition of “excessive celebration,” was announced in a memorandum titled “Game-Related Discipline.” Under the heading Player Demonstrations, the memo reads:
“Player demonstrations (e.g., end-zone dances) are not fouls under NFL playing rules and will not result in penalties by the game officials. However, if a demonstration constitutes taunting [which earlier in the memo is defined as “Any flagrant acts or remarks that deride, mock, bait, or embarrass an opponent are considered taunting. ], or if it is unsportsmanlike conduct or delays the game, a foul will be called.
Player demonstrations will be reviewed by the League office. If such an act is considered excessively unprofessional or in extremely poor taste, the involved player or players will be subject to fine.”
This was not the first attempt at limiting self-expression in the endzone. In 1995, the NCAA produced a video titled College Football: A Celebration of Teamwork, “to more clearly define unsportsmanlike conduct.” The video shows film clips of potentially unsportsmanlike taunting or celebration and explained the committee's ruling on the legality of the actions pictured.
In considering whether the NCAA or the NFL has the right to prohibit endzone dancing, it is helpful to remember that the players agree to abide by a totally arbitrary set of rules. (Joel Dinerstein ironically remarks that the rule really addresses what he terms “an illegal use of black culture.” (10)) In his 1978 essay, “How Can One Be A Sports Fan?” French theorist Pierre Bourdieu contends that sports may well be “a supply intended to meet a social demand. (11)”
Bourdieu suggests that:
“The relative autonomy of the field of sport is most clearly affirmed in the powers of self-administration and rule-making, based on historical tradition…which sports associations are acknowledged to exercise: these bodies are invested with the right to lay down the standards governing participation in the events they organize, and they are entitled to exercise a disciplinary power (banning, fines, etc.) in order to ensure observance of specific rules which they decree. (12)”
Bourdieu further suggests that “the history of sport is a relatively autonomous history, which even when marked by the major events of economic and social history, has its own tempo, its own evolutionary laws, its own crises, in short, its specific chronology. (13)”
No matter how much one accepts that football players agree to abide by the arbitrary set of rules and consider football within its specific chronology, the proscription against excessive celebration is not a clearly defined rule. There is no chalk line that distinguishes an in and out of bounds of celebration. Unlike rules that dictate that a team has four downs to advance ten yards or that a player cannot pull on another player’s helmet, an out of bounds endzone dance is determined by the judgment of the players, coaches, and /or referees. This suggests to me that League officials need to critique the improvisational choreography of endzone dances. What are the criteria of evaluation? Is it simply a matter of aesthetic sensibility? Jeffrey Sammons, an African American historian at NYU, notes that in the NCAA video, in “an effort to clarify the boundaries of acceptable behavior, juxtaposed footage of athletes celebrating in ways that would draw a penalty and ways that would not. Most of the penalty-drawing footage showed African Americans,” and as Sammons notes, “most of the violations, be they by blacks or whites, are more based on style – a style associated with blacks, which is often characterized as choreographed and unnatural. (14)” My use of Jackson’s framework calling for a recognition of endzone dances as an example of an African American improvisatory practice supports Sammons’s contention that African American style appears “choreographed” and further (this seems like an improvement on early dance criticism of African American dancers written by white writers who believed that dancing was “natural to the Negro.”
Not everyone supported the NFL’s actions. John Clayton of EPSN.com suggests that the NFL, the National Football League, should be called the NO FUN LEAGUE. He writes that he “disagree[s] with the NFL stopping most of the endzone dances and paying too much attention to having players live up to the uniform code.” He thinks there are more important things for them to be ruling on – such as deceitful plays (15). In a St. Petersburg Times article titled “Art can be tricky. Just ask Rudy Giuliani,” Hubert Mizell wrote:
“This season, the NFL plans to tinker with American expressionism. Some of the new strokes, I’m sure, will make many of us cheer, as pro football’s zebras, as decreed by King Paul, will work at diluting taunting, eliminating sack dances and halting end-zone spikes and dances while bringing more decorum to a violent, immensely popular game. Rambunctiousness can be disgusting, even obscene. To some, I mean. It is, after all, supposed to be sport. (16)”
By titling the article as he did, Mizell firmly places the prohibition on celebration in the realm of art censorship. He makes the zebras or referees the arbiters of art while poking fun at the notion that removing the dancing from football will somehow make it more genteel.
Despite all of the attempts of prohibition by officials in the NFL and the NCAA, endzone dancing has not diminished in popular imagination. For example, football-themed computer games allow the game operator to select from a variety of dance moves when scoring points. And actor Cuba Gooding Jr. who appeared as a break dancer when he was 16 in the 1984 closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, put his dancing ability to use in the 1997 film Jerry Maguire. Gooding’s performance was lauded as People magazine covered the Academy Awards in 2003. There was a full size picture of Gooding accepting his Oscar for his performance in Jerry Maguire. Underneath the picture, it says “Jerry Maguire’s football hero giddily reprised his end-zone dance moves in 1997. This is 6 years later.”
In conclusion, while I can find dozens of examples of people writing against endzone dances, dismissing them as a chance to show off, or as the NFL says “excessive celebration,” many references to endzone dancing critique the performances themselves. These evaluatory comments are in the style of a kind of dance criticism that addresses specific details of performance, such as how well a particular ballerina performed the required thirty-two fouettés in the ballet Swan Lake. For example, an Associated Press article complimented the performance of an endzone dance performed by African-American players and went on to critique the white players who joined them. “Cornerback Ty Law performed his trademark end zone dance with receiver Troy Brown, and then forced quarterback Tom Brady, Belichick, and Kraft to do end zone dances. (They were not very good.) (17)” The improvisational moves, the choreography of the players, originated by African American players, co-opted by white players, who did a pale imitation of the dancing, has been forbidden by governing bodies. The attempt at appropriation and imitation by white dancers is not unfamiliar to anyone who has studied a history of African American dance forms. Neither is an attempt to suppress the expressivity of African-American performers. However, in the endzone, one might have hoped for a more level playing field.
Footnotes:
Jean and Marshall Stearns, Jazz Dance. (1968), 15.
Jacqui Malone, Steppin’ on the Blues (1996), 33.
Malone (1996), 33-34.
Jonathan David Jackson’s recent essay “Improvisation on African-American Vernacular Dance.” Dance Research Journal (Winter 2001): 41.
Mike O'Hara, “Receiver works on moves on both sides of end zone.” The Detroit News., August 28, 2002.
Matt Coldagelli, “Lords of the dance.” The Daily Illini. Online/published Wednesday, October 1, 2002.
Jay Ulfleder, “Game Face: Is Sportsmanship in the Eye– or the Color – of the Beholder?” Baltimore City Paper (3-9 January 2001).
Coldagelli, October 1, 2002.
Coldagelli, October 1, 2002.
As quoted in Gena Dagel Caponi, “Introduction: The Case for an African American Aesthetic.” Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’ and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture. ed. Gena Dagel Caponi (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 4.
Pierre Bourdieu, “How Can One Be A Sports Fan?” The Cultural Studies Reader. ed. Simon Durning, 340.
Bourdieu, 343.
Bourdieu, 341.
As quoted in Jay Ulfleder, “Game Face: Is Sportsmanship in the Eye– or the Color – of the Beholder?” Baltimore City Paper (3-9 January 2001).
John Clayton, “The trick plays have got to go.” (Friday, December 14) espn.go.com/nfl/columns/clayton_john/1295965.html /ESPN.com
Hubert Mizell, “Art can be tricky. Just ask Rudy Giuliani,” St. Petersburg Times, (July 22, 2001).
“Party time for the Patriots” Boston.com Staff and Associated Press, 02/05/02.
Originally published in:
Movement Research Performance Journal
Issue #29: Improvisation is Dead
Spring 2006