Victoria Bostic

Victoria was born in 1951 and grew up in Philadelphia within a musical family. In 1972, she earned her degree in Social Welfare at the U of I.

Listen to Victoria's stories about learning to dance, how dance was always apart of family gatherings, what dancing in Philadelphia was like, from house parties to the Slow Drag. She also talks about dancing on the U of I campus in the early 1970’s, and the exchange of music dance. Find out how and why she continues to dance today.

Victoria Bostic Oral Histories

Learning to dance informally

Transcript

Whenever the family gathered, for holidays, July the fourth, you know, summertime things, if there was music, there was dancing. So, you know, and basically I think those kind of informal or do you call them social dances I guess? I learned from watching people in my family, my older siblings and cousins and neighbors and watching them, you see the dance and then you go home and try to do it or you stand beside them and you try to and then, you know, you have the new dance or whatever the dance is that you're trying to learn. But basically, it was dictated by the music.
Learning to dance from friends from another part of the country

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The music kind of dictated the dancing, okay, so and I don't even know who, who would invent the dance. It was like, this is the new dance and somebody would know like, one of my girlfriends, she had family in another part of the country and she would come home. 'Oh, this is how you do the... ' And we all learned the dance on my block, or on my street, get in the middle of the street or the sidewalk and you put the music on and you dance.
Dance locations – house parties, community centers

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I didn't like bars. I mean I sneaked in bars when I was about 17 and I found out I don't like the scene, but the house parties, a lot of house parties with the red light on, dark and then there were the waistline parties where you, they take a tape measure and measure your waist and that's how much you have to pay to get in. I know, you know, but I guess it was a way of making money for the organization, whatever the organization or club was. And then we had this place. We had places in Philadelphia. Times Auditorium, there were dances there. The Athletic Club. There were dances there. The Blue Horizon. We had dances there. And Town Hall, there was a Town Hall. All of that stuff, the Blue Horizon is still there, but it's mostly boxing. We would go there and you go with your girlfriends and meet up with the boys who come with their boyfriends you know, with their fellow friends, and you danced you know sometimes it would be fighting too, but that's because you came from other parts of town and you know, but the party will be going on you'll be dancing and then all of a sudden you hear a chair fall with something and it's like oh, we gotta get out of here. So you run. But it was all in all, basically it was safe. Basically it was safe and it was enjoyable.
Sharing dances from different parts of country, bringing dances back to CU campus

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The dancing was, it was different for us from the East Coast, because we were mixed in with people from the Midwest and saying: ‘What the heck are these people doing?’ You know, because they didn't dance like us. They had this dance in Chicago called, I think it was called The Walk. And they would start off as partners. And then they would separate. And one person will go over here and the other person will go over there, and then they would come back together. And we were like 'really, is that? oh, no, umh, umh' So we would bring dances back from the east coast, and everybody wanted to learn the dances that we brought, you know, so, no matter where they were from, East St. Louis, Chicago, you know, Champaign. They wanted to learn the Philly dances.

But we would bring dances back, when we would go home to visit. ‘Okay, what are they doing? Okay, let's get that.’ Bring it back to Champaign.
Slow Drag

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And we had a dance called the Slow Drag. I guess people nowadays may call it a slow dance, but it was Slow Drag. You're dancing close with your partner, dancing close with your partner, very close with your partner. And we would only, us females, would only want to do that dance with other guys from Philly. Because the guys from other places, the largest number was from Chicago, but the guys from other places, they didn't really know how to Slow Drag. And they thought it was like ‘oh, a chance to get close and, you know, do some little freaky stuff,’ you know, but it wasn't like that. You had to know how to move with your partner in order to keep it from being some freaky stuff. And so we just didn't like slow dancing with those guys. And they would say 'you never want to dance with us' but ‘because you don't know how to do this.’

A Slow Drag, if you're dancing with just a dance partner, somebody coming to ask you to dance, it's one thing. It's one thing and that thing is just a real civil kind of just step, step. Yeah, pretty much. Step, step and then you don't step. You just stand and you just do some body movements together, and then you start stepping again. But you never back away from each other. Like that Chicago walk thing you stayed close together the entire time. But then, if you were dancing with your boyfriend, or dancing with your girlfriend, then it was a whole different kind of mood and movement that you did. You might do a little bit of grind in between, you know, just a little, and then you go back to civilized dancing. And that was how the Slow Drag was.

There were other people on the floor. Some doing the same thing. Some doing a little milder version of the same thing. And some just, just dancing without any kind of intimate movements. So, you know, it was social. And you didn't want to get with somebody you didn't like, on a long record, you know, but anyway, that's, that was our Slow Drag.
Learning to dance in past and now as a 70 year old

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Speaking of being almost 70 years old, because I’m 68 so I’m past halfway through my 60s…

Every time a new dance came out, I wanted to make sure I could learn it. I may never do it, but just make sure that I could. ‘Okay, okay, I got that.’ But what you find, what I found, not you, nobody else but me, is if you miss a dance, when it comes out, it's harder for you to learn the next dance. Now having children they would always you know, ‘Mom, this is the new dance’ You know you get in the middle of floor and your dancing with them and so you keep up with the dances and even now I'm like 'What are they doing now?' My children are grown, now. I don't have anybody home teaching me. But I'm watching the other little kids. 'Okay, maybe I can do that.' I get in the mirror and I tried us and said ‘I kind of look like them a little bit.’ But the larger community, if your my age, and you get out and you could do something like the young people, it's like 'Look at granny go!' So it's just all in fun, though.
Dance to express self, making your dance your own

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It was an opportunity to express myself and to just let go. And just because you can do the same step that I do, we might learn a step, in dance class. You do it one way. I mean, we all do the same step but it's putting your own self in it your personality and so it gave me a chance to express myself without I don't know, I don't want to say without care. But in social dance, so let me put it this way, when you are on a dance floor that kind of dance I mean it was totally like, whatever, you know. The performance dance was a little different. I mean, you had to stay in step you had 5, 6, 7, 8 you had to be on, on time and on step to do that, but you still expressed yourself, you know, you still got a chance to be you. And so that's what it really was. It was like self-expression. And with the African ethnic dance, it was the opportunity to be in touch with a culture that I was learning about, about myself, self-identity and all that. So it was again, I guess, it might sound cliché-ish, but like a cliché, but it was just the expression and the challenge, the challenge whether or not I can execute the movement, the way the movement was taught and put into it, what I felt needed to go, its self-expression.