Footage of Horace Sprott performing the "Buck Dance"

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A 16mm film print with people dancing to skiffle music and Horace Sprott doing the buck dance. It consists of a single reel of positive, black-and-white, 16 mm acetate film with bilateral variable-area optical sound. In the film, women and children can be seen watching men doing the buck dance as various percussive instruments are heard in the background. Voiceover narration accompanies the picture. At one point, the narrator says, "They call it skiffle music. Step dancing goes back to the formal dances held in the big house on the plantations, from polished floors to bare earth. The buck dance, there are few who can do it well.” Men and women dance in an open field as the narrator speaks. The women leave the field and the narrator continues with "The buck dance is the exclusive property of the male dancer, a sort of show-off piece in which he exhibits masculine strength and prowess.

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