The Charleston dance step, permanently identified with the ebullience of the 1920s, was introduced in Runnin Wild, anall-black 1923 show., The song "Charleston," by James P. Johnson and Cecil Mack, was supposedly inspired by the mover ments of black dancers in Charleston, South Carolina. The Charleston is a comic, sexy dance, adaptable to solo performance or chorus line. Danced by couples, it is synchronized rather than intimatei It is fast-paced and jerky of movement, performed with angled limbs and making frequent use of a buttocks-projecting semisquat. The feet 'rapidly alternate between heels-together/toestogether positions; the bent knees-move in, opposition; the splayed hands, moving in opposition or parallel, sometimes describe arcs in the air, palms forward and wrists extended, forearms pivoting from bent elbows, and sometimes shift back and forth from knee to opposite knee. It is a dance that displays the form of the body...