Dora Dean was born in 1872 in Cloverport (Kentucky, USA), at the time a town of just 850 or so residents. As an eighteen-year-old she decided to try her luck in the city of St. Louis, where she joined a Black Vaudeville group. There she met Charles Johnson, a self-taught dancer two years her senior. The pair married in 1893.
Johnson and Dean: Cakewalk Icons
Dean and Johnson moved to New York, where they brought Cakewalk to the Broadway stage. The dance had its origins in Southern African American culture, where it developed as a parody of the rigid social norms of the slave-holding upper class. Touring vaudeville shows spread the dance throughout the US, before Dean and Johnson brought the it into the high cultural mainstream. Not only were they likely the first Black performers on Broadway, they were also the first to perform an art from the African American cultural tradition on its symbolically charged stage.
The European Years
Johnson and Dean started their years-long European tour with a one-month engagement at the Wintergarten. The pair, with their luxurious costumes, innovative music, and exaggerated movements, became an overnight sensation, paving the way for the many other Black American performers who would visit Berlin in the years that followed. Soon, Cakewalk’s influence was everywhere: in variety shows and dance halls, in advertising and design, in music and art.Despite the growing competition, Johnson and Dean remained sought-after performers, and returned to Berlin many times during their years of touring. Dean in particular was enormously popular. One of her committed fans, the Berlin-based artist Ernst Heilemann, painted her life-size portrait in 1901. She even impressed European royalty: Queen Marie of Romania gifted her a gemstone brooch, and King Edward VII invited her to perform in London.