This article situates Hurston's largely neglected theatrical presentationsof West Indian folk dance alongside the better-known dance work of Bakerand Dunham in order to trace shifts in the racialized meanings surroundingblack vernacular dance stagings in the early decades of the twentiethcentury. A comparative survey of the three artists exposes an importantif complicated historical transition from stereotypical representationsof black primitivity to more nuanced representations of a black diaspora.