CALENDA: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF A CULTURAL IMAGE 59

 As soon as they strike up, the men and the women divide immediately, and
 putting themselves (two and two) directly against one another, they begin
 their dance, marching up to one another, and then recoyling in good measure,
 clacking their fingers, as they pass nodding their heads, whispering certain
 words into one another ears, tossing their fans, with a thousand postures
 and gesticulations. (Villault 1670:208-9)
 The men and women who are to dance divide into groups of equal
 numbers, facing one another in couples; and when the dance begins, they
 approach one another and withdraw in cadence, leaping and stamping their
 feet on the ground. They snap their fingers and bow their heads together;
 they talk to one another, loudly, quietly or in whispers; they bring their
 stomachs close together and sometimes knock their bellies together, while
 clapping hands at the same time; they move sometimes quickly, sometimes
 slowly, and sometimes sideways or backwards... And there are some who
 recite certain verses, singing, to which the others respond in refrain, as if it
 were a musical choir. These Moors take such pleasure in this exercise that
 they have schools almost everywhere expressly to instruct the young people
 in it. (Barbot [Hair 1992:564])

 Despite the fact that there is no mention in the Gold Coast record of a
name for the dance, the similarities between the calenda and what these
writers described for the Gold Coast are remarkable. The other connection
that is not really surprising is that the writers were French. In short, then,
the calenda, as an African cultural image transposed to the New World, was
developed by colonial writers writing in French.
 Between 1770 and 1810 a number of accounts on the British West Indian
islands described dances of the slaves, showing them to have some
similarities to those in the French Caribbean literature, but no specific names
of dances were given by the writers and there were several significant
differences from what Labat described. It is only around the time of
Emancipation (Alexander, J.E. 1833 1:157-8) that a specific name for a dance
emerged in the literature in English islands and it was this dance more than
the others which had a little closer resemblance to the calenda described by
Labat. It was called the Joan-Johnny or Joe and Johnny and was said to be "an
African dance" and a "real negro dance." It was located in Barbados and
Demerara (British Guiana). In the middle of the nineteenth-century it seemed
to be very popular, for Day (1852) describes it thus:

 Joe and Johnny, being a real negro dance is always held in the open air. The
 'Tum-tum' was an old familiar sound, and guided by its spirit-stirring thump,
 I found a numerous assemblage of ladies of colour, forming a ring in the
 unenclosed back-yard of a negro hut. Being in fact a plot of ground behind
 the house. ... (46)
 The object of the dance was to show the paces of the ladies to the
 admiring beaux, and a couple of dark beauties paid their 'Aquaar-ter dollah'