traditions of free northern black people, and Johnson has pointed to evidence that he was performing "a quite specific, African-infused plantation dance". Descriptions of his dance hint that Juba performed black steps such as the walk-around, the pigeon wing, a primordial Charleston, the long-bow J, trucking, the turkey trot, the backward spring, the wailing jawbone, and tracking upon the heel. However, Johnson cautions that "I might see any number of dance steps here, if I look longingly enough." Juba was in a white-dominated field playing for largely white audiences; he likely compromised his culture's music and dance in order to survive in show business. This was true of his comedy sketches and songs, which did not stray from standard minstrel fare. One London observer in the 1840s who witnessed slave dances on a South Carolina plantation called them "poor shufflings compared to the pedal inspirations of Juba". Juba's dance may have been an amalgamation of African and European precedents. Dickens's piece on the New York dancer, describing leg movements only, points to the Irish jig, but he also refers to Juba performing the single and double shuffle, which are black-derived steps. Historians Shane and Graham White have argued that black people of this period performed European steps in a different style from whites. Historian Robert Toll has written that Juba "had learned a European dance, blended it with African tradition, and produced a new form, an Afro-American dance that had a great impact on minstrelsy". Dance historians Marshall and Jean Stearns have agreed, saying that "in the person of William Henry Lane, the blend of British folk with American Negro dance in the United States had, by 1848, resulted in a striking new development. So foreign observers, who were in a position to view its emergence objectively, treated it as an original creation." Legacy and historiography The terms juba dancer and juba dancing became common in variety theaters after Master Juba popularized them. Actors, minstrels, and British clowns inspired by Juba and other minstrels adopted blackface and performed dances similar to Juba's as a stage character called the "Gay Negro Boy". The character spread to France (from 1860) and Belgium (from 1865) when British circuses toured there. Elements of these dances were still found among British whiteface clowns as late as the 1940s. Juba's rave reception in Manchester may have presaged that city's later status as the center of dance