Samuel A. Floyd Jr., the director of the center, developed this approach while researching an article on the "ring shout," a religious dance associated with the slavery period.

During the ring shout, the women joyfully shake their hips and waves their arms in the air, never for a moment disturbing their splendid headgear.

The ring shout is described as a dance with "counterclockwise circling and high arm gestures" that resembled the Big Apple.

The songs are performed in the "ring shout" style; the singers stand in a circle and then move counterclockwise in a shuffling dance.

Charles Lyell, a visitor to the Sea Islands, gives one of the earliest descriptions of an African American ring shout.

Ms. Threadgill plans to involve the audience in what is called a ring shout, using Johnson's song "Last Fair Deal Gone Down."

The ring shout was practiced in some African American churches into the 20th century, and it continues to the present among the Gullah people of the Sea Islands.

The origins of the ring shout are obscure, and it is usually assumed to be derived from African dance.

The Gullah ring shout is similar to ecstatic religious rituals performed in West and Central Africa.

Modern scholars still hold this to be mostly true, claiming that the walkaround was a parody of the ring shout, a religious slave dance.