Black America dances US history

by Alison Hird

Article published on the 2009-03-17 Latest update 2009-03-17 17:24 TU

(Photo: CND)

African-American artists and choreographers have danced their way through some of the 20^th century’s key moments. Not only have they produced some of the most provocative and interesting work ever on the American stage, but dance has expressed changes in society and even helped bring them about. A striking photo and film exhibition at Paris’s National Dance Centre gets you longing to stomp. 

Cast your mind back to January this year.

The US election campaign is in full swing and Barack Obama is asked whether he thinks former president Bill Clinton was “the first black President”, as African American novelist Toni Morrison had said.

Obama replies he would have to see Clinton dance first. 

Then the Obamas both strut their stuff in separate editions of the Ellen Degenres chat show. Michele sweeps the board.

“His dance style clearly, at least in Americans’ eyes, reads much whiter than Michele’s,” explains dance historian Susan Manning. “It makes sense. He grew up in Hawaii, in a different milieu. Michele grew up in more working-class south side Chicago.

"I’m intrigued by the dance sub-text of the whole campaign,” she adds enthusiastically.

Katherine Dunham
(Photo: Anonymous)

Hardly surprising. Manning’s an authority on African-American dances and was called upon to curate a rich and thought-provoking exhibition at the National Dance Dentre (CND) in Pantin, east of Paris.

Called Danses Noires/Blanche Amérique (Black Dances/White America) - though in French the wordplay also allows for the more fusionist “black and white dances in America” - it traces a century of dance expression by African-Americans whether in social halls, theatres or streets.

Throughout that period, the dance floor proved a vibrant forum for expressing black identities, but Manning guards against trying to define black dance.

“I was certainly steering clear of trying to answer what black dance is and trying instead to suggest that what is important is that artists in different decades have asked that question and answered it through their dance expression in many different ways and in ways that were directly and indirectly related to larger social changes.”

The exhibition therefore sets out to inter-relate social change and artistic change, showing the extent to which dances physically engaged with the larger historical and social movements of the time.

Movements like “agit prop”, inspired by the Communist Party which was active in supporting the black civil rights movement in 30s America.

The exhibition shows photos of Edith Segal’s film Black and White where a black American stands in front of a Jewish American, each man clenching his fist in a gesture of solidarity over the class struggle.

African-Americans didn’t just bring social issues into their work, they used it to advance civil rights.

The choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham came to prominence in the early 40s and toured the States during the years of WWII, performing in theatres where blacks were only allowed to sit at the back. Her stage protests in such theatres helped end segregation, according to Manning.

“She would literally make stage speeches saying,  'I can see you’ve enjoyed this but we’re not coming back to this theatre unless the house is integrated'. In that way she managed to integrate many theatre venues during the WWII years.”

Pearl Primus
(Photo: Barbara Morgan)

Dunham worked with Pearl Primus, another emblematic choreographer and anthropologist who drew on African traditions, reworking them in a contemporary context.

While Dunham’s company performed to critical acclaim, it was harder for African-Americans to break into classical dance.

In 1932, Janet Collins was just 15 when she successfully auditioned for the prestigious Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but turned the role down when its director insisted she paint her face and body white. Her talent broke through the colour barrier in the end, however, and she became the first African-American to perform at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

By the late 60s, early 70s, dancers such as Eleo Pomare were expressing some of the anger of the black power movement.

One of the exhibition photos shows him clad only in leather gloves, briefs, cap and boots, as he pretends to stand astride a motorbike.

Janet Collins
(Photo: Walter Owen)

“He refused to dance the negro,” says Manning. Negro being for him a negative term by then, Pomare refused to dance the way white folks saw him:  a kind of folksy, music-loving figure. “He really wanted to express the anger, the uptightness, the feeling of what it is to live in the black ghetto at that moment.”

But just as there’s no one black identity, not everyone shared that image of black masculinity.

One of the most influential contemporary African-American choreographers is Bill T Jones. While he certainly benefited from some of the changes during the years of the civil rights movement, Manning says he seeks to challenge the kind of images that someone like Eleo Pomare had created.

“He looked back at black arts and felt that the lines had been drawn limiting what black artists could do. He very much wanted to dance in a different way”.

Notably, Jones reworked the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in his choreography Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land. Manning calls it “an epic work that takes on black history, black culture, questions of religion and sexuality in a huge way”.   

She also cites hip hop artist Rennie Harris who’s done an interesting take on Romeo and Juliette.

 “There are interesting continuities coming up all the time” she says. “I think African-American artists have done some of the most interesting, profound and provocative work on the US stage.”

Manning hopes visitors to the exhibition will also be struck by the sheer diversity of black dances. From the early jazz-inspired ragtime and tap, musical reviews and minstrel shows where blacks performed for whites, to fast swinging lindy-hopping, through to ballet, modern dance and hip hop, to name just a few.

What links them according to French co-curator Claire Rousier is a common heritage marked by energy and resistance.

So where does that leave the energetic Obamas?

These torch-bearers of the post-civil rights generation of African-Americans have an obvious sensibility for dance. When the couple finally merged their styles and waltzed their way around the stage at the inauguration gala, it was, in Manning’s eyes, “a potent image of union and the bridging of so many divisions”. 

Danses Noires/Blanche Amérique runs at the CND, 1, rue Victor-Hugo, 93507 Pantin France until April 7^th, before moving to Lyon and Marseille