Module II - Revelations and Racism- African American Concert Dance

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Module II - Revelations and Racism- African
American Concert Dance

• Topics for the day
• Intro to modern dance
• Harlem Renaissance and the Minstrel stereotypes
• Afro-American pioneers in concert dance
• Hemsley Winfield and Edna Guy
• Asadata Dafora and Kykunkor

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What is concert dance?

• Philosophy of early modern dance - movement
  joined with soul. An inner statement of spiritual
  belief. Psychic meanings are intuited and felt
  more than literally expressed.
• Modern is a fine art, intellectual in its
  origins, based on ideas. Challenges a purely
  entertainment aesthetic
• Creative - movement invention departs from
  ballet. Belief in power of movement was critical.
  
• Focus on inner world of experience
• Dance serves as a vehicle for self awareness, of
  inner motivations. Especially relevant for Af-Am
  culture that was stripped of the connection to
  its culture.

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Harlem Renaissance and search for identity

• Pervasive Minstrel Stereotypes
• Harlem Renaissance - Negro Renaissance power of
  art to challenge stereotypes and reclaim dignity
• Langston Hughes poet, 1926 article The Negro
  Artist and the Racial Mountain, - Negro artists
  need to create to express their own dark skinned
  heritage without fear or shame, if whites or
  blacks like it ok, if not, ok, they must create
  now as strong as they can.

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Langston Hughes (1902-1967) poems

• THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
• IVE known rivers
• I've known rivers ancient as the world and older
  than the flow of human blood in human veins.
• My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
• I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
• I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to
  sleep.
• I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids
  above it.
• I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe
  Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen
  its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
• I've known rivers
• Ancient, dusky rivers.
• My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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Langston Hughes (1902-1967) poems

• Question
• When the old junk man Death
• Comes to gather up our bodies
• And toss them into the sack of oblivion,
• I wonder if he will find
• The corpse of a white multi-millionaire
• Worth more pennies of eternity,
• Than the black torso of
• A Negro cotton-picker?

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What shall the Negro Dance About

• Question posed in 1933, Workers Dance League at
  Harlem YMCA, following a performance by Hemsley
  Winfield.
• Ad Bates - a young Negro should dance about the
  things that are vital to him.
• Anonymous our dance should express the strivings
  of the New Negro. Thhis term reflects the new
  consciousness of the Harlem Renaissance.

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The Development of Black Modern Dance in America
Three Phases

• End the myth of the minstrel presentation of the
  Negro, and the myth that their was no African
  culture. Introduction of authentic African
  Material
• 2) Black choreographers explore contemporary
  African American culture.
• Two agendas - kills the minstrel myths and
  celebrate potential for a new art that will grow
  out of the Africanist aesthetic.
• 3) Freedom to create from total fabric of Black
  experience and to create from within or outside
  of African-American heritage.

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The Pioneers in Black Concert Dance

• Helmsley Winfield
• Edna Guy

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Edna Guy
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Asadata Dafara (Horton) native of Sierra Leone

• Kykunkor The Witch Woman- Dafora was 45 in 1934
  debut
• Kykunkor - included a series of authentic African
  dances Agunda -dance of joy, Eboe - jester
  dance, Battoo- challenge dance.
• Kirstein and other critics reflect racist
  stereotypes still in currency.
• Kykunkor portrayed blacks as human beings- this
  was its revelation and success, Dafora turned
  away stereotypes of African barbarism by
  referring to American lynchings.
• A huge success - paved way for blacks taken
  seriously in concert dance

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Asadata Dafara (Horton) Ostrich Dance
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92nd St. YMHA presented Negro Dance Evening split
into

• Part I African
• Part II West Indies
• Featuring Edna Guy, Asadata Dafora, young
  Katherine Dunham and Talley Beatty

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92nd St. YMHA presented Negro Dance Evening split
into
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