JoAnne Tucker shares her experiences in dance from directly a modern dance company to leading movement activities for women in prison and domestic violence survivors.
While
Facebook gets lots of criticism and has its drawbacks, one of its very positive
things for me is connecting to the many dancers I’ve worked with from the time
Avodah began in the early 70’s to the women who were part of the recent Healing
Voices – Personal Stories film Through
the Door. Lisa Watson, a member of
Avodah in the 90’s, is a friend on Facebook and this past May 19th
she posted about Dr. Edith Eva Eger (now 92) who wrote a book at age 90 about
surviving the Holocaust. The book is called
The Choice: Embrace the Possible, and
I thank you, Lisa, for bringing the book to my attention.
Recently I
have tended to stay away from reading accounts of Holocaust survivors but this
book held special interest for me because prior to her deportation to Auschwitz
in 1944 at the age of 16, Eger had been training as a dancer and gymnast. The post that Lisa shared on Facebook related
to the fact that Dr. Eger was in the Netherlands to meet with the director, the
actor and the ballerina who would be portraying her in a performance about the
time that Dr. Mengele in Auschwitz asked her to dance for him. There is a wonderful interview of her trip to
the Netherlands which includes her watching a rehearsal and hugging the dancer who
is portraying her. The interview is a
good account of her life and philosophy and I highly recommend it whether or
not you plan on reading the book. https://dreditheger.com/2019/05/04/interview-with-eenvandaag-dutch-national-television/
I wonder, if I were still running Avodah, if I would choose
to build a piece about Eger and the moment that
she danced for Mengele, who had come into the barracks looking for a
ballerina. She found that the way she
was able to dance for him was to close her eyes and pretend that she was at the
Budapest opera house dancing Romeo and Juliet. But it is not only that moment that I find
gripping and would want to convey. It is
her overall philosophy and spirit, even in her 90’s, that I would want to
capture (demonstrated by the fact that she ends her lectures with a high kick).
Among the many gems in the book is her recalling and giving
examples over and over again of the inspirational words from her mother, spoken
in the cattle car as they were being transported to Auschwitz. Her mother said
to her that no one can take away from you what you think and feel inside. The day they arrived her mother and father
died but she and her sister survived. Toward
the end of the war, prisoners were marched to Austria. She and her sister were found by a soldier on
May 4, 1945. She was barely alive, sick and with a broken back.
We learn how she recovered, married and moved to the United
States where she eventually studied Psychology, earning her Ph.D. and becoming
an expert particularly with war trauma victims.
She shares stories of some of her patients and how they help her work through her own challenges. While physically free she shares the struggle to mentally free herself. She relates this to her patients that are living in their own prisons, and so much of what she shares has relevancy to all of us about how we can live in a prison of our own making, choosing to be our own jailers. A comment by her I noted, most likely when she was recently interviewed by Oprah, is to choose expression rather than depression. It is what we keep secret and do not work through that causes our depression. Here’s the link where you can watch the interview.
One of her mentors is Victor Frankel, another Holocaust survivor who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning. She describes their friendship.
To conclude I want to share quotes from two sources. First,
a review in The New York Times written in October 2017 ends with the
reviewer’s comment, “I can’t imagine a more important message for modern
times. Eger’s book is a triumph and
should be read by all who care about their inner freedom and the future of
humanity.” Second, the Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate Desmond Tutu said: “The Choice is a gift to humanity. One of those rare and eternal stories
that you don’t want to end and that leave you forever changed. Dr. Eger’s life
reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that
suffering for the benefit of others. She has found true freedom and forgiveness
and shows us how we can as well.”
I am so glad to have read Dr. Eger’s book, which then led me to watch her various interviews. What a wonderful role model she is for those of us looking for people in their 80’s and 90’s leading rich meaningful lives.
In my last blog, I shared that Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from the team competition and some of the individual events in the Olympics increased our focus on mental health. COVID, the challenges of staying at home for over a year and then returning to interactions with people, and the need to navigate a new normal are stressful for most of us. Coping with these challenges certainly has been difficult for me, especially in the spring when I did not physically feel well. During this time I came across a book which I found very meaningful. The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind and the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk is currently #1 on The New York Times Best Sellers Paperback Nonfiction list and it has been on the list for 149 weeks. It is #1 on Amazon for books related to Mental Illness. It is also available as an audio book.
In a review by Concepcion de Leon on October 18, 2018 she clearly summarizes the three approaches that the book covers for people recovering from trauma: 1) top down by talking; 2) taking medicines and 3) bottom up – allowing the body to have experiences. She then goes on to note:
Survivors usually need some combination of the three methods, writes Dr. van der Kolk, but the latter — the mind-body connection — is most neglected. His work is predicated on integrating body-focused treatments into trauma recovery work, like yoga, role-play, dance and meditation. Another method he suggests is writing and keeping a journal. Click here to read the full review.
What struck me as I listened to the book was the fact that van der Kolk, a very respected researcher and expert on trauma, gives credibility to what many of us have been aware of for a long time: the power of yoga, role-playing, dance and meditation in healing. He points out that they are referred to as alternative therapies in healing, with drugs being the primary approach. In Part 5: “Paths to Recovery,” he states that it should be the other way around and that drugs should be the alternative therapy.
In my research I found four different articles in The New York Times citing van der Kolk’s work. That kind of exposure gives resounding recognition. While the medical community may be reluctant to give up talk therapy and medication, the public is hungry for alternatives. The first article was in 2014 in the magazine section of The New York Times. It opens with a description of a workshop van der Kolk gave at Big Sur in California called “Trauma, Memory and Recovery of Self.” Working with one participant he took role-playing to a new level which he calls “Structure,” which grew out of the psychomotor therapy developed by Albert Pesso, a dancer who studied with Martha Graham. The article goes on to describe van der Kolk’s career in much detail and I highly recommend checking it out. Here is the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/a-revolutionary-approach-to-treating-ptsd.html
The second article is the review which I have already quoted and the third and fourth articles are from this summer. How amazing that a book that came out in 2014 is receiving so much press and interest now! The third article basically is asking the author if he follows how his book is doing. The last article is a brief introduction to a long (over-an-hour) podcast with the author and Ezra Klein. I loved that in the introduction Ezra Klein points out that van der Kolk:
co-founded and leads a trauma research foundation and has been studying ways to try to heal these deeper parts of our psyches, everything from movement therapies like yoga and dance to E.M.D.R. to internal family systems therapy to MDMA treatment. We talk about all of it in here.
Here’s the link where you can listen to the podcast or read the transcript.
It is affirming to have read this book because I was first introduced to this kind of work in the 1960’s when I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh. As a theatre major I first took a course in Creative Dramatics from Dr. Barbara McIntyre (1916-2005), and later as a graduate student I was her teaching assistant. As I write this section, I pause with gratitude to Dr. McIntyre and the warm mentoring she provided. Born in Canada in 1916, she came to the University of Pittsburgh in the 50’s with a master’s degree and a career in children’s theater, teaching and using creative dramatics. While at Pitt she saw the therapeutic value of creative dramatics when asked to work with children who had speech impairment. That led her to work with Eleanor Irwin, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in Pitt’s School of Medicine. Ellie (as we called her) promoted the use of creative drama in drama therapy. Barbara received her doctorate in 1957. I studied with her between 1963 and 1965. It was during this time that I began to see the relationship between drama and movement in healing. In particular, she and Ellie Irwin introduced me to the work of Jacob Moreno and psychodrama.
Jacob Moreno (1889-1974) was born in Bucharest, Romania and practiced psychiatry near Vienna from 1918–1925. In 1925 he moved to New York City and continued working as a psychiatrist and experimenting with psychodrama, which included core techniques such as mirroring and role-playing. I have a vague memory of attending one of his sessions and seeing role-playing in action.
In the early to mid-sixties I also became aware of Judy Rubin and her work in Art Therapy. Judy and Ellie worked together, and in fact my mom, Janet Klineman, Ph.D., who was Director of the Lower School of The Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind, was very familiar with their work. After I moved away from Pittsburgh in 1966, my mom often mentioned them, as I believe they may have worked with students at the School for Blind. A quick Google search of Judy Rubin and Eleanor Irwin showed that they are still very active in the field. In 1985 they developed an Expressive Media Film Library and as recently as this spring Judy Rubin’s Facebook Page celebrated a Launch Party on May 22 featuring a number of art therapists sharing theory, practice tips and personal experiences.
Reading The Body Keeps Score was an experience in reaffirming my long-held belief that body work is a very important component of healing. The book provides excellent language to describe how the brain and body work together, and cites research work that van der Kolk and his colleagues have done to support this. Before closing I want to highly recommend reading the book and especially Part Five, Chapter 16: “Learning to Inhabit Your Body: Yoga” and Chapter 18: “Filling in the Holes: Creating Structure.”
I close with two pictures from the project I did using creative movement with women from Esperanza, the domestic violence shelter in Santa Fe.
Expressing Anger, Through the Door Project, Esperanza Shelter, Santa Fe, NM Photograph by Judy Naumberg
Expressing Joy, Through the Door Project, at Esperanza Shelter in Santa Fe, NM Photograph by Judy Naumberg
My attention was caught by the title of a talk presented by HUC (Hebrew Union College) Connect in collaboration with the journal Prooftext: “Dance as a Tool of Pleasure and Humiliation in I.J. Singer’s Book The Brothers Ashkenazi. It was a webinar on Zoom, so I registered to attend and am glad I did. The presentation by Sonia Gollance triggered my intellectual side to learn more about how dance was used in this family epic novel that takes place mainly in the city of Lodz, Poland between 1870 and 1920.
Sonia Gollance, a Lecturer in Yiddish in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, is a scholar of Yiddish Studies and German-Jewish literature whose work focuses on dance, theatre and gender. In her article in Prooftext she explores how dance is a main motif in The Brothers Ashkenazi, advancing the plot, character development and social commentary. In the very well researched article, she uses the term “literary dance scenes,” pointing out that the term mainly has developed in the context of British literature and the novels of Jane Austen. Her scholarly look at I. B. Singer’s book shows how literary dance scenes clearly depict the complexities of life in Lodz and the differences between the two brothers.
When I heard the talk via HUC Connect, I thought I would be focusing this blog on how dance was used for humiliation in Singer’s book and other related books or movies. While I will include some of that here, after reading the article in Prooftexts, I am equally fascinated with Gollance’s analysis of the dance motif and how it impacts the whole book’s development.
Dance is used masterfully to show the differences between the main character Max and his twin brother Yakub. Gollance points out that not only are the characters being developed by use of dance scenes, but we are being given insights into the different social groups and their assimilation into the main culture. Gollance looks at how each character functions in dance situations.
Early in the book we learn that there are differences between each twin’s relationship with his body. Max, the older twin, is thin and quiet. He doesn’t like to go outside and play with the other children. Yakub is the opposite; he is robust and thoroughly enjoys play. Singer then uses dance to tell us more about the characters. Max only dances when he is forced to. This happens only twice. The first time is at his arranged wedding, when his father tells him to join the Hasidic dancers at his celebration. His father has arranged for them to come, even though that is not what the bride’s family wanted. One hundred Hasidic men basically take over the dancing at the wedding, and Max does join them. The second time Max dances is toward the end of the book. Max has been rescued from a Russian prison by his brother Yakub, and at the border the antisemitic Polish soldiers command him to dance. This kind of dance is referred to as a Mayufes. He does so to prevent himself from being physically attacked by them. He dances and moves as fast as he can until he collapses on the ground. His life is saved.
In contrast we learn that Yakub dances for his own enjoyment and pleasure with his dancing partners. He enjoys moving and engages in the more modern pair dancing. However, he will not be forced to dance. When the Polish soldiers tell him to dance, he refuses and instead strikes the lieutenant, who then empties his pistol into Yakub’s body, killing him.
Singer has used dance to tell us more about each of his characters and also about the social order of that time. In particular, the wedding dance scenes illustrate this. The bride’s family wants the dance that is taking place in the women’s section where men and women are dancing together. In contrast, the groom’s father stops that interaction, with his 100 Hasidic men taking over the dancing. This tells us a lot about cultural differences and challenges of the time for the Jewish community.
The Mayufes scene in The Brothers Ashkenazi is very poignant because it ends with a death. In the movie The Piano there is also a scene where Jews are made to dance, showing a similar form of humiliation and mockery of Jews.
Although not dancing a Mayufes, Edith Eger in her book The Choice: Embrace the Possible,and in various interviews, talks about how she danced for Dr. Mengel. The following is from an interview in 2015 for CNN. (https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/25/world/auschwitz-dancing-mengele/index.html)
“Dr. Mengele came to the barracks and wanted to be entertained,” Eger says.
Fellow inmates “volunteered” Eger to perform for the man who had ordered her parents’ death.
She asked her captors to play the Blue Danube Waltz as she danced for one of the worst war criminals of the Holocaust.
“I was so scared,” Eger says.
“I closed my eyes, and I pretended that the music was Tchaikovsky, and I was dancing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in the Budapest opera house.”
The German doctor rewarded the Jewish girl with an extra ration of bread, which she later shared with the girls in her prison quarters.
Eger says months later, those same girls rescued her when she nearly collapsed from disease and starvation during a forced death march through Austria.
To learn more about Edith Eva Eger, please check out my blog on July 12, 2019, where I write about her, her book and my reaction to it.
To conclude, I am very grateful to have heard the webinar presented by Sonia Gollance, as she made me aware of how dance can be used in literature to further character development and convey social order of the time. Her article in Prooftexts is available online; here is a link to it. The link works for me and I was able to read the full article. https://www.proquest.com/openview/e19eac68f651b3a1595b5e5584ad3bf9/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=47712
I just finished reading this eye-opening book, and I had planned to write a review. As I begin to write, I realize there is more I want to say than simply to review an excellent book. In this blog I will point why this work was very much needed and how Dr. McPherson developed the collection. I’ll include a brief overview of the book. In my next blog, I will explore my reaction as a retired dancer/choreographer/artistic director, and note particular chapters that were important in helping me to better understand both the times during which I was very active in the dance world, and where things have evolved to now.
Let me begin by saying I have a friendship with Elizabeth McPherson, so as I continue this blog I will be referring to her as Elizabeth. Elizabeth performed for 8 years in the company that I directed. We have continued to stay in touch since then. I have written articles for the quarterly Dance Education in Practicewhich she edits. We presented a workshop on Helen Tamiris at the 2018 Jews and Jewishness in the Dance World conference. Recently she visited me in Costa Rica, spending time working on a biography of Helen Tamiris.
Milestones in Dance in the USA was one of two books that received the 2023 Ruth Lovell Murray award from the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO). In recognizing the book, the organization provided the following description:
Designed for weekly use in dance history courses, it traces dance in the USA as it broke traditional forms, crossed genres, provoked social and political change, and drove cultural exchange and collision. The authors put a particular focus on those whose voices have been silenced, unacknowledged, and/or uncredited – exploring racial prejudice and injustice, intersectional feminism, protest movements, and economic conditions, as well as demonstrating how socio-political issues and movements affect and are affected by dance. https://www.ndeo.org/Membership/Awards/Ruth-Lovell-Murray-Book-Award
In a blog that Elizabeth wrote for NDEO in February, she describes her extensive background in taking and teaching dance history courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. She points out that most of the focus in such courses has been on showing how US dance has grown out of Western European aesthetics, and as a result, “many important and influential voices in dance have been less acknowledged and sometimes even silenced.” Her current dance history course seeks to highlight these voices.
In this same blog, Elizabeth describes how she was approached to be the editor of the book:
In the summer of 2020, after doing a peer review of a book for Taylor and Francis-Routledge, I was contacted by the publisher to gauge my interest in creating a textbook on the history of American Dance. Routledge was developing a Milestones series. Each book would be an edited collection of ten essays on various topics related to the overall theme.
Cover of the dance history book reviewed in this blog.
Drawing on her new approach to teaching dance history, Elizabeth selected ten authors who matched the new focus of her dance history course. The diverse authors were all very qualified to write on their specific subjects.
There is no better way to share the depth of the book and the authors than to list the ten chapters:
“Native American Dance and Engage Resistance” by Robin Prichard
“An American Take on Ballet” by Dawn Lille
“Black Women Keep the Tempo: The Impact of Black Women on Jazz and Tap Dance in the USA” by Alesondra Christman
“Gendered Politics and the Female Dancing Body” by Julie Kerr-Berry
“An Exploration of Inspiration, Imitation, and Cultural Appropriation in Dance in the USA” by Miriam Giguere
“Dancing for Social Change in the 20th and 21st Centuries” by Hannah Kosstrin
“Challenging the Distinction between Art and Entertainment: Dance in Musical Theater” by Joanna Dee Das
“Postmodern Dance: Laboratory of Rupture” by Emmanuele Phuon
“On Black Dance and Postmodern Representation from Black Power to Afro-Futurist Performance” by Carl Paris
“From The Serpentine to The Renegade: Milestones in Dance and Media Technology” by Jody Sperling.
I found each chapter fascinating, well researched and filled with new insights into the world of dance in the United States. One of the outstanding features of the book is the Further Reading List that each author gives at the end of their chapter. The materials include books, films, and Internet resources. Following that are the specific References that relate to the chapter. If one’s curiosity is peaked, there are lots of options for getting more information.
The Appendix of the book provides useful information for the reader. This includes a detailed Timeline of US history and dance in the US, a Glossary, and a Further Reading List which has sections for Books, Films and Videos, Internet Resources, Articles, Exhibits, and Journals.
Elizabeth has edited an outstanding book, not only as a textbook for dance history courses but also as an excellent resource in any college/university library for humanities courses. I highly recommend Milestones in Dance in the USA to any reader interested in getting a diverse perspective of the range of dance activities in the US. I learned a lot and in the next blog will share some of the information I found particularly fascinating.
In the last blog , I reviewed this informative book. In this blog, I will share thoughts, insights and new awareness that I gained from reading the book. In May of 2004, I moved from New York City, leaving my role as Artistic Director and choreographer of The Avodah Dance Ensemble, a small modern dance company that I founded in 1974. I often went back to NYC, at first twice a year, enjoying catching up on some dance, especially with dance companies I already knew. Luckily, I spent the summers through 2009 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts Camp is located. Linda Kent, then Director of the dance program, brought many up-and-coming modern dance artists to Camp and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing performances and sometimes watching classes and rehearsals. With COVID and the move to Costa Rica, I have only made one trip back to NYC, and that was in June 2022. Of course, over the years I followed dance by reading articles and reviews in various online newspapers such as The New York Times, paying attention to Instagram, Facebook posts, Dance Magazine and other online sources. This is not the same as being intimately involved in dance on a day-to-day basis, as I was before. In writing this, I am amazed that it has now been just over 19 years since I made a major life change. Reading Milestones in Dance in the USA caught me up to date in some dance trends I was not aware of and reminded me of dance experiences I hold dear in my memory.
Before getting into specifics of the book, I also want to point out that reading the book made me aware of how limited I was in exploring the full range of dance happening around me in NYC. I stayed pretty focused on mainstream modern dance while occasionally attending a ballet performance or the latest Broadway musical. Milestones in Dance in the USA let me know about dancers, companies and trends that I had had only limited knowledge about, although they had been happening around me. There were also areas in the book where I simply had no knowledge at all about what happened in that genre of dance.
I wonder if others have experienced being passionately involved in a career and realizing (either at the time or later) how focused their attention has been on their particular niche and how unaware they have been of trends going on around them. Having retired 19 years ago, I wanted to catch up on “new” happenings. It is good to read a book like this and fill in some of those spaces.
I begin by sharing some information I got from the very first of the 10 chapters, “Native American Dance and Engaged Resistance.” The chapter was written by Robin Prichard, who begins with a dedication honoring “my ancestors, the Tsalagihi Ayeli, also known as the Cherokee . . . and the original inhabitants and stewards of the land on which I wrote this article.” She is a choreographer and Fulbright Fellow who undertook a cross-cultural choreography project between Australian Aboriginal and contemporary Dance and has taught at several colleges in the United States and Australia.
The article opens with information she will expand on:
Native American dances are the oldest continuing dance traditions of the North American continent, containing unparalleled diversity in content, meaning and practices. . . . The story of Native American dance tells a distinctly American story of Indigenous lifeways, followed by slavery, genocide, and forced assimilation, as well as resistance and renewal.
She points out how dance held a venerated place in North American cultures as a carrier and creator of knowledge and lifeways during the 15,000 years before European ships “ran aground on the continent.”
The fact that Native Americans use dance to resist assimilation and continue their culture is demonstrated by the concern of the federal government and the hundreds of official restrictions and bans on dance that “the federal government produced in the decades between 1880 and 1930.”
She goes in depth into one dance in particular, The Ghost Dance, describing how “it was meant to bring an end to White colonial rule and restore Native Americans, who would be joined by their ancestors to live peacefully on earth.”
Dance was not just a leisure activity; rather it served as a way “to stay Native American, to continue essential lifeways, and to survive into the 20th century.” In contrast she shared how Wild West Show (a category of shows) used “Indians” doing dances and horseback riding to appear as symbols of the past.
The end of this detailed and well-written chapter focuses on Powwow Dances which developed into “the largest expression of Native American culture with hundreds each year across the USA and Canada.” She points out that “Powwow dance and music have been present at every major Native American civil rights protest of the 20th century.” Specific dances that are part of the Powwow are described, such as: The Round Dance, “a social dance of friendship in which every person is encouraged to join,” and The Jingle Dress dances, which have become “visible manifestations of Indigenous healing in both Native America and Black Lives Matter protests.”
She summarizes:
Resilient and adaptable, dance reinforces social, cultural, psychological, economic, and political ideals. Intertribal dance celebrates widely shared Indigenous Institutions and values while also continuing tribal-specific dance cultures.
She ends with a poem by Alcatraz poet Cheryl Ann Payne:
The layers and layers of concrete could not
stop the flowing of spirit between the Land
and her People
We danced the Spirit back into the Land
Hannah Kosstrin’s chapter on “Dancing for Social Change in the 20th and 21st Centuries” stood out for me because as a choreographer I shared this desire for my work. She begins:
When people dance with the goal of making the world a better place, they are dancing for social change. Social action drove many choreographers in the United States of American during the 20th and 21st centuries. Occurring on the concert stage and in community settings, dance for social change includes: work that engages social problems to change people’s minds or inspire them to enact change; work that offers viewpoints other than culturally dominant ones; and community-based dance efforts for empowerment and liberation.
She goes on to give specific examples:
The workers dance movement (1920-1940’s) for workers’ rights, egalitarianism and anti-racism. She gives many examples including discussing the work of Anna Sokolow, Sophie Maslow, Jane Dudley, Charles Weidman, Pearl Primus, and Katherine Dunham.
Choreographing Postwar Change to “make audience members feel like they are witnesses to onstage atrocities that inspire them to take action.” Anna Sokolow’s piece Rooms is cited for how it depicts feelings of isolation and alienation.” Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder shows the plight of Black men on a prison chain gang. Alvin Ailey’s Revelations is about representation and opportunity. Some of Jose Limon’s works foreshadowed the Chicano Movement and mentored Native American students. Eiko and Koma in 1991 “embedded dances within specific sites in calls for environmental justice.” Anna Halprin and Liz Lerman used “dance practices to bring communities together mobilizing the Jewish concept of ‘tikkun olam,’ healing the world.”
Mobilizing Sexualities began in the 1980’s when choreographers began making autobiographical dances. “Many mobilized their gender and sexuality identities for social change through representation and collective action.” Bill T. Jones and his “first life and artistic partner Arnie Zane” were leaders in this movement. Arthur Aviles, “a choreographer of Puerto Rican heritage . . . puts dance at the center of queer social justice community building.” Jennifer Monson and Elizabeth Streb, Lesbian choreographers, displayed queerness through how they used movement rather than themes.
Storytelling for Justice beginning in the 1990’s and continuing to 2020’s made pieces about historical injustices using their communities’ stories for social action. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Urban Bush Women is an example of using Black Women to make pieces important to Black Women. H.T. Chen, in the NY area, and Minh Tran in Portland, challenged anti-Asian sentiment in their work. There are mixed-ability dance companies using dances with multiple physicalities that provide opportunities for dancers whose bodies do not fit the norm of what is thought of as the dancing body. Three Black American choreographers, Kyle Abraham, Camille A. Brown and Jennifer Harge, create works related to the Black Experience in the 2010’s to 2020’s. Discussion of the works of two current Indigenous choreographers, Rulan Tangen and Patrick Makuakane, illustrate storytelling for sovereignty and environmental justice. Jody Sperling, who danced on sea ice in the Arctic in 2014, is included, as well as Mexicanx-American artist Fabiola Ochoa Torralba’s work calling for climate recognition and rights of people on society’s margin.
This is an intense chapter filled with lots of information. It resonated with me because I was familiar with so many of the choreographers and pieces that are mentioned, and it was interesting to see them put in this context. I, too, found that a lot of my interest in choreographing pieces had an underlying call for social change.
The last chapter I want to share is by Joanna Dee Das: “Challenging the Distinction between Art and Entertainment: Dance in Musical Theater.” Musical theater holds a passionate place in my heart, as I have been involved in both directing and choreographing community productions and am an enthusiastic Broadway attendee. I was curious what new things I would learn from Dee Das.
In her introduction she poses some interesting questions and states the purpose of the chapter:
If George Balanchine can create “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and have it called entertainment when a part of the musical On Your Toes (1936) and art when performed by members of the New York City Ballet in 1968, then we must question the root of this art/entertainment distinction. Musical theater choreographers operate under a different set of constraints than those working in concert dance, but those constraints lead to creative work that is no less worthy. This chapter will demonstrate how race, gender, and ideas of artistic independence, originality and authenticity shape how dance is classified.
She shares how dance in early musical theater had two influences, European ballet extravaganzas that began in the US in the 1860’s and the Africanist aesthetic of Black American social and theatrical dance. The first major transformation of Broadway dance was in 1921 in the musical Shuffle Along where dance became central to the “energy and motion of a Broadway show.” There was such a reaction to this all-Black cast and all-Black creative team that The Ziegfeld Follies of 1922 had a number called “It’s Getting Dark on Old Broadway.”
Interestingly, Martha Graham in 1930 referred to existing theatrical dance as a “handmaiden of music, of drama, even of costumes and stage sets and equally obscene in their lack of artistic integrity.” Dee Das points out how this led to an inauguration of concert dance as separate from Broadway entertainment. It was not only the dancers that expressed this division, but also critics of the period such as John Martin, Edwin Denby and Clement Greenberg.
That separation didn’t mean that ballet choreographers or concert dancers didn’t become involved in Broadway productions. George Balanchine is one example; Katherine Dunham is another who “blurred the Broadway/concert dance, entertainment/art lines.”
In the 1940’s there were many examples of crossover between modern dance and Broadway. Helen Tamiris choreographed Up in Central Park and Hanya Holm did Kiss Me Kate. At the same time there was also a movement to make “ordinary jazz routine” have power. As choreographer Robert Alton says, “I have exactly six minutes to raise the customer out of his seat. If I cannot do it, I am no good.”
Of course, most of us are familiar with how Agnes de Mille influenced Broadway dance in Oklahoma! and Dee Das reminds us that “de Mille’s choreography in Oklahoma! furthered the plot and developed characters’ emotional arcs.” Following de Mille, Dee Das points out that Jerome Robbins became the “standard-bearer for musical theater choreography” and he enjoyed success on both Broadway and in the ballet world. He is known for musicals such as Peter Pan, West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof, and for being both the director and the choreographer of shows.
In the 1970’s and 80’s Michael Bennet, Gower Champion and Bob Fosse were important figures in Broadway choreography. Fosse followed Jerome Robbins’ pattern of serving as both director and choreographer and developed his own style, which is pointed out as a “cynical depiction of female sexuality.” An example is given in “Big Spender” from Sweet Charity where the women “thrust their pelvises jerkily and aggressively.”
The next trend wasn’t until the 1990’s when George C. Wolfe as director, and dancers Gregory Hines and Savion Glover brought a trio of musicals that showed an “African aesthetic of tap dance and its capacity to carry history and memory.” For example, in Bringin ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk, “the story of the survival of “the beat,” as expressed through tap dance, became the metaphor for the Black experience in the United States . . . .”
The Avodah Dance Ensemble worked with Children Living in Temporary Housing. One year we arranged for the group to attend a performance of Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk. In the front row of this photo (dark shirt, light pants) is Elizabeth McPherson, editor of Milestones in Dance in the USA. I took the picture.
The chapter goes on to discuss how choreographers and dancers continue to cross over between the different dance worlds. In the very successful Hamilton, premiered in 2015, Andy Blankenbuehler created a “parallel physical score,” where dance moved seamlessly throughout the musical. The style of movement is unique, fitting each of the scenes as “he combines various forms of hip-hop with musical theater’s ballet/tap/theatrical jazz . . . . ”
Dee Das concludes the chapter by pointing out that the question needs to shift to “how musical theater dance’s kinesthetic contributions balance with other aural and visual media to communicate with audience members and create pleasure.”
While certainly all the chapters deserve mention and held my interest, these three had particular appeal. All the chapters in this book are well researched, and I have only given you a taste of the scholarship each author brings to their topic. This book is an outstanding resource not only for dance history courses but for those individuals who want to explore dance in the United States from a variety of perspectives.
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