AFRICANS LEGENDS WITH THIER CULTURES

A dance style initiated by blacks that gained fame in the early 20th century was tap dance. Featured in such theatrical shows as The Darktown Follies (1913), tap dance combined elements of African-influenced shuffle dances (most notably the buck-and-wing, which was performed in minstrel shows), English clog dancing, and Irish jigs. Black dancers such as Bill Robinson, one of the greatest virtuosos of tap, brought the new form respectability and popularity. Tap dancing developed further in the 1930s and 1940s when Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Also during the 1930s and 1940s, blacks moved into ballet and modern dance, dance .

It is has been previously created and performed by whites alone. Prominent white choreographers, including Ruth Page, Agnes de Mille, and Helen Tamiris, incorporated African American themes and movement styles into their dances and hired blacks to perform them. In 1928 Tamiris performed two dances to traditional spirituals, and for her 1932 piece Gris-Gris Ceremonial, which was based on a West African ritual, she used African-inspired shaken gourds as accompaniment. In 1931 dancers Edna Guy and Hemsley Winfield were featured in a performance in New York City billed as “the first Negro dance recital in America.” Sierra Leonian dancer Asadata Dafora featured African themes and movement in his dance-dramas, large-scale plays that used dances in telling a story. His works Kykunkor (1934) and Zunguru (1938) earned both popular and critical acclaim at their New York City premieres for their authentic portraits of black culture.

During the 1930s and 1940s two American dancers who had been trained as anthropologists, Katherine Dunham and Trinidad-born Pearl Primus, made immensely important contributions to African-influenced dance based on research they had done in Africa and the Caribbean. In 1931 Dunham founded the Negro Dance Group in Chicago. After traveling extensively in the West Indies she choreographed one of her most famous works, L’ag’ya (1938), which was based on a fighting dance of Martinique. She later made Haiti a principal site of her research in dance and culture. In the 1940s Dunham toured the United States with another black dance troupe she had formed, and by 1945 she had opened her own school to teach the African and Caribbean dances she had learned. Pearl Primus began presenting her choreography of African and African American themes in the 1940s. The dance Strange Fruit (1943), for example, expressed rage at the lynching of blacks in America. A nine-month tour of Africa in 1948 produced more African-inspired pieces. These dances fascinated audiences with their use of freely moving torsos, rhythmic vitality, native-influenced costumes, and enormously energetic and enthusiastic performers.

The Lester Horton Dance Theater, founded in 1932, was the first racially integrated dance troupe in America. One of the major dancers was Alvin Ailey, who served as the group’s director from 1953 to 1954. Ailey left in 1958 to form his own modern-dance company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. In 1960 his new company premiered Revelations, a piece set to a soundtrack of African American spirituals that reacquainted millions of Americans with the beauty and pathos of those traditional songs. One of Ailey’s dancers, Judith Jamison, won fame for her intense performance of Ailey’s solo Cry (1971), a dance that portrays a black woman’s life story. Other prominent black choreographers who have contributed significantly to modern dance include Donald McKayle, Debbie Allen, Talley Beatty, Garth Fagan, Bill T. Jones, and Joel Hall. In recent years several regional modern dance companies have been created to present works by African Americans.

Beginning in the 1950s, a number of black ballet dancers, including Arthur Mitchell, Janet Collins, Virginia Johnson, Carmen De Lavallade, and Geoffrey Holder, rose to success in regional and national ballet companies. Mitchell was the first African American to dance with the New York City Ballet, and in 1969 he founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem, America’s first ballet company for African Americans. Collins served as prima ballerina for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company from 1951 to 1954.




The past 20 years in African American dance have been rich in innovations as well as connections with the past. The definition of dance has broadened beyond ballet, modern, and jazz. Popular and social dances, including the urban black dance forms of break dancing and hip-hop, have been recognized for their artistry and expressiveness. All-female companies such as Urban Bush Women have been formed, as has a company devoted exclusively to hip-hop dance, The Pure Movement Dance Company.
Tap dance found a new audience in the late 1900s as performers, scholars, and students recognized it as a uniquely American genre. Female tap dancers, who once danced in relative obscurity, have also achieved recognition and encouragement. As they tell their stories, they bring to light the legacy of women who have matched male tap dancers—from Bill Robinson to Honi Coles, the Nicholas Brothers, and Gregory Hines—step for step.
Dance created and performed by African Americans has become a permanent part of American dance. Contemporary dance companies founded by blacks tour both nationally and internationally. The diversity of dance styles and genres is represented by such groups as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Garth Fagan’s Bucket Dance Theater, Philadelphia Dance Company, The Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Kariamu & Company, and Forces of Nature Dance Theatre.
Many African American dance companies have specialized in reconstructing traditional African dances, keeping these dance forms alive in America. They have influenced a generation of choreographers who blend African styles with movements from modern and popular dance. These groups include the African American Dance Ensemble; KanKouran West African Dance Company; Ko-Thi Dance Company; Dinizulu and His African Dancers, Drummers, and Singers; and Muntu Dance Theater.