When Negro slaves arrived in America, from the early 1600’s, they brought their culture – its rhythms, music and movement – with them.
Chained – literally and figuratively – to a foreign landscape and another’s rule of law, these African voices (numbering in the millions) moved to the beat of their own world to prolong survival. It’s in this diaspora that the unique vocabulary of Negro dance rose and flourished – beginning as celebrations and contests amongst slaves, then reinventing itself over time as a calling card, political weapon, and badge of honor.
As tracked in US website Theatredance, from the outset, cultural appropriation was rampant. Whites saw slaves dancing and decided the ‘image’ was amusing, a potential source of wider entertainment. The stereotype of the ‘dancing slave’ was born, and European entertainers around the United States took to blackening their faces in hollow imitation.
In her book Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance, US dance historian Jacqui Malone, touches on why early moves of the black community struck an instant chord with practitioners and audiences.
‘In stark contrast to the erect spines and stiff legs of European dance, the spontaneous, bent-kneed, and angulated bodies stressed a life-affirming joy that remains vital today’ she says.
Slaves only to the rhythm, African American dancers and choreographers kept the joy alive, creating their own companies over the decades, and fusing principles of modern dance with ancient tribal motions.
Gradually, further offshoots took hold – tap, jazz and hip-hop pushing the Negro dance matrix outward. Add to this the surviving dances from early 20th century America like the shimmy, black bottom, shorty george and the cakewalk, plus swing, religious and ritualistic dance, even the movements of African American marching bands (hugely popular in recent years), and myriad styles of Negro motion were inescapably visible (more so than their proponents) and intimately tied to black creative expression.
Part of this expression – starting in those first days of rebellion against slavery – was affirmation of identity, and consolidation of community as a force for change.
For Negro dance pioneer Katherine Dunham, cultural and racial politics were always a part of the studio landscape. Says researcher Wendy Perron in a profile piece for Dance Magazine (2000) entitled One-Woman Revolution: ‘Jazz dance, “fusion” and the search for our cultural heritage all have their antecedents in Dunham’s work as a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. She was the first American dancer to present indigenous forms on a concert stage, the first to sustain a black dance company, the first black person to choreograph for the Metropolitan Opera. She created and performed in works for stage, clubs and Hollywood films; she started a school and a technique that continue to flourish; she fought unstintingly for racial justice.’
For another of Negro dances’ leading lights, a life in dance was less about race, than transcending it. Alvin Ailey, who faced homophobia in addition to racism throughout his prolific career, expressed an early desire for his dance to connect cultures through exemplary physical story telling, irrespective of a single dancers hue. While he certainly wanted to extend opportunities for otherwise marginalised African American dance artists (and the first incarnations of his company featured primarily African American dancers) a multi-racial platform for dance remained his priority, as did transcending what he dubbed ‘negritude’ (later called Black pride). Consequently, the Ailey company employed dancers, composers, and choreographers of any and all races, based entirely on talent.
While the politics of identity, discrimination, and African American themes were still often at the heart of Ailey’s repertoire, his focus was on advancing the form. He was undeniably successful, his company popularising modern dance throughout the world with international tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department (a liasion Ailey was dubious of at first, suspecting his Government was more interested in demonstrating their ‘tolerance’ of Negro dance to the world, than in genuine altruism).
Hip-hop too was originally conceived as a transcending device: a politically motivated alternative to crime and violence that plagued urban African American communities. Contemporary hip-hop took hold in the mid 1970s, when Jamaican-born Bronx resident Kool Herc noted dancers’ enthusiasm for the drum “break” or percussive solo of a song. By the time New York DJ, Afrika Bambaataa, coined the term ‘hip-hop,’ the phenomenon was transforming urban battles into artistic expression – gangs of dancers displaced street gangs, practicing and performing together for a war of movement against rival groups.
Said Bambaataa famously: ‘When we made Hip Hop, we made it hoping it would be about peace, love, unity and having fun so that people could get away from the negativity that was plaguing our streets (gang violence, drug abuse, self hate, violence among those of African and Latino descent). Even though this negativity still happens here and there, as the culture progresses, we play a big role in conflict resolution and enforcing positivity.’
Negro dance as race identifier, historical microscope, and social trigger lives on today in artists like Savion Glover.
The dancer, choreographer and producer shot to fame as a young tapper (often performing at the side of legend Gregory Hines). When Glover began to craft his own work, his heritage (and its politics) were never more centrestage. Glover conceived, choreographed and starred in Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, a Broadway musical that put racial politics and Negro dance under a Times Sqaure spotlight. The dance work used rhythm tap to score significant beats in African-American history (including slavery, lynchings, and Hollywood’s colonisation of African American culture). While the focus remained primarily on his feet, Glover’s politics were embraced by audiences and critics as part of his creative identity, sending Negro dance stomping into a new millennium.
Though academics still debate the directionality of modern black dance, figures like Dunham, Ailey and Glover have helped entrench its steps in popular culture worldwide, freeing practitioners to reinvigorate its meaning as they – not the slave master – see fit.
