Pearl Primus, An Authority On African Dance

One of the greats in the black dance field who should be celebrated during Black History Month is Pearl Primus--dancer, choreographer, anthropologist , educator (she is professor of Ethnic Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts). In the 1940s and '50s, Primus created such a stir with her African-based  dance works among critics and public alike that Walter Terry, the dance critic, now deceased, proclaimed her "the world's foremost authority on African dance."

That designation, resulting from her years of travel throughout the American South, the Caribbean, and Africa to study and document black dance, is anchored to her "search for roots" and her need to reveal "the dignity, beauty, and strength" of black people.


The 70-year-old Trinidadian-born artist-scholar's quest gave rise last summer to a photo-biographical exhibition at the Caribbean Cultural Center, "A Search for Roots: The Life and Work of Dr. Pearl Primus." The exhibition, part of the center's Third Annual Tribute to African Diaspora Women, consisted of many enlarged black and white performance photos from such dances as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (based on the Langston Hughes poem) and "Haitian Play Dance" as well as facsimiles of printed concert programs.


Pearl Primus, declared Dan Dawson, who curated the show, is a "living national treasure."

This article was submitted to the New York-based New American newspaper on January 30, 1990,but was not published.

Note: Pearl Primus died in 1994 at the age of 74.

Choreographer Garth Fagan, An Artist Who Happens To Be Black

Reading through the dance reviews about Garth Fagan's Bucket Dance Theatre, you come across such comments as "And though most of the dancers are black, the movement is in no way ethnic" (San Diego Union). After awhile you begin to wonder if that's why the white critics are so enthralled with Fagan's choreography. (Although it's hard to see how the Union critic came to his conclusion, since a dance like "Time After Before Place" has an unmistakable Caribbean motif, including the carnivalesque costumes.)

I saw the Bucket Dance Theatre perform at the Joyce Theatre during the first week of a two-week engagement (their run ends November 13 [1988].) And though I acknowledged the skill of the dancers and the intricacy of the choreography put on them by Fagan, these gymnastic feats left me virtually unmoved. In fact, the audience that night showed more enthusiasm than I did. At the root of my attitude is the fact that Fagan, to quote the critic from San Diego, "never imposes ideas and issues upon the dance material." My preference is for dance-drama, not abstract movement.

Strangely, Fagan, a native of Jamaica, with roots in Afro-Caribbean dance (as a teenager he danced with the Jamaican National Dance Theatre) told the Los Angeles Times critic that he prefers to be known as "an artist who happens to be black." But then again, maybe it isn't so strange. Langston Hughes, in his famous 1926 essay, "The Negro and the Racial Mountain," spoke about a young black poet who told Hughes that he wanted to be known as "a poet--not a Negro poet." Hughes warned us against those artists who harbor "the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible."

That's why I have a tremendous amount of respect and affection for Kevin Jeff and his [Brooklyn-based] Jubilation! Dance Company. They make no apology for who and what they are. I just wish other dancers and choreographers felt the same way.

This item, which appeared in a dance column I wrote for the New York Amsterdam News, was published January 28, 1989.