Modern dance and music as we know it began in early 1920s Harlem, New York. This period, known as the Harlem Renaissance, gave us dance moves like the Charleston and the Jitterbug. There are many inspiring and interesting stories about the growth of African American dance culture, but perhaps none more inspirational than Pearl Primus.
Pearl Prim
us is considered to be the first African American modern dancer. She, like most other African American dancers, used the art form to express the social and political hardships for African Americans in the United States. Primus did research on dance in Africa and included an in-depth study of African dance traditions in her performances.
Today, Choreographer Kyle Abraham continues this strive to use dance as a medium to express a strong social message. Like Primus, Abraham uses the work that has come before him to inspire the work he creates, particularly the hip-hop culture of the 1970s and the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
Abraham states, “I’m creating dance, still today, a lot of the time I’m just moving in relation to what the subject matter is.” This is something that all artists, famous or amateur, can aspire to do. Despite dance being a very abstract form of expression, it should never be wri
tten off as meaningless. When one creates art, they must consider what react they want to evoke in their audience, even if the audience in reality doesn’t always understand it at first. For this reason, I took me personally a few views of Kyle Abraham’s and Abraham.In.Motion at the Modlin Center clip to make heads or tails out of it. Before we see a dance performance in person, I personally will try to get as much background information about the authors intended message so I can better appreciate what is going on.
I think it’s great that Kyle Abraham convey a strong social message through his dance. It gives his creation a deeper meaning. He is taking a piece of his own culture and his own struggle and to display it in an artistic way. I like how we can see a piece of the artist through their work.
I, too, didn’t understand the clip when first viewing it. It is way easier to understand the dance when you have some background information to frame what is going on. After knowing the relevant background information, we viewers can then use our own imagination and perspective to come up with our own feelings on the piece.
Vincent your views were similar to mine, in that you saw the progression of this dance movement. It is intriguing how Pearl Primus became a model for those to follow in her work to describe the hardships of African Americans. I liked how you linked this to the present day choreographer, Kyle Abraham, whom we both admired. Indeed much more background knowledge would be helpful for all types of audiences to understand this unique form of art.
You bring up a good point that modern art is not necessarily something entirely new, but rather an evolution from what has come before it. When looking at different eras in art, it is easy to get fixated on the differences between their artworks, but it is also import to look at the similarities and credit where those similarities come from. Even though Abraham’s dances draw inspiration from the hip-hop dances he grew up with, they also resembles classical ballet in certain aspects and as such, are a re-interpretation of dance rather than a re-invention of it. As I said in my blogpost, this modern dance movement seems to me to be a mashup of the different styles that have come before it. The blending of all these styles is so seamless that it turns into a new style of itself.
I like how you mentioned that Pearl Primus was the first black modern dancer, and how she served as a role model for all the others after herself. She had set up the norm of portraying social and political hardships of black americans at the current time and all the dancers followed in her footsteps. This helped incorporate black traditions and culture into modern dance.