Modern Dance Negro Dance Race in Motion

0RGHUQ'DQFH1HJUR'DQFH5DFHLQ0RWLRQDQG'DQFLQJ0DQ\'UXPV
([FDYDWLRQVLQ$IULFDQ$PHULFDQ'DQFHUHYLHZ
$QLWD*RQ]DOH]
$PHULFDQ6WXGLHV9ROXPH1XPEHU6SULQJSS5HYLHZ
3XEOLVKHGE\0LG$PHULFDQ6WXGLHV$VVRFLDWLRQ
'2,DPV
)RUDGGLWLRQDOLQIRUPDWLRQDERXWWKLVDUWLFOH
KWWSVPXVHMKXHGXDUWLFOH
Accessed 18 Sep 2016 09:29 GMT

Mumford worked toward “a decentralized, green vision for an aesthetically, politically
and ecologically reconstructed urban and rural environment” (104).
This tradition continues today in the form of Natural Systems Agriculture and the
ecologically-oriented community planners commonly lumped together as the New Ur-
banists. This reader wished Minteer had more thoroughly explored the intersection of
conservation with the cultural pluralism that civic pragmatists also championed. Rather
than a defect of Minteer’s research, however, that criticism suggests important directions
for scholarship that builds from this important and timely book.
Miami University Kevin C. Armitage
MODERN DANCE, NEGRO DANCE: Race in Motion. By Susan Manning. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press. 2004.
DANCING MANY DRUMS: Excavations in African American Dance. Edited by Thomas
F. DeFrantz. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 2002.
Literary criticism analyzes written language to understand its social and aesthetic
signiicance while dance criticism reads, interprets, and analyzes the language of the hu-
man body in a similar way. Two recent critical volumes, Modern Dance, Negro Dance by
Susan Manning and Dancing Many Drums by Tommy DeFrantz intervene in narratives
of American studies by introducing dance as a barometer of social history. Even though
both volumes cover the dance performance work of twentieth century African American
artists, the two authors’ perspectives on the work differ. Manning provides a complex
critical reading of social art practices based upon reviews and primary documents, while
DeFrantz edits a collection of African American writers and artists who respond to dance
aesthetics and practices. Manning is an outside critic, digging through the archive and
questioning the social, racial, and gender presumptions behind each dance document.
In contrast, De Frantz uses multiple scholars’ voices to describe the social and cultural
elements that inluence African American dance work.
DeFrantz is interested in deinitions: “What is Black dance? What does it have to do
with race? How is it different from African American dance?”(4). At the same time, he
allows the investigations of his contributors to speak to crossover and disjuncture between
and among the artists and their forms. DeFrantz wants to reclaim a history that is not
deined by binaries of black and white, one that recognizes African American artistry. In
his volume, the individual nuances of performance spring from the page in each percep-
tive essay.
Even though the editor divides the book into three sections: Theory, Practice, and
History, the sections are not distinct; their subjects cross, intersect, and remain in dialogue
with one another. In the theory section P. Sterling Stuckey discusses Christianity and the
challenge of reading dance hidden within religious contexts. Nadine George comments
on the politics of negotiating gender, race, and black-face identities in Vaudeville. Marya
McQuirter analyzes the aesthetics of the awkward, and Richard Green demonstrates how
Pearl Primus allowed her dancing body to resolve racial dilemmas.
The theory section mutates into a discussion of dance practice. Authors in this section
decipher the means and mechanisms of making dances. Their collective writings respond
to questions about art production, collaboration, and dissemination. Marcia Heard and
Mansa Mussa for example, trace the histories of contemporary African dance through
the practices of artists like Chares Moore and Nana Yao Opare Dinizulu. Photographs
of bodies in motion provide context for the cultural studies readings. Other essays are
more concerned with aesthetics and trends. Sally Banes and John Szwed revisit dance
161
instruction songs that teach European Americans how to dance to black music while Veta
Goler discusses blues aesthetics in Diane McIntyre’s lifelong collaboration with jazz
artists. The anthology concludes with a history section that excavates information about
under-documented African American artists: Asadata Dafora, Margot Webb and Harold
Norton, Katherine Dunham, and the New York Negro Ballet.
Manning takes a different approach to social activism within dance. Whereas most
critical studies of modern dance focus on primarily white choreographers with a nod
towards including African American artists, Manning integrates the histories of black
and white dance in modern America. Her carefully crafted writing describes continuity
and change in the “staging of blackness and whiteness during the period when the term
‘Negro Dance’ was in common usage” (xxiv).
Her book discusses some of the same African American artists as the De Frantz
volume, however the strength of the writing is the way that it illuminates the complexities
of race, culture, and artistic production. Because she includes white (and other) artists,
she places the work of the African American artists within a wider social and historical
context. Manning thematically groups her material around political approaches to content.
For example, the irst chapter “Danced Spirituals,” describes the work of black and white
choreographers who were inspired by African American spirituals. It includes close read-
ings of performances by Edna Guy and Helmsley Winield as well as Ted Shawn and Helen
Tamiris. What is unique about Manning’s approach to chronicling these dance works is
her consideration of text, venue, audience response, and artistic intent. Her relection on
each of these diverse elements allows her to astutely analyze the political implications
of the performances.
The chapter “Dancing Left” is particularly interesting in this respect. During the
1930s, both the Worker’s Dance League (a consortium of leftist dancers) and the Federal
Theatre Project produced dance projects about the underclass. Only the Federal Theatre
Project however, supported African American dance productions. Manning notes that
“When African American performers linked dances of the Black Atlantic to dances of
social protest, Martin [a New York Times dance critic] and his peers hardly took notice”
(101). She then delves into the complexity of shifting racial landscapes by describing
a 1991 reconstruction How Long Brethren by African American choreographer Dianne
McIntyre. Manning confronts the reader with the irony of having a protest dance by white
Jewish choreographer Helen Tamiris’ reconstructed 55 years later by a choreographer
who would not have been recognized when the dance irst created. Through nuanced
writings that include multiple critical outlooks, Manning is able to bring politics to dance
history.
The two books Modern Dance, Negro Dance by Susan Manning and Dancing Many
Drums by Tommy DeFrantz offer alternative perspectives about African American dance
in the twentieth century and make strong contributions to academic understandings about
how dance speaks to American societies.
State University of New York at New Paltz Anita Gonzalez
A NATION OF REALTORS: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American

Middle-Class. By Jeffrey M. Hornstein. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2005.
Jeffrey Hornstein’s A Nation of Realtors is an important addition to American culture

scholarship, arguing persuasively that the U.S. real estate industry architected a twentieth-
century cultural paradigm that equated owning one’s “own” home with authentic middle
class status. In addition, A Nation of Realtors has a spooky relevance today (2007), as
162

Modern Dance Negro Dance Race in Motion

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Modern Dance Negro Dance Race in Motion

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Modern Dance Negro Dance Race in Motion

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

0RGHUQ'DQFH1HJUR'DQFH5DFHLQ0RWLRQDQG'DQFLQJ0DQ\'UXPV

Accessed 18 Sep 2016 09:29 GMT