Alive, Pearl Primus, For 10 months her energy and emotion commanded the stage, along with her stunning five-foot-high jumps. These include grounded movement that privileges deeply bent knees, rhythmically percussive movement driven by highly propulsive energy, and the isolated articulation of different body parts, to name a few. However, her goal of working as a medical researcher was unrealized due to the racial discrimination of the time. She has gone all the way around back to the starting point, eager to put this terrifying and eye-opening experience behind her. [12] Within the same month, Primus, who was primarily a solo artist, recruited other dances and formed the Primus Company. She had learned how the dance expressions of the people were connected to a complex system of religious beliefs, social practices, and secular concerns, ranging from dances that invoked spirits to intervene on behalf of a communitys well-being to dances for aristocrats that distinguished their elevated social class. She puts this tragedy to the back of her mind, allowing herself to conform to the terrifying side of southern society. [32] She was the recipient of numerous other honors including: The cherished Liberian Government Decoration, "Star of Africa"; The Scroll of Honor from the National Council of Negro Women; The Pioneer of Dance Award from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre; Membership in Phi Beta Kappa; an honorary doctorate from Spelman College; the first Balasaraswati/ Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Chair for Distinguished Teaching at the American Dance Festival; The National Culture Award from the New York State Federation of Foreign Language Teachers; Commendation from the White House Conference on Children and Youth.[1]. 6-9. In 1978, she completed her doctoral degree in dance education at New York Universitys School of Education. Pearl Primus' debut performance predated Dr. King's March on Selma by over 20 years, however her work did much to dispel prejudice and instill and understanding of African heritage in American audiences. Her familial ties laid the foundation for the art she would later create. II, p. 5 One of the dances Primus performed on the program was Hard Time Blues, a work that she would reprise at Jacobs Pillow four years later. Zollars project involving Primuss work revealed a number of remarkable connections between the artists. It toured extensively, though it was not performed at the Pillow. In their book, the Schwartzs include a program note from a 1951 performance of Fangain New York City. By John Perpener Explore by Chapter The Early StagesDiscovering Cultural OriginsExcerpts From An African JourneyTouring InternationallyThe Later Years The Early Stages Yes, I have danced about lynchings, protested in dance against Jim Crow cars and systems which created sharecropping. For more information on Primus, her career and choreography, seeThe Dance Claimed Me(P Bio S) by Peggy and Murray Schwartz, Yale University Press, 2012. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Ailey was born on January 5, 1931, in Texas. "[22] She has been unselfish in sharing the knowledge she has gained with others. Posted 21st August 2015 by Mark Anthony Neal. %%EOF [28] They were divorced by 1957. [5] Eventually Primus sought help from the National Youth Administration and they gave her a job working backstage in the wardrobe department for America Dances. I have attacked racial prejudices inallforms Pearl Primus,Dance Magazine, November 1968. 1933-2023 Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, Inc. All Rights Reserved. An extended interview with Primus,Evening 3 of Five Evenings with American Dance Pioneerscan be viewed or streamed at The Library for the Performing Arts. [21] As an anthropologist, she conducted cultural projects in Europe, Africa and America for such organizations as the Ford Foundation, US Office of Education, New York University, Universalist Unitarian Service Committee, Julius Rosenwald Foundation, New York State Office of Education, and the Council for the Arts in Westchester. Femi Lewis is a writer and educator who specializes in African American history topics, including enslavement, activism, and the Harlem Renaissance. CloseJohn Martin, The Dance: Five Artists, New York Times, February 21, 1943, Sec. Within a year, she received a scholarship from New Dance Group and continued to develop her craft. She spoke up through dance about what was happening to other African Americans at the time (as a woman, too) and had a powerful political voice that could've gotten her killed as well. In 1941, she was granted a scholarship for the New Dance Group's Interracial Dance School. Pearl PrimusStrange Fruit Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1919 before immigrating to America She had little dance experience butcaught on naturally as she joined NewDance Group Fused her modern and ballet training Solo created in 1943 Inspired by the song Strange Fruit sung by Billie Holiday She walks towards the body slowly, with confidence, as she makes a motion of a saw with her hands, cutting down the body that challenged her world. Primus took these traditionally long rituals, dramatized them, made them shorter, and preserved the foundation of the movement . Primus was also intrigued by the relationship between the African-slave diaspora and different types of cultural dances. According to John Martin of The New York Times, Primus work was so great that she was entitled to a company of her own.. The stories and memories told to young Pearl, established a cultural and historical heritage for her and laid the foundation for her creative works. They married, and had one son together who also showed promise as a dancer. Margret Lloyd describes Pearls movement in her performance of Hard Time Blues, "Pearl takes a running jump, lands in an upper corner and sits there, unconcernedly paddling the air with her legs. in education from New York University, she traveled to Liberia, where she worked with the National Dance Company there to create Fanga, an interpretation of a traditional Liberian invocation to the earth and sky. Pearl Primus was the first Black modern dancer. Early in her career she saw the need to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance. In 1974, Primus staged Fanga created in 1949 which was a Liberian dance of welcome that quickly made its way into Primus's iconic repertoire. [2][3] In 1940, Primus received her bachelor's degree from Hunter College[4] in biology and pre-medical science. Through this organization, Primus not only gained a foundation for her contemporary technique, but she learned about artistic activism. She also taught at New York's Hunter College. She used her dancing as an art to express the many issues revolving around black culture. Instead, it implies the difficulty in those with fleeting conscious in the South to set aside what they know for what they clearly see is terrifyingly wrong. 20072023 Blackpast.org. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/476589/Pearl-Primus; Arts Then, she was asked to choreograph a Broadway production called Calypso whose title became Caribbean Carnival. Pearl Primus continued to teach, choreograph, and perform dances that spoke of the human struggle and of the African American struggle in a world of racism. The dance performance, Strange Fruit, choreographed by Pearl Primus, depicts a white woman reacting in horror at the lynching which she both participated in and watched. Removing the body from her sight signifies her inability to face reality, and the ease with which she could fall back into familiar comfort after something so horrible. "Black American Modern Dance Choreographers." She developed a growing awareness that people of different cultures performed dances that were deeply rooted in many aspects of their lives. In 1943, Primus performed Strange Fruit. Her travels were clearly connected to her overarching interests mentioned above, and they also informed the type of protest dances that grew out of the New Dance Groups objectives: The New Dance Group aimed to make dance a viable weapon for the struggles of the working class. In 1953 Primus returned to Trinidad to study dance there, and met her husband, Percival Borde. by the same name by Abel Meeropol (publishing as Lewis Allan). Primuss extensive travels took her to nine different countries, where she was able to observe, study, and learn an encyclopedic array of dances with their deep cultural connections to the people. When Primus returned to America, she took the knowledge she gained in Africa and staged pieces for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. She replied that she had never done so. She later included it in her performances at Barney Josephsons jazz club/cabaret Caf Society, which this photograph promoted. All Rights Reserved. Moreover, she developed an overarching interest in the cultural connections between dance and the lives of the descendants of African slaves who had been taken to widespread parts of the world. Dunham made her debut as a performer in 1934 in the Broadway musical Le Jazz Hot and Tropics. Again, we come to one of the recurrent themes of these essays: It was importantduring the different decades of the 20th and 21st centuryfor black artists to create work that served a number of purposes that went far beyond the creation of art for the sheer pleasure of aesthetic contemplation. I stretch my arms to the earth and to the sky for I alone am not strong enough to greet you. CloseIbid., p. 264. She also taught at New Rochelle High School, assisting with cultural presentations. Primus' 1943 work 'Strange Fruit' leaped over the boundaries of what was then considered 'black dance', "The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance - PDF Free Download", https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLSR-V3TM, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLS5-YS1P, "Pearl Primus Is Dead at 74; A Pioneer of Modern Dance", Picture of Pearl Primus in Folk Dance (1945), Archive footage of Primus performing Spirituals in 1950 at Jacob's Pillow, "Pearl Primus rejoices in the Black tradition", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pearl_Primus&oldid=1151870198, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development alumni, United States National Medal of Arts recipients, Trinidad and Tobago people of Ghanaian descent, Trinidad and Tobago emigrants to the United States, Trinidad and Tobago people of Ashanti descent, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2012, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 26 April 2023, at 19:27. Her efforts were also subsidized by the United States government who encouraged African-American artistic endeavors. Similarly, Zollar gravitated toward the role of artist/activist early in her career. She was able to codify the technical details of many of the African dances through the notation system she evolved and was also able to view and to salvage some "still existent gems of dances before they faded into general decadence.