African American Modern Dance
See also: Modern dance in the United StatesAfrican American modern dance drew on modern dance and African American folk and social dance along with African dance and Caribbean dance influences. Katherine Dunham founded Ballet Negre in 1936 and later the Katherine Dunham Dance Company based in Chicago, Illinois. She also opened a school in New York (1945). Pearl Primus drew on African and Caribbean dances to create strong dramatic works characterized by large leaps in the air. Primus often based her dances on the work of black writers and on racial and African-American issues, such as Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1944), and Lewis Allan's Strange Fruit (1945). Alvin Ailey, a student of Lester Horton and Martha Graham, with a troupe of young African American dancers performed as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York in 1930. Ailey drew on his blood memories of Texas, the blues, spirituals and gospel.
Read more about this topic: African-American Dance
Famous quotes containing the words african american, african, american, modern and/or dance:
“I think it’s unfair for people to try to make successful blacks feel guilty for not feeling guilty.... We’re unique in that we’re not supposed to enjoy the things we’ve worked so hard for.”
—Patricia Grayson, African American administrator. As quoted in Time magazine, p. 59 (March 13, 1989)
“The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle—the sheet anchor of American republicanism.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“And, in fine, the ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade—
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)