Talley Beatty - Themes in Choreography

Themes in Choreography

Beatty’s work explored themes around the struggles and everyday life of African Americans. Many of his pieces focused on his own “personal statements about alienation, racial discrimination, and the hardships of urban life”. In the film Conversations with Contemporary Masters of American Modern Dance Beatty talks about some of his more well-known choreographic works. According to Beatty Southern Landscape, a five-part dance, is a description of the time right after the Reconstruction period in the South. The dance explores an event in history described in Howard Fast's novel Freedom Road. The plot centers around a group of black and white farmers who had happily formed a community together before being literally destroyed by the Ku Klux Klan. After the slaughter, people went into the fields at night to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones. The most well-known and famous solo section of the dance, titled Mourner’s Bench is about a man returning from recovering a body, and reflecting on the ideas of hope and strength.