The performances I chose to analyze are Billie Holiday X Pearl Primus- (Music Video) and Alvin Ailey Dance- Wade in the Water from “Revelation”. I chose these two performances because they both tie into the slavery aspect of the United States; one was created after the slavery era during the Jim Crow timespan and the other was a song of escaping slavery. These two songs to a student that not only have ancestors from both of the eras, but also attends a prestigious HBCU, which is Savannah State University give a sense of pride and great sadness.
Sadness because the strange fruits were people of a dark hue and the hangings were so prevalent that it seemed as if my people were naturally grown in them.
The pride comes in to play when one thinks of the circumstances. A plethora of different people coming from different regions, having different languages; then when a common language was formed they were not perfect with it, but yet they found a way to communicate an escape plan through a song that had a hidden message.
I also picked these two pieces because the performers were people of African descent and activists Pearl Primus has been titled “the grandmother of African American dance”. She obtained a biology degree from Hunter College, but had trouble finding work in that field because in the early 1900s African Americans having a scientific job was taboo.
She later picked up dancing and had small performances in New York’s Café Society Downtown.
During one of her performances, they stopped the show because it was so powerful. She later formulated her own company which in her interest developed pieces that incorporated elements of social protest. Most of her work was influenced by her experiences in many African countries such as; Nigeria, Zaire, Rwanda, Ghana. She formally introduced Americans to African dance. She was an activist, educator, and choreographer that became well known by her famous pieces “Strange Fruit” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”.
Alvin Ailey was the choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which was a multi-racial modern dance group that helped spread modern dance globally. He gained his inspirations from black church services he attended when he was a young boy. Most of his performed pieces featured gospel, blues, and spiritual songs. One of his well-known pieces “Revelations” came from his childhood in Texas in the Baptist Church. In the 60s Ailey took his company traveling while it was paid for by U.S State Department it helped him go international. He had a performance that expressed the experience of being black in South Africa. He even used some of ’s music in his performances.
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