Introduction: Creating American Identities

1: Becoming and Being American | 2

About Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, Jawole Wila Jo Zollar

About Martha Graham

Martha Graham was born in 1893 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and moved to Santa Barbara, California as a teenager. Her father was a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore and a specialist in nervous disorders. George Graham's influence on the young Martha was profound. "Bodies never lie," he once told her.

Martha Graham began her study of dance at the newly established Denishawn School in Los Angeles at the age of twenty-three. A protégé of Ted Shawn's, she appeared with him in the popular Denishawn ballet Xochitl, dancing the part of a passionate Aztec maiden, a role that established her reputation as a magnetic performer. In 1924, dissatisfied with her opportunities at Denishawn, Graham left to take a job with the Greenwich Village Follies at the Winter Garden Theater in New York City, and began to explore her potential as an independent artist. She experimented with new ways of moving in classes she taught at the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, New York, and on April 18, 1926, gave her first concert at the 48th Street Theater in New York City, appearing with three of her students. 

In the years that followed, Graham created more than 180 ballets and developed a unique technique of movement based upon principals of contraction and release. Early ballets by Martha Graham had names like Claire de Lune, Desir, Danse Languid, and Maid with the Flaxen Hair. Yet within a few years titles such as Revolt, Immigrant: Steerage, Strike and Poems of 1917 revealed her commitment to the contemporary world.  For example, Heretic, in 1929, staged “the essence of the eternal struggle of the individual with something new to offer, coming up against the blank wall of conservatism in any field,” a theme that was repeated often throughout her career. As an artist, and particularly as a woman artist, she was a rebel in conventional American society.

Graham made a sympathetic portrait of an American woman through Frontier (1935), a dance that must have had special resonance for Americans during the Depression and as America’s heartland (some of it settled in the 1860s) became America’s Dust Bowl. Her 1936 “Steps in the Street” (which was part of a larger work called Chronicle), subtitled “devastation, homelessness, exile,” might have referred to any of the tragedies of the period (among them, the Depression and the Spanish Civil War which many American artists commented upon). American Document (1938), which included structural elements from minstrel shows and words from writings such as the Declaration of Independence, a letter from Red Jacket of the Senecas, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, made reference to America’s troubled history. Graham’s own heritage, perhaps, allowed her to apply a broad lens to American history.

About Pearl Primus

Pearl Primus (1919-1994) was born in Trinidad and moved with her family to New York City when she was three years old. While she was growing up, her family instilled in her a sense of the cultural heritage of her West Indian and African roots. When she became interested in studying dance, she was advised to look into the New Dance Group, a collective of dance artists who were committed to using concert dance to affect social and political change.  She was the first black student to receive a scholarship at the studio in 1941, and her association with the organization was fortuitous because the teachers encouraged her to explore her own interests in social activism through dance. 

She made her professional debut in 1943 with a series of solos that established her as one of the most promising young modern dancers of the period. Primus made abstract dances (Margaret Lloyd mentions some of these, including Trio and Study in Nothing) and dances that dealt with African-American experience and racial oppression such as Strange Fruit (1943), The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1944), and Hard Time Blues (1945). In 1949, under the auspices of a Rosenwald Fellowship, Primus was able to pursue eighteen months of research in Africa where she combined her training in dance and anthropology. She returned to Africa numerous times during her career, and she molded her love for the art and culture of the African diaspora into a distinguished career as an artist, educator, and social activist.

About Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

Jawole Wila Jo Zollar was born in the early 1950s and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. As a child, she studied modern dance and first performed with Joseph Stevenson, a former student of the pioneering African-American dancer and choreographer, Katherine Dunham. After graduating from high school, she received her BA degree from the University of Missouri and her MFA degree from Florida State University. She moved to New York City in 1980 and began studying with Diane McIntyre, a highly regarded dancer, choreographer, and teacher who was the director of the dance company, Sounds in Motion. Zollar credits much of her early artistic development to McIntyre, particularly in regard to emphasizing the organic relationship between music and dance. In 1984, she set out on her own and founded the Urban Bush Women, a company composed of women of color. 

Over the years, Zollar has established a dance technique that synthesizes traditional modern dance, postmodern dance aesthetics, and the dance traditions of the African diaspora, including African-American vernacular dance. Her dance works also include her dancers’ vocalizations, as they sing, speak, shout, and generally explore the full potential of the human voice.  She uses this array of performance elements to create commentaries on the lives of black women in America, to confront social injustices, and to trace the rich cultural traditions of the people of the African diaspora. Her dances include Walking With Pearl (studied in this Unit and including references to Primus’s works), Batty Moves (1995), and Girlfriends (1986).  In addition to her highly-acclaimed performance work, she also engages in artistic and social activism through extended residencies aimed at community empowerment.     

Foner, Eric. 1998. “Who Is an American.” In Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study. Edited by Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

 

1: Becoming and Being American | 2