Sections 5, 6, 7, and 8: Creating Contemporary American Identities through Movement

Classroom Activities

• In the groups that were developed in section 6, students review the movement phrases they worked on and the materials brought into class from the Assignment.
• After agreeing upon a theme, students collaborate to create a movement study, using compositional techniques such as call and response, theme and variation, or phrase accumulation, and integrate the music, spoken text, design, or whatever artwork inspired their theme into the choreography.

• Start
• Primary Sources
• Introduction
• 1.) Martha Graham’s Frontier
• 2.) Pearl Primus’ The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• 3.) Martha Graham’s Steps in the Streets
• 4.) Pearl Primus’ Strange Fruit and Hard Time Blues
• 5.) Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
• 6.) Martha Graham’s American Document
• 7.) Creating Contemporary American Identities through Movement
• 8.) Creating Contemporary American Identities through Movement


• Comment on this module

• VIDEO

• Martha Graham
• Frontier
• Low
•   
• Pearl Primus
• Strange Fruit
• Low, Medium, High
•  
• Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
• Walking with Pearl: African Diary
• Low, Medium, High
•  
• Walking with Pearl: Southern Diary
• Low, Medium, High

  TEXT

• Martha Graham
• I am a Dancer
• American Document
• Pearl Primus
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance – New Leaders: Pearl Primus
• My Statement
• African American Concert Dance – The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond
• Strange Fruit
• Hard Time Blues
• Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
• Artistic Influences and Company Development
• Other
• Movement Analysis Worksheet
• "Words for Movement"
• Sklar, D. "Movement Observation Guidelines"
• Siegel, M. (1991). "Rethinking Movement Analysis". Unpublished manuscript used with author's permission (excerpt).