AFRICAN-AMERICAN DANCE HISTORY (Essay Sample)

. Name: Instructor: Class: Date: African-American Dance history The American civil war caused black American people to migrate to the north cities like New York, where they met from various parts and having different cultures, dancing and music. This created sense of wanting to learn more from one another and hence this brought up dancing styles which were lively and exciting. Black American dance has a huge influence on how people dance up to date. During 1950s jazz type of dancing came into the music industry. Jazz had originated from African vernacular languages however it was not until 1950s where it was called jazz. The African-American dancers during this period were Catherine Dunhum, Pearl Primus, Arthur Mitchell and Alvin Ailey. Catherine Dunhum Catherine was born to an African American father and French mother on June twenty second 1909, she began her musical career through singing in the church however she pursued her education as well since she was the first African American woman to attended university of Chicago where she graduated with master and doctoral in anthropology. However during this time she continued to pursue her interest in music and dancing and in 1934 she became famous due to jazz music and later she introduced her dance style called L’ag’ya which had its basis from martial arts dances that were done by slaves to develop their strength to fight. Dunhum researched on music from Haiti Jamaica and Martinigue in 1944 she developed a school of dancing where students learnt ballet, primitive dance and percussion(Katherine Dunham Personal Foundation). Pearl Primus He was black modern dancer and his first performance was strange fruit which had no music but rather a sound tape poem about a black man being lynched by white man who was a racist. She used music and dancing to express the constrains that the black people were experiencing. She was Trinidad but her parent later migrated to Harlem. She studied research about African dance after working in new dance group studios which was among the few places where they trained alongside the whites. After her researches in 1950s she presented many African dances to the many theaters in America. Arthur Mitchell. Arthur was very popular during the 1950s and 1960s He won a scholarship to study ballet and he later joined New York City ballet where he stayed for fifteen years. Mitchell was the first African American to perform in ballet and show that Africans dancer could as well do better in ballet dancing. He believed in education and was the founder of theater called Harlem. Alvin Ailey. He was born in poor rural areas of Texas in 1931. He danced in high school where he danced in ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. He paid for his school upkeep from dancing and teaching music. He was a leading dancer in Jamaica music. He founded Ailey American Dance Theater in the late 1950s with an aim of enriching American dance as well as expressing black culture. He performed dance like jazz and modern dance. In most of the African American dances the audience were African since the popular dance was jazz during this pe...