Katherine Dunham on the French Stage (No Repeat of La Revue Nègre)

French reactions were a characteristic blend of allusions to Dunham’s erudition and to the sensuous attractions of the show. A piece by popular critic Max Favalelli can be read as an invitation au voyage¹ through Dunham’s choreography, and tells us much about French fantasies about the black body in exotic settings—the colors, smells, and movements. Interpreting the show with his preconceived ideas, clichés, and contrived images, the reviewer trivializes the substance of the performance. Once again, the article opens with an evocation of the Revue Nègre. One is struck by the similarities in the comments on Baker’s shows and on Dunham’s:

Twenty years ago Harlem sent us like a blow to the heart the famous Revue Nègre, which revealed the magnificent ebony body of Josephine Baker, the gasping of the tom tom…. A distinguished anthropologist, Katherine Durham limits herself, in her human geography, to the shores of the Caribbean and Brazil. After the strong primitive alcohol from the alembics of New Orleans, she serves white (or cream colored) rum that disguises its fire under a deceitful sweetness. From Havana to Martinique via Trinidad, we set out on a lazy cruise on those seas of tepid milk surrounded by coral. An enormous cigar between her snow-white teeth, her hair shining like the flank of a sea lion, Katherine appears, like the Creole sung by Baudelaire. Her legs, supple and naked, are ivory pistils that emerge from the corolla of her petticoats.”²

But the strangest scene for the critic was “L’Ag’Ya,” and this is how he describes, in his own fashion, one of Dunham’s most famous dances. “Slowly, with the gestures of a sleepwalker, she begins to undress. First, her shimmering headdress. Then her skirt reveals lascivious hips shaken by a voluptuous tremor.” And he describes the majumba, the love dance induced by an evil philter, after the beguin danced by the Creole women: “Leaning back in disarray, Katherine faints … the blue steel of a knife will free her from the charm. But the audience finds it hard to break free from the charm of Katherine.”

Caribbean Rhapsody was described as a tumulte noir. An article in Ce soir (27 November 1948) offered Dunham one the best compliments she could hope to find in the press: “It is such a revelation in technique and richness that it can be compared to Diaghilev’s ballets.” In other reviews, Dunham, la magicienne de la danse antillaise, was compared to Carmen Anaya, la reine gitane, whom, incidentally, both Baker and Dunham greatly admired. In a “Letter from England,” Maurice Pourchet praised Dunham for her magnificent performance in “L’Ag’hia.” But he was particularly impressed with the male actors, who, he said, could give lessons to Western professional performers, and whose merits emerge out of racial instinct—a compliment that must have made Dunham shudder since she put so much emphasis on training, work, and discipline. Mention was also made of the excellent use of the drum—so perfectly played that its “sonority [took] on definite colorations” of “jazz more refined than the barrelhouse or nightclub jazz” of Dunham’s voice; not as striking as Baker’s or Robeson’s, but with “timbres” that express nostalgia.”³ Some reviews gave detailed description of the show, usually—as often was the case with Dunham—organized in three parts: one inspired by traditions from South America, mainly Brazil; the second a ballet set in the West Indies; the third, a retrospective of jazz and an evocation of Harlem and Chicago in the mid-1920s. One critic in Carrefour was particularly severe, denouncing the entire performance as a ballet nègre blanc whose modernity was already outmoded in the States. He further claimed that the enthusiastic acclaim of Parisians was as outmoded as the show. Most reviews mentioned the fact the Dunham had studied anthropology; one marveled at the idea that such a superb dancer could also be a distinguished anthropologist. Hélène Jourdan Morhange gave perhaps the most flattering appreciation. Quoting Nietzsche’s phrase, “Rhythm is an indispensable self-conquest through discipline,” she praised the “hallucinating spectacle,” but also maintained, “the reckless fantasy that Dunham presents is always based on rigorous discipline.” She also singled out Tommy Gomez and Vanoye Aikens for their skills as dancers.⁴

After its premiere at the Théâtre de Paris in November 1948, Rhapsodie Caraïbe ran at the Sarah Bernard. Seeing the show in February 1949, J.A. Baltus was impressed by the striking innovation Dunham brought to the stage: “the perfect ensemble she creates with dancers and musicians, the subtleties of sets, lights, and designs, and the variety of the numbers, burlesque or solemn, Dunham’s ability to shift from one mood or tone to another, to shift scenes…. With her, exoticism makes sense.”⁵ When a slightly different version of Dunham’s show was performed in July 1949 at the Ambassadeurs, Richard Wright and Aimé Césaire were the sponsors. To Anne Masson, the show was “a vast panorama of the arts and spectacles of the Negro race that asserts its bi-continental dimension, its complicity and its unity at the same time. It is the world of a marvelously gifted people for whom heartbeats are expressed in the rhythms of dances and sadness.”⁶ In February and March 1950 and October 1951, the Théâtre de Chaillot, and then the Théâtre de Paris, featured new versions of Rhapsody, the latter with the additional numbers “Frevo” and “Washerwoman.” In January 1953, Dunham presented her last big show, Southland. In 1955 she directed a musical comedy, Les Deux Anges, at the Théâtre de Paris.

Thus, from 1948 to 1955, and in between tours to distant places, Dunham returned repeatedly to Paris with revised versions of her Rhapsody or with new choreographies. The first part of the show was called “Africa.” Its prologue was a Brazilian suite that included “Acaraje,” a homage to the Brazilian musician Dorival Caymmi; “Choros,” an arrangement of a quadrille of old Brazil; “Frevo,” on a carnival tune from Pernambuco, Brazil; “Batucada,” from the Bahia region; and “Los Indios,” “Cumbia,” “Tango,” and “Shango,” a set of ritual dances ending in a sacrifice to the Yoruba god. The second part, called “Americana,” included plantation dances like the buck and wing, the pas mala, and the juba, as well as spirituals like the barrelhouse, some nostalgic melodies, and the cakewalk, which started with acrobatics featuring Mister Bone and Tambo. The third part began with “Rites of Passage” and included rituals of male puberty; “Death,” a set of orphic rites with the god Gédé presiding; and “Veracruzana,” derived from Mexican folklore.⁷ Dunham not only made a careful selection of her best numbers for this show but also followed the trail of the black diaspora. She had set out to perform with geographical and historical coherence. Where Josephine often seemed to improvise on someone else’s music, Katherine largely followed traditional steps on ancient tunes especially arranged for her company. The choreography thus created was a strong thematic and artistic statement.⁸ If most critics were tempted to see Dunham as a new Baker, as another fille de la jungle who had brought exoticism and primitivism to the Paris stage, and if many used the same clichés about black dance and the black body, they nonetheless tried to give Dunham her due. They appreciated her singular itinerary, her ability to do thorough research and cover so much ground, to stage innovative choreographies, perform, create a school, and train dancers.⁹

1. The review was titled “Bewitching and sensuous, Katherine Dunham takes us on a tour on the South Seas” (“Ensorcelante et sensuelle, Katherine Dunham nous fait faire le tour des mers du Sud“). Max Favalelli, “Katherine Dunham,” PAN: Magazine de la vie parisienne, 10 (1948). [↩]

2. Favalelli quoted Baudelaire:

   Son teint est pâle et chaud, la brune enchanteresse.

   A dans le corps des airs vaguement maniérés

   Grande et svelte en marchant comme une chasseresse

   Son sourire est tranquille et ses yeux assures

   Sans cesse à mes côtés s’agite le demon

   Il nage autour de moi comme un air impalpable

   Je l’avale et le sens qui brûle mon poumon

   Et l’emplit d’un désir éternel et coupable. [↩]

3. “Dunham installe le tumulte noir au Théâtre de Paris.” Other headlines were equally sensational: “Katherine Dunham, la négresse blanche, stages on a classical rhythm African exorcisms and Martinican mazurkas” (J.A. Baltus in the Figaro Littéraire, 1 December 1948) or “La brune incendiaire renouvelle le ballet.” Another review in Arts, October 1948, further describes these exorcisms in which “voodoo is always afoot”: “She sweeps on provokingly and bends her waist in the huge arms of a man whose trunk has the thickness and color of giant trees in the rain forest, Shango. In the middle of a clearing hemmed in by intertwining weeds, in the moist heat of a hothouse where pulpous fleshy orchids blossom, a priest, in order to exorcize people possessed by the devil, kills a white cock as an offering to the Yoruba god of iron.” [↩]
4. Franc Tireur, 30 November 1948. [↩]
5. Réforme, 19 February 1949. “[This is] a Negro show in its proper place, for it reveals an important element of Parisian stage and music. The triumph of the Revue Nègre 24 years ago was consecrated at the Champs-Elysées before reaching Berlin, Prague and Bucharest, and this extraordinary phenomenon reminiscent of the Russian Ballets coincided in Paris with l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which, one remembers, revealed African plastic arts. The popularity of black rhythms, this image of a brass instrument planted in the center of a cheerful Negro mask, a symbol of optimism, had entered our consciousness at the same time as African ornament and sculpture conquered our walls and replaced our trinkets. We understood a race through the new beauty it had come to give us by the handful, and it is thanks to this discovery that we learnt how to love blacks. In how many homes has the Angelus by Millet been replaced by a Basuto mask? And do we not listen to Robeson and Armstrong the way our fathers listened to Caruso and Paderewski? The appearance of Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère also indirectly served as a preface to Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.” [↩]
6. Anne Masson, “Les battements du cœur donnent le rythme des danses noires,” Radio 49, 22 juillet 1949. [↩]
7. The company included four drummers, five singers, 17 dancers, and 14 members for technical and administrative services. On October 26, 1951, Regard magazine devoted its cover to Frances Taylor, the new dancer recruited by Dunham. On page 13 the comments read: “Back from Haiti and South America comes Katherine Dunham. Three years ago she presented Rapsodie Caraïbe. Now back from a new trip to Haiti, she has derived from it the themes of the present show. Her troupe is composed of blacks of all origins, including one authentic voodoo priest. All of them dance as though they had done nothing else in their lives. It is full of lights, rhythms, gaiety and sometimes unusual emotions.” [↩]
8.  In the Christmas 1951 issue of Tropiques, the piece titled “Interpreters of Our Aspirations” by Katherine Dunham is somewhat too general. She stresses at length the centrality of dance in life: “If one considers the elements that represent form and time, the challenge to space and gravity is among the most archaic animal expressions. As if in a continual effort to reach organic unity with nature, dance defined widely as a ‘rhythmic gesture’ has remained unchanged along all phases of the physical, psychological and sociological evolution of mankind from prehistoric times until now. The universal character of dance being recognized at last by historians and ancient chroniclers, writers and artists, and more recently by ethnologists and psychologists, a lively interest in it has been manifested of late. Dance is not only a spectacle and an entertainment, and it is granted a cultural and psychological dimension. In modern societies one still debates the status of Dance, which is placed in an ambiguous position between Science and Art, between performance and entertainment. In primitive societies, dance is basically a functional element in individual and collective life.” Katherine Dunham, “Interpreters of our aspirations.” Tropiques, la revue des troupes colonials 337 (Noël 1951), p. 62. [↩]
9. In her early fieldwork Dunham was careful to take precise notes, just as she would take notes on each performance throughout her career. But she also wished to have photo and later film records made as a sort of extension of, or a preliminary work for, her choreographies. These offer interesting parallels and comparisons with her actual stage works. The films Dunham used to build her archives, made by her or by others, attracted the attention in France of Jean Rouch and the Cinémathèque de la Danse, which now has a large collection and is showing them on special occasions, such as the one that recently celebrated filmmaker Maya Deren. [↩]