Among Dunham’s choreographies, Southland deserves special attention. Like Baker, Dunham had always been concerned with any form of discrimination, in particular with the pervasive violent racism against American blacks.1 Dunham knew intimately the poem “Strange Fruit” by Lewis Allan, a pseudonym of Abel Meeropol, and also Lillian Smith’s novel of the same name (Kaiso, 361) and since 1949 she had been working on a “lynching ballet,” an original piece that would turn out to be her most controversial show. She was convinced that dance should not be mere entertainment, that dance could be art and yet express the rage and terror of a lynching. Given the political climate in the U.S. in the early 1950s, with McCarthyism in full swing, only a few writers, intellectuals, and artists were courageous enough to take a public stand, even against egregious injustices, and only a few dared confront political issues in their work. It is significant, then, that Dunham conceived of the work while she was on her South American and European tours. She certainly may have had in mind the experiences of Richard Wright and Paul Robeson when she chose to premiere Southland abroad.
The show was commissioned by the Symphony Theater of Chile, el teatro municipal. In Santiago, censure came fast and was no surprise.2 The ballet was accused of being an act of defiance and disloyalty, and was almost immediately canceled. The company was forced to leave, and reviewers were silenced by the U.S. Embassy. Performances planned for Buenos Aires for the 1951-1952 season were canceled. In spite of all these difficulties, financial problems, and warnings from her company, Dunham would not be deterred, as though staging her ballet against all odds had become a moral obligation.3 She had completed and choreographed Southland during her stay in Buenos Aires in the last months of 1949. Rehearsals were resumed in Genoa, Italy, in preparation for the Paris season. Roberto Rossellini saw one rehearsal and was enthusiastic. Dunham informed the American Embassy in Paris of her intention to present Southland there, and the cultural attaché’s evasive answer was, “We trust your good taste.” Dunham thought that if he would not commit himself to prohibit the show, she would go ahead and do it.
Southland opened at the Palais de Chaillot on January 9, 1953. The variety of the steps, the musical score, the songs—sorrow and mourning and healing songs—and the elaborate sets and costumes created an ensemble of impressive sophistication and beauty. Two contradictory aspects of the South, its obvious magnificence and its singular violence, were symbolized by a magnolia tree with blood on its bark. Skillfully weaving graphic description together with dramatic movement and gesture, Dunham was careful to include many of her successful choreographies as a long prelude, gradually picking up the thread of violence. Ultimately, the piece arrived at the famous “Habanera,” performed by a white woman, and the dance of death, which concluded with a lynched black body hanging from the tree, accompanied by the song “Strange Fruit.”
- Anticipating problems, Dunham thought of diverse strategies: a prologue proclaiming that a protest against lynching did not mean an attack on a country she loved and respected; a narrative structure and dialogues that ingeniously combined fact and fiction (she gave the names of her actors to the characters); and using a history of lynching that was thoroughly researched. [↩]
- The U.S. Ambassador had written a book defending the Ku Klux Klan; the reaction of the State Department was immediate. [↩]
- During rehearsals the company itself reacted to the staging of the scene in which a white woman, played by a white actor, accuses a black man of rape by shouting the word nigger; it forced some cast members to become aware of their own color prejudices. [↩]
