Jawole Willa 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 …
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 …
Contemporary choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar continues the theme of dancemakers who use their art to express their American identities and as a means of communicating about social and political issues. Zollar choreographed her dances titled Walking with Pearl to honor the artistic legacy of Pearl Primus and to show how that …
Pearl Primus was a member of the New Dance Group where she was encouraged by its socially and politically active members to develop her early solo dances dealing with the plight of African Americans in the face of racism. Strange Fruit (1945), a piece in which a woman reflects on …
Like Langston Hughes’s poem, Pearl Primus’s The Negro Speaks of Rivers is a meditation on the African diaspora. Primus’s dance evokes a sense of connection, pride, and strength among peoples of African descent. Students will identify the movements and gestures that help capture the choreographer’s ideas. Classroom Activities Discuss: Ask …
