Classroom Activities

Analyze: Describe some of the examples garnered from the observation assignment. Consider what kind of physical action is required in order for a person to use the machine in each of the examples.

Move: Take turns selecting one example and isolating and demonstrating the movement from the selected example (without identifying the machine). Ask others to characterize the physical relationship demonstrated between this person and the imagined machine:

• What kind of action does this machine require?
• Is a great deal or a small amount of force necessitated?
• What body parts are most involved in the action?
• What are the pathways and directions involved in this action?
• Try to identify what machine is involved in each example.

Discuss: What is the nature of the relationship implied by each of these human/machine partnerships?

Collaborate: In groups of four or five, create a repeatable movement sequence composed of the materials generated from the three observed actions each member has contributed. Each member should teach her/his movements to the group; the group task is to organize and combine these individual movements in order to create a complex group “machine.” In keeping with the definition of a machine, each individual action should appear to initiate the next action. When each group shares their composition with the rest of the class, ask viewers to pay attention to:

• Type(s) of effort needed to do the job
• Amount of space covered in personal and general space
• Spatial pathways
• Large and small movement
• Body level
• The rhythm of the actions
• Shapes made
• Repeating patterns

Write: Compose a reflective paragraph about the ways in which your body resembles machines. Then write another paragraph discussing whether this correspondence is a good thing or not.

Africa Diaries (2004) refers to the trips to Africa that Primus took, beginning in 1948, to conduct the anthropological research.

Southern Diaries (2005) refers to the trip which Primus made during the summer of 1944 to live and work with poor migrant workers in the rural South. In Southern Diaries, Zollar incorporates reconstructions of Strange Fruit and Hard Time Blues with her own choreography, creating a theatrical continuum between two generations of modern dance artists.

Classroom Activities

Read: Read John Perpener’s article on Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

Expand: How does the search for identity—as well as social and political protest—continue to be a concern among artists today?

Watch: View Zollar’s Walking with Pearl. Remind students that in observing dance, they should be looking for ways the choreographer creates meaning through gestures, images, and connections to literature, other dances, and every day life. Use the Movement Analysis Worksheet.

Write: Allow students to free-write (3 minutes) their responses to the dance, especially writing descriptions of the dance. Afterward, ask writers to harvest verbs from their responses. Read the verbs aloud as a list. Ask students to use these verbs to write a poem or descriptive paragraph about Walking With Pearl. Ask students to share their writings in small groups.

Discuss:

• Identify differences and similarities among the works by Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.
• Zollar’s work makes deliberate use of Primus’s words and dances. Discuss the impact of this borrowing. Think of additional artists who refer to other artists’ works in making new work.
• How have conditions facing African-American women changed from Primus’s time to Zollar’s time? What are some of the things that have remained the same?

Move: Research a dance form practiced by members of their family and/or community and learn steps from the dance. This material will become the basis for creating your own dance.

Classroom Activities

Watch: View Strange Fruit and Hard Time Blues. Ask students to observe with the following in mind: What movement elements do you see in the dances: spatial patterns (for example, straight line, circular, rectangular, lines at right angles), body shapes, and different movement qualities, i.e. light/strong, fast/slow, direct/indirect? How does Primus express themes of social commentary and protest in her work? What gestures does she use?  How do the movement elements support the meanings of these dances?

Discuss: What do Primus’s dances tell us about 1940s America?  Comment on the irony of Americans fighting to liberate Europeans during World War II, while racism continued in America.

Compare: Can you isolate and describe the differences between Primus’s and Graham’s dance expressions of social commentary and protest themes?

Move: Set up a movement experience that allows students to explore gestures and movement qualities present in Primus’s work and that students might relate to contemporary protest. This might be done through a technique class, improvisation, or dance making experience.

Read: Read the information on Pearl Primus from Margaret Lloyd’s chapter “New Leaders—New Directions” from The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance. Do some research on America in the 1940s and list some events important to African Americans in the 1940s.

Expand: Can you think of examples of social commentary and protest as reflected in popular culture today? Bring in examples of contemporary artists who use details from their lives—their experiences, their travels, their personal relationships—as inspiration for the creation of their music, visual art, literature and poetry, or dance.

Connect: You might also create a project that asks students to interview senior members of their community and collect oral histories of the Great Depression.

Research: Find American literature that reflects themes of social and political protest. Poetry is a good choice to focus on since that is the literary form Primus drew upon to inspire several of her dances.

Classroom Activities

Read: You might begin your study of Steps in the Street by asking students to read selected excerpts from Studs Terkel’s Down and Out in the Great Depression aloud or playing Woody Guthrie’s music for the students.

Expand: Discuss the Great Depression and the impact it had on the American people. Ask students to describe the images they researched by Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange.

Watch: View Graham’s Steps in the Street and ask students to observe with the following in mind: What movement elements do you see in the dance: spatial patterns (for example, straight line, circular, rectangular, lines at right angles), body shapes, and different movement qualities, i.e. light/strong, fast/slow, direct/indirect? How is protest embodied in this dance? Describe the movements. How is meaning created? Shape? Pattern? Contrast? How are the individual and the group contrasted? Who does the artist identify with?

Discuss: What does it Steps in the Street tell us about 1930s America? Do you see any similarities between the images you looked at by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange?

Move: Divide the group in half and form several lines, standing shoulder to shoulder, scattered randomly throughout the space. As one student walks around the space, the students in lines should block his or her progress. Note: It is important to emphasize that students may not touch each other. Students should take turns being the “one against many.”

Reflect: Ask students to discuss their experiences as part of the group and as the individual moving into a group of people. What does it mean to be one against many?

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 students for their impressions about Primus’s life in New York in the 1930 and 1940s. Primus was both from Trinidad and identified as an African American. How would her experience be different than Graham’s?

Watch: View Primus’s 1944 solo, The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Write down initial impressions of the dance and answer the following: What kinds of movements did Primus use in order to capture the images in Hughes’s poem? What kinds of movements did Primus use to create her vision of an American identity? Watch The Negro Speaks of Rivers again using the Movement Analysis Worksheet. Look to identify spatial patterns (for example: straight line, circular, rectangular, lines at right angles), body shapes, and different movement qualities, i.e. light/strong, fast/slow, direct/indirect.

Discuss: 

• Compare and contrast the two ways of observing dance—looking for movement in relationship to meaning and looking for compositional movement elements (floor patterns, shapes, etc).  How do these ways of seeing differ and lead you to different aspects of dance?  How are they complementary?
• Describe some of the images you found incorporating words from the Movement Analysis exercise.
• How is this dance like and different from Frontier?
• What are some of the dance movements and everyday gestures that we associate with African American identity today?
• What are some of the ways that a single ethnic group’s movement patterns become a part of the lives of all Americans?

Write: After reading the chapter on Pearl Primus from John O. Perpener’s African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and Pearl Primus’s “My Statement,” write down ideas about what life might have been like for Primus growing up in the United States in the 1930s. If you need to, do a little research about America in the 1930s, especially the Harlem Renaissance.

Expand: Research the Great Depression. Be sure to look at photographs taken during this period, for example images by photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. How would you describe the people in these photographs?

Martha Graham’s Frontier, an early solo piece by the great choreographer, focuses on the frontier woman and the challenges of Westward Expansion. Graham’s innovative work utilized a minimalist set by Isamu Noguchi and music by Louis Horst to highlight the emotions and symbolism within the work.

Classroom Activities

Discuss: Ask the group what the term frontier means to them and ask them to create their own lists of definitions and associations for the word.

Analyze: Using the Movement Analysis Worksheet, have students identify spatial patterns (i.e. circular, rectangular, lines at right angles) within Graham’s Frontier. Once students can confidently identify these patterns in space, ask them to identify body shapes and different movement qualities (i.e. light/strong, fast/slow, direct/indirect).

(For more information about Movement Analysis, student should read: Words for Movement, Movement Observation Guidelines, and Rethinking Movement Analysis.)

Discuss

• What are the movement themes (repeated gestures, locomotor movements) in Frontier?
• What are the repeated spatial patterns and movement qualities (i.e. strong movement, light movement) in Frontier?
• What traits does the woman in Frontier seem to have?
• How does the dance relate to America’s Westward Expansion?
• Why might these ideas about being American have resonated within the cultural agendas that defined 1930s America?
• How might the dance have resonated with those concerned about American economic and agricultural issues?
• How does the Frontier woman resonate with our ideas about American women in the 1930s?  With contemporary ideas about women?
• Ask students to compare the definitions and associations list they created at the beginning of the class, based on their interpretation of the concept of the frontier, to their present understanding.
• Can you think of other ways that dance and movement might create a distinctive national or ethnic identity?