Pearl Primus

Primus performing "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in 1944

Pearl Primus (November 29, 1919, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago – October 29, 1994) was a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Early in her career she saw the needs to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance. Primus’ work was a reaction to myths of savagery and the lack of knowledge about African people. It was an effort to guide the Western world to view African dance as an important and dignified statement about another way of life. Additionally, her work provided a knowledge and meaning for dances that had been plagued by distortion of movement and excessive hip shaking of the backside.

Early life

Primus was born in Trinidad in 1919 ♥ to Edward and Emily (Jackson) Primus. Among her relations were drummers and initiates into the Shango/Spiritual Baptist faith. Her maternal grandfather, in particular, was an Ashanti musician from Ghana. When Pearl Primus was two years old she, with her two brothers were brought to New York City where they were reared. Although her parents did not exhibit theatrical tendencies, Primus’ mother had learned the social dances of Trinidad from her grandfather. Primus also had a colorful aunt who sympathized with her decision to embrace dance. When that came, this aunt who dressed in unusually colorful clothing, exclaimed that she would have been shocked had Primus not become an entertainer.

Primus did not set out to be a dancer. When she finished Hunter College High School, she entered Hunter College as a pre-medical student majoring in biology. There she was an outstanding athlete in track and field and could run at an award winning pace. Upon graduating in 1940, Primus entered graduate school at New York University. While there, in pursuit of work to finance her studies, Primus found herself in the employ of National Youth Administration. Although she was looking for another type of work, she was fortuitously assigned to the NYA dance group as an understudy. She then studied at the New Dance Group. Her natural abilities made her an excellent dancer and her instructors, who were among the leading modern dance pioneers of that era, recognized her talents and encouraged her to develop them.

Primus’ dance orientation, then, began with experimental choreography in dances that expressed social protest and explored ethnic material. As her interest in dance grew, Primus also studied with the major modern dance pioneers: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Hanya Holm and Louis Horst.

During this period, Primus combined studies in educational sociology and anthropology with her dance training (not unlike Katherine Dunham a decade before her) and performances with the choreographers listed above. Among some of her most significant performances was that with Beryl McBurnie in Antilliana. From McBurnie, Primus learned Afro-Caribbean dance and the folk dances of the Caribbean. Her dancing ability and dramatic presence was noticed during one of thse performances when McBurnie had her dancing a minute part in a Caribbean market scene. Primus obviously performed the piece above and beyond McBunie’s expectations because she was so provocative that she stole the show. Primus, however, was unaware of the audience’s reaction and quietly left after the piece to go to work on her part time job as a riveter.

Career

Primus began to research African dance, “consulting books, articles, and pictures and visiting museums'. After six months, she had completed her first composition, African Ceremonial. It was presented along with Strange Fruit, Rock Daniel, and Hard Time Blues at her debut performance on February 14, 1943 at the 92nd Street YMHA. Her performance was so outstanding that John Martin of the New York Times states that “she was entitled to a company of her own.”

Her next performances began in April 1943, as an entertainer at the famous night club, Cafe Society Downtown, for ten months.

In June 1943, Primus performed at the Negro Freedom Rally at Madison Square Garden before an audience of 20,000 people.

Primus also choreographed a work to Langston Hughes's famous poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which was performed at her Broadway debut on October 4, 1944 at the Bealson Theatre.

She then began to study more intensively at the New Dance Group and became one of their instructors. In the summer of 1944, Primus visited the Deep South to research the culture and dances of Southern blacks. She visited over seventy churches and picked cotton with the sharecroppers. In December 1943, Primus appeared as a guest artist in Asadata Dafora’s African Dance Festival at Carnegie Hall.

In December 1944, Primus, who was primarily a solo artist recruited other dancers and performed in concerts at the Roxy Theatre. African Ceremonial was rechoreographed for a group performance. At this time, Primus’ African choreography could be termed interpretive, based on research and her imagining of the way in which a piece of African sculpture would move.

In 1946, Primus was invited to appear in the revival of the Broadway production Showboat choreographed by Helen Tamiris. Then, she was asked to choreograph a Broadway production called Calypso whose title became Caribbean Carnival. She also appeared at the Chicago Theatre in the 1947 revival of the Emperor Jones in the ‘’’Witch Doctor’’’ role that Hemsley Winfield made famous.

Following this show and many subsequent recitals, Primus toured the nation with a company she formed. While on the university and college circuit, Primus performed at Fisk University in 1948, where Dr. Charles S. Johnson, a member of Rosenwald Foundation board, was president. He was so impressed with the power of her interpretive African dances that he asked her when she had last visited Africa. She replied that she had never done so. She then received the last and largest ($4000) of the major Rosenwald Fellowships for an eighteen month research and study tour of the Gold Coast, Angola, Cameroons, Liberia, Senegal and the Belgian Congo.

Primus was so well accepted in the communities in her study tour that she was told that the ancestral spirit of an African dancer had manifested in her. The Oni and people of Ife, Nigeria, felt that she was so much a part of their community that they initiated her into their commonwealth and affectionately conferred on her the title Omowale- the child who has returned home.

Pioneer of African dance in the United States

Primus' sojourn to West Africa has proven invaluable to students of African dance. She learned more about African dance, its function and meaning than had any other American before her. She was able to codify the technical details of many of the African dances through the notation system she evolved and was also able to view and to salvage some “still existent gems of dances before they faded into general decadence” (Primus, from the Schomburg Library: Primus File, 1949). She has been unselfish in sharing the knowledge she has gained with others.

The significance of Primus’ African research and choreography lies in her presentation of a dance history which embraces ethnic unity, the establishment of an articulate foundation for influencing future practitioners of African dance, the presentation of African dance forms into a disciplined expression, and the enrichment of American theater through the performance of African dance.

Additionally, Primus and the late Percival Borde, her husband and partner, conducted research with the Liberian Konama Kende Performing Arts Center to establish a performing arts center, and with a Rebekah Harkness Foundation grant to organize and direct dance performances in several counties during the period of 1959 to 1962. Primus and Borde taught African dance artists how to make their indigenous dances theatrically entertaining and acceptable to the western world, and also arranged projects between African countries such as Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and the United States Government to bring touring companies to this country.

Choreography approach and style Primus’ approach to developing a movement language and to creating dance works parallels that of Graham, Holm, Wiedman, de Mille and others who are considered to be pioneers of American modern dance. These artists searched literature, used music of contemporary composers, glorified regional idiosyncrasies and looked to varied ethnic groups for potential sources of creative material. Primus, however, found her creative impetus in the cultural heritage of the African American. Fusing spirituals, jazz and blues and then coupling these music forms with the literacy works of black writers, Primus’ choereographic voice- though strong-resonated primarily for and to the black people on whose experiences her works were based. Her style, her themes and her body type promoted modern dance among African-Americans. Primus’ strong belief that rich choreographic material lay in abundance in the root experiences of a people has been picked up and echoed in the rhythm and themes of Alvin Ailey, Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty, Dianne McIntyre, Elo Pomare and others.

Primus believed in sound research. Her meticulous search of libraries and museums and her use of living source materials established her as a dance scholar.

Some of her works

Pearl Primus focused on matters such as oppression, racial prejudice, and violence. Her efforts were also subsidized by the United States government who encouraged African-American artistic endeavors. In 1944, she interpreted Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1944), and in 1945 she created Strange Fruit(1945), based on the poem by Lewis Allan about a lynching. Hard Time Blues (1945) is based on a song about sharecroppers by folksinger Josh White.

Primus married the dancer and choreographer Percival Borde in 1954, and began a collaboration that ended only with his death in 1979. In 1959, the year Primus received an M.A. in education from New York University, she traveled to Liberia, where she worked with the National Dance Company there to create Fanga, an interpretation of a traditional Liberian invocation to the earth and sky. In 1978, Primus received a Ph.D. in Dance Education from New York University. The following year she created Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore(1979), about the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing. From 1984 to 1990 Primus served as a professor of ethnic studies, and artist in residence at the Five Colleges consortium in Massachusetts. Her original dance company eventually grew into the Pearl Primus Dance Language Institute, where her method of blending African-American, Caribbean, and African influences with modern dance and ballet techniques is taught.

Awards

Primus has received numerous awards. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush honored Primus with the National Medal of Arts. Some also received the first Balasaraswati/ Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Chair for Distinguished Teaching at the American Dance Festival (1991), the Star of Africa from the Liberian Government, the National Council of Negro Women’s Scroll of Honor- Woman of the Year, the Distinguished Service Award from the Association of American Anthropologist, and many others.

External links

• [1] The Prime of Miss Pearl Primus
• [2] Picture of Pearl Primus in Folk Dance (1945)
• Archive footage of Pearl Primus performing Spirituals in 1950 at Jacob's Pillow
• [3] Article from New York Times: Pearl Primus rejoices in the Black tradition

http://www.mamboso.net/primus/summary_2.html. {maintained by Francisco Reyes II]

Additional reading

Schwartz, Peggy and Murray (2011). The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

• Black America- Dance of the Spirit. Focus on Dance. November 6, 1972. 
• Sorrell, Walter (1966). Out of Africa in The Dance Has Many Faces. New York: Columbia Press. 
• DeFrantz, Thomas (2002). Dancing many drums: excavations in African American dance. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press.