DAYTON CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY
So how one sees black modern dance is bound to be an issue in the Dance Center’s series this year, “Present Vision/Past Voice: The African-American Tradition in Modern Dance.” The opening program was a brilliant choice: three early works by black choreographer Donald McKayle, performed by the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. Not only is McKayle’s voice part of the black tradition–his works precede, in a similar vein, those of Alvin Alley–but his vision sets black culture apart at the same time that his generosity makes it available. His art is distinctly political, yet you feel it’s driven by goodwill; there was plenty of grief in what I saw, but remarkably little bitterness.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Games (1951), which opened the program, at first seems light, almost naive, but that’s a setup: the tragic end is both more shocking and more moving because the dance focuses so intently on children. McKayle uses traditional music–playground chants, folk songs, spirituals–sung live onstage, and that makes the dance seem all the more spontaneous and human. (Sheila Ramsey and Lourin Plant’s a cappella singing made the spoken word seem a sorry thing–high-pitched, brittle, and false.)
The sudden bit of racist violence that closes Games, plunging a loving and innocent community into grief, is a brutal shock. I’d like to be able to say this ending is sensational or melodramatic, but how can it be when 40 years later kids are still murdered for having the wrong color skin in the wrong neighborhoods?
In District Storyville McKayle not only celebrates the black tradition and how it’s been passed on, but plays with the “disreputability” of the black demimonde and the stereotype of blacks’ high spirits. In fact, District Storyville is so broad and upbeat that I wondered how it would have looked outside the context of the earlier, darker dances. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the emotional and dynamic contrasts that enable Games and Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder to turn some indefinable corner and give your heart a good hard squeeze. What it does have is McKayle’s sense of a life so strong it can’t be kept down, and that’s an inspired way to begin a year-long look at black modern dance.
