Primus was also exposed to a dance aesthetic that connected modern dance to social protest. Speaking about her preparation for the Negro Freedom Rally, she told the Daily Worker: “I know we must all do our part in this war to beat Fascism and I consider the battle against Jim Crow in America part of that fight, which is taking place on the battlefronts of the world.” In this broad battle, Primus believed her dancing could serve as a tool to help dismantle these evils. She continued, “Each one of us can wield a weapon against Jim Crow and Fascism and my special one is dancing. I shall continue to protest Jim Crow through my dancing until Victory is won.” Primus’s statement demonstrates her grounding in Double V discourse linking fascism abroad with Jim Crow at home. According to Double V, both Nazism and Jim Crow were animated by white supremacist ideology and maintained by law and violence.8
The Popular Front aesthetic would also have a profound influence on the young dancer. The Popular Front, the coalition of liberals and leftists who opposed fascism, and the modern dance companies it inspired insisted that art, including dance, could be a weapon in the struggle for social justice. In the 1940s, Primus believed the arts were a tool in the struggle. Later, she recalled that “in the forties you could protest[;] in fact, I was most encouraged.” She was not alone—Katherine Dunham and Talley Beatty also choreographed dances of social protest—but she was unique. Primus combined athleticism and grace, intellect and political passion, and had a devotion to the African past and present as well as a thorough engagement with the modernist aesthetic. She was less interested in commercial or popular success than Dunham and Beatty were; she was an intellectual first and foremost. For Primus, dance was as much a medium of teaching and consciousness raising as it was a form of entertainment—if not more so.9
Primus was not only engaged in a leftist political and artistic community, however; she was also part of a group of New York–based artists who wished to bring the culture of Africa and peoples of African descent to the attention of white audiences. Instead of evolving from a leftist to a black nationalist, instead of transitioning from an artist interested in social realism and modern dance to one interested in what would later be called “Afrocentricity,” Primus always merged these political stances and aesthetic commitments. She did so by situating African dance alongside modern dance, and in so doing creating a dialogue between the two forms, showing them both to be representations of a longing for freedom and human dignity. In this way she was not different from a number of her politically engaged contemporaries. Long before her first trip to Africa in 1948, Primus was as interested in the history and culture of the continent as she was in the innovations of modern dance. In fact, her awareness of and interest in Africa preceded any formal dance training.10
When Primus told her own story, she almost always started with her Ashanti grandfather, who was a “voodoo” drummer in Trinidad, and with the masked, dancing figure of Carnival. She rooted her own artistry in her African and Caribbean roots. Her grandfather, “Lassido” Jackson, traced his lineage to an Ashanti king. According to Primus, “he lived the life of a traditional person.” She later said, “My home was an African home.”11 Outside her childhood home, she recalled as an adult, one could experience Harlem or Brooklyn, but inside, it was always the Caribbean and Africa. As in the homes of many black people, dance was not something to be performed onstage, but something done in the home and in the ballroom. At times she claimed her mother excelled as a graceful and gifted dancer. The dances at home or in the ballroom were an amalgamation of Africa, the Caribbean, the American South, and the black North. When Primus began her formal training and then her professional career, she sought to dance Africa, the Caribbean, and the American South as she imagined them and reconstructed them from her own research. She danced this geography before she traveled it.
As a Caribbean immigrant to New York, Primus inherited a legacy that combined political radicalism, pride in African ancestry, and a belief in the opportunities available to her in her new home. She was one of the 40,000 Caribbean immigrants who came to New York and Harlem between 1900 and 1930. They were central to the development of Harlem’s political and artistic culture during this time. Primus inherited not only a sense of culture from her Caribbean roots, but also a very strong black nationalist worldview. Her father and uncle constantly talked of black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey and his Back-to-Africa movement. She was aware of herself as an African in the West, part of a people who had contributed much to the development of the Americas, and part of a generation that would help to defeat fascism.12
Pearl Eileen Primus was born in Woodstock, Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1919. In 1921 she and her mother joined her father in New York, part of a wave of Caribbean immigrants who settled in the city. Between 1913 and 1924, the peak years of Caribbean migration to the United States, large numbers of migrants settled in Manhattan and Brooklyn. By 1930, Caribbean immigrants made up a quarter of black Harlem’s population. In New York, Primus, her parents, and her two brothers, Edward Jr. and Carl, first lived on 69th and Broadway, an area near what is now Lincoln Center. The neighborhood was home to a number of West Indian and African American families, including that of a budding young pianist named Thelonious Monk. Later, the Primuses moved to 110 East 97th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues in East Harlem. Although the area housed a number of black families, it would soon be best known for its Puerto Rican inhabitants. Even in the thirties, this part of Harlem was more ethnically and racially diverse than its better-known western side. Eventually, the Primus family would move to another Caribbean stronghold in Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant.13
Like many other Caribbean immigrants of this first major wave, the Primus family put a high premium on education and professional achievement. Therefore it is not surprising that Pearl attended one of the city’s most competitive high schools, Hunter College High School. Founded to teach intellectually gifted girls, Hunter College High School was established as a private girls’ school in 1896. It eventually became a selective magnet public school, but it was not operated by the New York City Department of Education; instead, it was administered by Hunter College. Primus was one of the few black students to attend. After graduating from Hunter College High School, Primus enrolled at Hunter College, where she was a pre-med and biology major. The college was open to all qualified young women regardless of religion or ethnicity, and it maintained a reputation for a rigorous program of academic study.
Although she aspired to be a doctor, Primus had a broad range of interests as a student. She was an Olympic-caliber track-and-field star who excelled at the broad jump; she minored in physical education and took classes in dancing, apparatus, fencing, basketball, tennis, and possibly swimming (“if I can get it,” she wrote in her journal before registration). Even as early as 1937, she wrote, “I’d love to specialize in the dancing but it is not stressed more than the others.”14 That she majored in biology and excelled at sports would not be insignificant. She understood, both intellectually and experientially, the mechanics of the body. But although she was an avid athlete and dancer, at this time in her life Primus seemed destined to be a scientist.
Still, her letters and journal entries from this period reveal a sensitive, thoughtful, intellectually curious young woman devoted to her family, her studies, and her friends. She possessed a poetic nature and a love of the natural world and the changing seasons. A well-rounded reader, she was also ambitious, hoping to earn a PhD in biology and eventually to become a surgeon. As Hunter was a commuter school, Primus lived at home with her close-knit family. In one journal entry from that time, she described her chaotic room as she studied for finals: “All my biological instruments, frogs, skeletons, butterflies, glass jars, stirring rod, mixing bowls, hard lens, all my drawing apparatus, chalks and rags; all my school notes . . . my books are now arranged under the bed.”15
The young Primus also took full advantage of New York, catching shows and visiting museums. In another journal entry she noted
her excitement that Richard II was scheduled to reopen soon and said that she “would also like to hike thru Tibbetts Brook Park. I want to see the Frick Collection too.”16 Tibbetts Brook Park, which opened in 1927, is a large park located in Yonkers, only a few miles north of Manhattan, and it provided nature-loving New Yorkers like Primus with the opportunity to hike and fish. On the opposite end of this bucolic setting, the Frick Collection, located on 70th Street between Madison and Fifth, housed major works of art by European artists. So the young woman who had been born in Trinidad became a true New Yorker as she explored the full range of what her city had to offer. She also went to the Savoy in Harlem, where she danced all the popular social dances and especially enjoyed the Lindy Hop. Perhaps she used her athletic skills as she leapt, keeping time with the music, soaring with, if not above, the other dancers. She even may have danced in a crowd that included Malcolm Little, later to become Malcolm X.
After graduating from Hunter College in 1940, Primus sought out work as a lab technician in order to earn money to attend Howard Medical School. However, because of racism, none of the labs to which she applied would hire her, despite her qualifications, and she was forced to take various clerical and menial jobs. She worked as a cherry picker, a riveter, a switchboard operator, a welder for Todd Shipyards in Hoboken, and a clerical worker at the National Maritime Workers Union.17 Primus was one of a growing number of women who found work in the war industry, which was up and running as the famed “arsenal of democracy” as early as 1940. Women in New York could be found operating elevators, driving trucks and taxis, and “riveting, welding, and working the assembly line in war plants and in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.” For the most part, black women still met with difficulty when they sought skilled labor or clerical work, which is why Primus could rarely find anything but unskilled jobs. Although Executive Order 8802, signed by President Roosevelt in June 1941, banned race discrimination in the defense industry, it was rarely enforced. Very few black women were as successful as Primus was in acquiring employment as welders or riveters.18
In 1941, Primus refocused her attention on her education and finally began to find work more suited to her interests. She began to pursue graduate classes in health education at New York University before transferring to a master’s program in psychology at Hunter. That same year she found employment with the wardrobe department of the Depression-era National Youth Administration (NYA). Created in 1935, the NYA was a New Deal program designed to address the problem of unemployment among young Americans by offering grants to high-school and college students in exchange for work. For young people who were not enrolled in school and who were unemployed, the NYA offered on-the-job training on federally funded work projects. By 1937 there was also a special program for African Americans directed by Mary McLeod Bethune. Primus had taken dance classes throughout her time at Hunter, but the NYA provided her with her first opportunity to perform. She danced in a program entitled America Dances. With this performance she gained a number of admirers and supporters who encouraged her to continue with dance.
During this period, Primus also became involved with two institutions that would help to nurture her artistic and political visions. She worked as a counselor at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (short for Workers Children’s Camp), a leftist children’s camp in rural New Jersey, and she auditioned for and was granted a scholarship to the New Dance Group’s school. Founded in 1934, Camp Wo-Chi-Ca was fully integrated and offered scholarships to students who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend. The young Primus was in fine company when she joined the staff of Camp Wo-Chi-Ca as a dance counselor. Visitors to the camp included the painter Charles White, the author Howard Fast, painter Jacob Lawrence, sculptor Augusta Savage, and poet Langston Hughes, and many of these artists would become Primus’s friends and collaborators in later years. In fact, one of her charges was Paul Robeson Jr., son of the famed activist and performer. Primus taught the younger Robeson how to Lindy, and Robeson Sr. told her she was responsible for the holes in his rug, a result of countless hours of his son’s practicing. The camp would gain attention in later years for its continued support of Paul Robeson when he was targeted as a Communist during the height of the McCarthy era.
The New Dance Group had been established in 1932 by artists dedicated to social change through dance, and its studio was the only place in New York where one could take racially integrated dance classes. However, the atmosphere among the students was not always welcoming. Primus was one of four selected to receive scholarships out of a total of twenty-seven dancers who auditioned for spaces; the “award” required her to do menial labor—washing floors and cleaning toilets—in exchange for two hours of instruction per week. At times white students would purposely bump into Primus on the studio dance floor. These small gestures of hostility were evidence of the racist indignities quietly suffered by black people in even the most liberal of settings. Still, Primus persevered, and her experiences as a student, a dancer, and a worker all helped to shape her art, her politics, and her philosophical outlook.
Young dancers at the New Dance Group were exposed to leftist and progressive political thought and activism, but Primus came to the school with her own progressive political principles. There she found an affirmation of her commitment to linking social change with modern dance. In addition to encouraging students to be cognizant of the relationship between politics and dance, the New Dance Group provided exquisite technical training. At their studios, Primus studied ballet, modern dance, tap dance, and cultural dances from other countries as well as dance history, philosophy, and choreography. She was taught by the leading luminaries of modern dance, including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Beryl McBurnie. Primus credited Weidman’s work with “aiding me in the use of speed and distance on the stage.”19 McBurnie, also known as “La Belle Rosette,” was a Trinidadian dancer and choreographer who also taught Katherine Dunham, Geoffrey Holder, and Primus’s future husband, Percival Borde. Judith Delmer, the secretary of the New Dance Group, introduced Primus to African sculpture, from which the young dancer learned postures and angles. From photographs and collections of African art housed throughout the city, she made note of bodies leaning forward in relaxed stances, the connection of the feet to the earth, and the use of the free and relaxed hand.20
Primus soon became entrenched in the world of modern dance. She also quickly emerged as one of the city’s most promising young dancers. On Valentine’s Day 1943, she made her professional debut as part of a program at the 92nd Street Y entitled Five Dancers, featuring Nona Schurman, Gertrude Prokosch Kurath, Julia Levien, and Iris Mabry, all of whom would, like Primus, become major figures in modern dance performance and scholarship. There Primus premiered two solos, “African Ceremonial” and “Hear-de-Lans-a-Crying.” It had taken her six months to research and create “African Ceremonial.” In preparation, she read books, journals, and travel diaries. She looked at photos, paintings, and drawings in museums. She spoke with African graduate students and worked with Norman Coker, a dancer from West Africa who had worked with Asadata Dafora.21
Of Five Dancers, John Martin, dance critic at the New York Times, wrote: “If Miss Primus walked away with the lion’s share of the honors, it was partly because her material was more theatrically effective, but also partly because she is a remarkably gifted artist.” Martin went on to write that while Primus had been seen in New Dance Group productions and with Belle Rosette, she deserved a company of her own. Following her appearance at Five Dancers, the “audience literally yelled for more of her.”22
What a debut! Martin, the most influential critic of modern dance, would become Primus’s champion and adviser. In person, Martin encouraged her to pursue dance full-time, noting that through the dance she could also heal people. While he saw her as “the most gifted artist-dancer of her race,” he also noted that “it would be manifestly unfair to classify her merely as an outstanding Negro dancer, for by any standard of comparison she is an outstanding dancer without reg
ard for race.”23 Martin further raved, “She has tremendous inward power, a fine dramatic sense, a talent for comedy and, marvelous to relate, a really superb technique with which to eternalize them.” When a critic of Martin’s stature singles out a young dancer, others of power and influence take notice. Martin’s personal encouragement and his published reviews nurtured the young dancer and helped to create audience curiosity and enthusiasm for her performances.
Martin, along with a number of other white critics, seemed to prefer Primus to Katherine Dunham. Dunham was the best-known black modern dancer for many years. Her shadow looms large. She is the point of comparison for all black dancers and choreographers who seek to make a name for themselves in the field of modern dance. Ten years Primus’s senior, Dunham had founded her first company in 1937 and had begun researching dance in Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba, and Martinique in 1936. This research would ultimately culminate in the publication of numerous writings as well as the development of a movement vocabulary—the Dunham technique. The company gained a great deal of attention when it premiered at New York’s Windsor Theater. By the year of Primus’s debut, Dunham and her company had appeared in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather; two years later, in 1945, she opened the Dunham School of Dance and Theater in New York. In order to fully appreciate Primus, it is important to understand what she shared with, and how she departed from, Dunham, who certainly blazed a path for her.24
Pearl Primus, October 11, 1943. Photo by Carl Van Vechten.
Dunham and Primus were early recognized as important figures in dance. When Margaret Lloyd published The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance in 1949, the first major history of the form, she included sections on both dancers. In doing so, Lloyd acknowledged the significant contributions made by both dancers. She made note of their differences as well. Dunham brought a sense of showmanship, drama, and glamour to her performances of Caribbean-inspired dances. Critics found Dunham’s choreography more sexual than Primus’s, but Primus brought greater physical power to her movements. Primus presented African, Caribbean, and black American dances on the stage without glamorizing them and sought to use the stage to educate viewers about lesser-known histories and cultures. Many white critics, including Lloyd, seemed more comfortable with Primus; for them, she represented dance in its “authentic” form. It is unclear whether this was an estimation reserved for black dancers. Finally, unlike Dunham, Primus avoided personal contact with her audience. In this way, she was like her friend, pianist, composer, and arranger Mary Lou Williams and other members of the young generation of emerging bebop musicians, all of whom sought to emphasize their identity as serious artists as much, if not more so, than the role of entertainer. For some black women, in particular, it was sometimes necessary to create a kind of self-protective distance from an audience that might project fantasies of sexual availability onto their performance.
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