Harlem Nocturne (6 page)

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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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 regard for race.”
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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.

While the black press appreciated what both Dunham and Primus had to offer, Dunham received the lion's share of attention; she was the bigger and more accomplished star and an outspoken critic of racial segregation. She also fit the standard of beauty that dominated the black press. Dunham had her own company, and her productions were more theatrical. However, at least one article in the
Amsterdam News
applauded Primus's seriousness over Dunham's turn to skimpy costumes and Hollywood.
²⁵

Speaking of the difference between herself and Primus, Dunham told an interviewer, “As far as some relationships between our choreography, our work, our plans, or intentions I don't think that exists. I think that Pearl Primus is chiefly African oriented. I think she has done a great job in bringing this to the American public. Whereas my work has been much more Caribbean and eclectic.” She went on to observe, “I would say my interest is not to reconstruct or present from an anthropologist point of view African material and I admire Pearl Primus for this because that seems to be her intention. I am more interested in what can I do creatively with the material that comes from these backgrounds that I am interested in.”
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