“It’s About Change”: The Liberating Spaces of Black Dance

One Spirit, Many Voices. This is the motto of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance (CPRD), a Black dance ensemble and school in Denver, Colorado. It’s ingrained into everyone who steps foot in their school and theater — from students to audience members, whether you consider yourself a dancer or not. Walking into that space, you become not only a member of the community, but a part of the family that Parker Robinson, her dancers, and her students foster.

I spent 14 years of my life growing up at Cleo’s; my friends and I used to joke that we spent more time at the dance studio than we did at home. I cannot comment on the Black experience, nor do I intend to. However, CPRD is my home. I would not be the person I am today without my childhood spent there. This community dance space proved essential to my life, especially in the face of decreasing funding for the arts in schools. By creating this third space, Cleo’s not only provided a safe place for Black dancers, but also children who were unable to find art in their schools and needed it as a crucial part of their lives. Black dance spaces have long been sites of liberation, and they deserve to be recognized in a world that tends to erase the roots of dance in activism and human experience. 

Typically, when people think of dance, ballet is the first thing that comes to mind: white ballerinas in pristine tutus and pointe shoes dancing to classical music. This is a stereotype, and ballet has come a long way in becoming more inclusive of race and gender. However, prior to these more recent changes in ballet, dancers in the late 1890s and early 1900s deviated from the normative structures of ballet to create modern dance. Rejecting the rules defined by ballet, especially in Europe, modern dance began to take shape in America. Deviating from the aristocratic origins of ballet in royal courts, modern dance aimed to give more freedom to human expression, break the confines of dancing en pointe, and move based on the natural human body. Primarily pioneered by white American women like Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, and Martha Graham — who developed the popular modern style Graham — modern dance gave a voice to women historically overshadowed by European men. However, African American dancers did not begin to gain widespread recognition in modern dance until the 1930s.

Katherine Dunham was the first Black choreographer to develop a modern dance style — the Dunham technique. As an anthropologist, she traveled to islands in the West Indies, specifically Haiti, where she immersed herself in the culture to better understand African roots in dance. Inspired by Haitian movement, Dunham created her technique as a way to bring elements of Haitian and African dance into the American modern dance context. She then founded the Katherine Dunham Company in the 1930s, becoming the first all-Black dance company to tour in the United States, and eventually the world. Dunham used her platform not only to bring different cultures into the spotlight of dance, but also as a way to process African American history. One of her most controversial works, Southland, premiered in Santiago, Chile, in 1951. The ballet told the story of the lynching of a Black man after he is falsely accused of raping a white woman. On stage during the prologue, Dunham said, “This is not all of America, it is not all of the South, but it is a living, present part.” She created this work as a powerful critique of not only the manifestations of racism in American society at the time, but also the violence inherently embedded in United States history. The work sparked such controversy that the U.S. government deemed it “anti-American,” effectively banning its performance in the U.S. Paris hosted a singular performance of the piece in 1953 before being fully banned by the U.S. State Department. That changed in 2012 when Cleo Parker Robinson Dance finally gave Southland its American premiere. Ultimately, Dunham’s legacy of political activism and cultural recognition through dance paved the way for other Black modern dancers.

Alongside the founding of Katherine Dunham Company in the 1930s, the New Dance Group (NDG), initially the Workers Dance Group, responded to the turmoil of economic crashes, mass unemployment, and emergence of the labor force in the 1930s with the following idea: “dance is a weapon” to challenge capitalism and fascism in America. They appealed to working-class struggles with an interracial and intercultural lens, often performing for unions and social demonstrations. By the 1940s, the NDG School offered lessons in vast techniques from around the world, as well as accessible practices for dancers with disabilities. It was New York’s first dance school that emphasized dance as a form of social protest, especially through multiculturalism. A former student described it as “an education in living.” NDG had a significant impact on many of its alumni, including Black dancers Pearl Primus and Donald McKayle, both of whom maintain status as prominent historic modern dance choreographers. Fieldwork in Africa and the West Indies informed Primus’ work, similarly to Dunham, while McKayle communicated African American experiences through modern dance. By bringing attention to Black struggles, many consider Primus and McKayle not only dancers and choreographers, but social activists. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) is likely one of the most prominent and well-recognized modern dance and Black dance companies in the world; One cannot discuss Black dance history without regarding its contributions and significance. Founded in 1958 in New York City, during the Civil Rights Movement, AAADT revolutionized the way that the world viewed African American dance. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Ailey said, “The cultural heritage of the American Negro is one of America’s richest treasures. From his roots as a slave, the American Negro — sometimes sorrowing, sometimes jubilant but always hopeful — has touched, illuminated, and influenced the most preserves of world civilization. I and my dance theater celebrate this trembling beauty.” Acknowledging these roots of the African American experience and weaving them into his choreography, Ailey created a Black dance company that brought hidden views of life to a national stage. Varying from Dunham’s company, Ailey centralizes an American audience and perspective, and utilizes Horton technique. During the 1920s to the 1940s, Lester Horton derived his technique from his personal — and problematic —  “observations” of Native American communities. However, Ailey adapted the technique popularized by white performers to represent Black American experiences. His most popular work, “Revelations,” depicted Ailey’s interpretation of the African American experience. First performed in 1960 to a series of gospel, blues, and spiritual songs, Ailey showed the tragedies of enslavement to the celebration of community in the South, reflecting his childhood in Texas and the Baptist church. The piece brought African American dance and art to the forefront of the American stage, set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, to popularize Black dance as a method of expressing emotion and protest. 

From the works of Dunham to Ailey, the following persists: dance is a form of protest. When Black dancers perform on a national and international stage, these performances undergo inherent politicization. These choreographers highlight elements of the Black experience from their personal perspectives, shedding light on stories intentionally omitted from history. This persists with the expansion of Black dance companies in the U.S. and around the world.

Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, founded in 1970 in Denver, is only one of many Black dance companies today, following the paths first created by Dunham, Ailey, and other Black dance pioneers. With four other Black dance companies founded by Black women — Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (founded 1968 in Dayton, Ohio), Philidanco! (founded 1970 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Dallas Black Dance Theatre (founded 1976 in Dallas, Texas), and Lula Washington Dance Theatre (founded 1980 in Los Angeles, California) — the International Association of Blacks in Dance was created in 1988 to gather Black dance professionals from across the world. The companies in the conference, including AAADT, Camille A. Brown and Dancers, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Rennie Harris Puremovement, and many more, expand Black dance to more than its history in American modern technique. From West African dance to hip hop, IABD encompasses the vast expansion of Black dance as a political movement, rather than a specific style of dance. For example, hip hop has a vast history of activism from its roots in the Bronx to its evolution into a more commercialized form of movement. Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance this past February brought attention back to hip hop in its most original form: Black, American, and political. 

Cleo Parker Robinson, who I had the opportunity to interview this March, perhaps describes it best. Reflecting on the backlash she’s faced by incorporating both a multicultural lens, and hiring dancers who are not Black in her company, she said, “I never saw Black dance as only Black, because dance is a human experience. It doesn’t come in a color. It comes in all the colors. So there’s no way to avoid it being all of the above. But I think politically it’s something different. Politically … it’s like a verb, it’s an active thing. It’s about activism. It’s about change. And then it’s about aligning with others who really understand what change is and the necessity of it.”

When asked why dance — and Black dance in particular — remains important in continuing a legacy of activism, she said: “Well, I think dance is not seen as political. And I think that people need right now to not feel political (laughs). ‘Cause they feel manipulated. And even before they even figure anything out they’ve already made a position. Either I’m a Republican or I’m a Democrat, or I’m liberal, I’m not, or I’m conservative, and they’re really… close-minded. There’s a lotta close-mindedness.”

She continued by describing her ideas of what she believes dance could do to bring understanding to people, especially in such a divided political and social environment. “I think the dance removes you from the mind and goes right to your spirit. And I think that that’s really important. And I think it also brings, maybe, those polarized places together in a place that feels more neutralized. And there, people will hear each other. And maybe we can bring a greater balance. And, I think that that’s what the dance does: it brings us into that place like… really trying to understand it. And then going, well let’s dance it… are there better solutions? And I think that that’s imagining. I think dance helps us come together to imagine something even better.”

Considering collective liberation through dance, she said, “I mean I kinda go with ‘One Spirit, Many Voices’: what we’ve been doing for a long time. And I think once everyone feels that there’s a place for them, there’s a place and there’s a voice, then it’s a natural liberation. I mean people feel free. It’s a freedom.”

That is the role of dance in a political world that doesn’t always value art as a method of activism: Dance creates a collective community, a collective voice, a place for everyone. If dance serves as a form of uniting people across beliefs, cultures, and languages, while Black dance provides a path of dance as activism, the idea of collective liberation follows. Black dance plays into Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of bottom-up change, or the concept that we cannot achieve full liberation for all unless we approach it from the perspective of liberating those who are most marginalized. By expressing Black experiences and using dance as a form of protest, Black dancers take the forefront in fighting for their liberation. By supporting this voice for liberation, following in their footsteps, and becoming — in the words of Parker Robinson, one spirit with many voices — we come closer as a community to collective liberation. 

By disregarding art and dance as methods of activism, many would say that what I’m arguing is not essential to the way that social movements change systems in society. Artists, including Parker Robinson, face this doubt and dismissal with something stronger: lived experience. So, the way she ended our interview is the way I’ll end this piece — “I might be all wrong, but somewhere I think I’ve had some real indication that [dance] works.”

Read the full interview with Cleo Parker Robinson at femmagazine.com.