Three Great Dancers

Johnson celebrated the influence of African and Caribbean dance forms on American choreography in Three Great Dancers, which features Josephine Baker (1906--1975) at center stage. In 1921, Baker came to New York, where she appeared in the chorus line of Shuffle Along, a landmark Broadway show created by African Americans with an all-Black cast. In Paris four years later, her skimpy costumes and unconventional moves catapulted her to international fame. Baker was not the first Black female dancer inspired by African sources. Florence Mills (1896--1927), who also appeared in Shuffle Along, and Adelaide Hall (1901--1993), another member of the Shuffle Along chorus line, promoted African-based music and dance.  

But most influential in integrating African and diasporic dance forms with modern dance was Katherine Dunham (1909--2006). In the 1930s, Dunham (lower left with a cigar in her mouth and draped in a white polka-dot cloth), formed one of the country's first Black dance companies. An anthropology major at the University of Chicago, she filmed vernacular dances in Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, and Trinidad, and in 1940, she choreographed Caribbean dance forms in Tropics and Le Jazz "Hot." 

The third "great dancer" of Johnson's title may be Pearl Primus (1919--1994). Many of Primus's dances conveyed messages about racism and discrimination. Strange Fruit, for example, which debuted in 1943, was a protest against lynching. Primus's energy and five-foot-high jumps commanded the stage, and in June 1943 she wowed an audience of twenty thousand at the Negro Freedom Rally at Madison Square Garden.