Stepping Into the Dancing Shoes of The Harlem Dance Theater
I’ll admit when my teacher announced to the class that we would be attending a dance class to learn about African American history, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. However, my dance experience with The Harlem Dance Theater was more than just a dance class, it was a unique educational experience that I won’t soon forget.
On November 9th, The Harlem Dance Theater held two interactive dance sessions at Woodstock Union High School in order to display a unique, interactive view of African American history to students through dance.
Going into the activity, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the workshop and was somewhat nervous to see what was in store. I had never done something like this and wasn’t sure I’d like it, but was soon pleasantly surprised by the experience that awaited me.
To begin the workshop, we were shown a video about the creation of the Harlem Dance Theater and its founder, Arthur Mitchell. After the video, we were asked “what was new to you?”, “why do you think that is?” and “where do you think that idea came from?”, as we learned about the African American integration into the world of classical Ballet, a realm of dance that was considered to be a primarily white area due to its European descent. We discussed the difference in bodies of different races and how that was considered to be a hindrance to dance and touched on racial discrimination in things as simple as the color of ballet tights.
It was shocking to learn about such ridiculous assumptions for something as universal as dance, but the implications were soon pushed away by the confidence of the leaders of the Dance Theater as they started right in with the lesson, teaching us ballet positions in a fast paced warm-up.
After the warm-up, we were told to create a circle around the gym to symbolize a community. We were instructed to shake the hand of the person to the right and give a hug to the person on our left as this class was now our community and our family.
We then closed our eyes and were instructed to picture an ancient African village. We were instructed to picture farming, trading, and our lifestyle. When we opened our eyes, we began to learn a farming dance. We talked through the steps of planting, harvesting, and trading our food and created corresponding motions to go with each task. When we had finished learning our motions, we began to dance together in a circle, feeling the music and chanting along with the instructors.
As we continued to dance, small groups of people were dragged out of the circle, one by one, by the instructors. When I was chosen, I was confused and resisted at first, much like the other participants who were dragged out as we were unaware of what was happening. As we stood outside the circle, we were asked how it had made us feel to be dragged away and the general consensus was that those who had been suddenly taken away were confused and fearful. The instructors then described that this was how strong people were taken from their communities, stripped from their families and friends to become slaves. The spaces left in the circle from the missing members represented the void that was left in communities after their members were taken captive to slavery.
We were then instructed to hold hands and shuffle in a line as if our feet were chained together, as the instructors yelled commands at us, to emulate the miserable experience of being packed onto a slave ship, an exercise that truly put students into the shoes of a slave.
While we were moving around the gym, we were told to stop and were grouped based on our location in the gym and assigned to different states where slaves were forced to work. Each state was labeled with a commodity such as sheep, crabs, sweet potatoes, oranges, etc. that slaves in that particular state were working to produce. In our state groups, we were instructed to create a short dance, illustrating the process of producing the commodity. We then performed the dances by state to show the different slave states and their commodities.
After we performed in our state groups, we came back together for another discussion, this time being asked to list adjectives about how we would feel if we were slaves who had just been granted freedom. Our contributions highlighted the mixture of fear, relief and confusion that slaves would’ve felt during the time and gave us a chance to put ourselves in their shoes to feel how they would have felt.
We then moved into the period of The Great Migration, participating in a Harlem-inspired dance to represent the influx of African Americans that moved to Harlem during that period of movement.
We were then asked to list adjectives that described the Civil Rights Movement, that we then used to create individual dance moves. We pulled tightly on air-ropes and raised fists in protest as we performed the dance, giving the adjectives of the civil rights movement a visual representation.
Finally, to close the workshop, we ventured into the James Brown era, finishing with a fun, upbeat dance for the “b-boys and b-girls”.
I left the workshop feeling grateful that I had gotten to be a part of such an interesting educational experience. Had I learned the same information in a power point in the classroom, I would never have felt so close to the history of the African American community. The Harlem Dance Theater made it so that no matter your race, you could find it inside yourself to step into the shoes of an African American to feel some of the emotions that they felt, which is an educational experience that was very eye-opening. To see people of all different backgrounds, from all around the country and the world, experience history in such an eye-opening, interactive way was an amazing experience that I definitely don’t regret attending.
