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Choreographing the Folk The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston Anthea Kraut PRESS: |
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$75.00 cloth |
Recovers an important dimension of the work of the renowned African American artist. While Zora Neale Hurston and her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God have become widely celebrated, she was also a prolific stage director and choreographer. In the 1930s Hurston produced theatrical concerts that depicted a day in the life of a railroad work camp in Florida and featured a rousing Bahamian Fire Dance as the dramatic finale. In Choreographing the Folk, Anthea Kraut traces the significance and influence of Hurston’s little-known choreographic work. Hurston’s concerts were concrete illustrations of the “real Negro art theatre” she was eager to establish, and they compellingly demonstrate how she used the arena of performance to advance a nuanced understanding of the black diaspora. Her version of the Fire Dance was staged in a variety of venues during the 1930s. In its multiple representations, Kraut asserts, the dance raised critical issues about ownership, artistry, and authenticity. Choreographing the Folk argues for the significance of Hurston’s choreography, and with perceptiveness, sensitivity, and originality, Kraut illuminates the important and often-contested place of black folk dance in American culture. “A choreographic legacy restored!” —The Philadelphia Sunday SUN “Kraut’s exciting book uncovers a long-forgotten aspect of Hurston’s artistic life, her work for the concert dance stage. . . . it suggests that Hurston’s work nor African American dance traditions can be neatly fit in racially marked categories. An important contribution to the literature on dance studies, and valuable to those interested in interdisciplinarity.” —Choice “This fine book picks up with a subject that should have been investigated years ago and pushes it toward greater understanding, that of the role of Zora Neale Hurston in developing and blending ‘genuine’ African-American culture and the arts and their contributions to the wider American culture. In her investigations and conclusions Kraut believes that Hurston’s play The Great Day spawned a series of performances that deserve a place in official dance records. They need to be more integrally tied in with African-American studies and American studies in general.” —Journal of American Culture “Choreographing the Folk represents a groundbreaking attempt to resituate [Zora Neale Hurston] as an influential dance artist, and also to reveal the cultural struggles for control over black folk dance in the 1930s. . . . Represents a long-overdue assessment of Hurston’s relationship to dance studies and to embodied representations of African American expression, and is an invaluable resource for both Hurston and dance scholars. ” —Journal of American Studies Anthea Kraut is assistant professor of dance at the University of California, Riverside, where she teaches courses in dance history and theory. 312 pages | 11 b&w photos | 6 x 9 | 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Coda: Hurston’s Choreographic Legacy Appendix A: Chronology of Known Performances by Hurston and the Bahamian Dancers |
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