"You Dance Because You Have To" BBC Radio 3 Program
Thea Nerissa Barnes, dancer, teacher and CriticalDance correspondent researched and introduced a 1 hour programme on Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus this week. It's well worth a listen, but will probably only be available until Sunday, 28th September, 2003.
Here is the link to the programme on
Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus no longer available
Programme Information
Both Katherine Dunham and Dr Pearl Primus were phenomenal, pioneering
African-Americans who sought the roots of their cultural heritage through
anthropological research. Both were dancers, choreographers, and writers. As Rosenwald
Fellowship recipients, Dunham did her fieldwork in the West Indies/Caribbean in
1936 and Primus pursued her anthropological research in 1949 in West Africa.
They returned to America with the authentic rhythms and dances of Africa and
the Caribbean reinvigorating Africanist dance practices that had been degraded
by years of slavery and then diluted into minstrel shows and vaudeville.
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[ 24 September 2003, 03:49 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]