Josephine Baker
The National Portrait Gallery has an exhibit regarding Baker's life which I recently visited. Baker is a fascinating figure whose career raises numerous questions about issues of race, gender and identity. But she was also, according to contemporaries, a compelling dancer who brought the dance idioms of black Broadway to Europe. She opened in the Revue Negre in Paris in 1925 as part of a company which included Sidney Bechet, Claude Hopkins and the tap dancer Louis Douglas. Baker did a Danse Sauvage which was an enormous sensation. This was emphatically not tap dance. The French apparently didn't much care for tap dancing in the mid-twenties and the producers apparently thought the show as originally conceived featured too much tap.
Instead of tap, Baker's dance drew from popular American dances of the time such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom and a step called "Through the Trenches" which, according to Baker's biographer Phyllis Rose "mimicked the way soldiers moved in a crouch to avoid sniper fire."
Baker's dance played into French stereotypes of "African" dance as openly lascivious and created an enormous sensation. Of course, rather than emanating from an African jungle, Baker's dance reflected the idiom of black Broadway - Baker had danced in Sissle and Blake's Shuffle Along - and its roots in the newly emerging music called jazz. The French critic Andre Levinson wrote of Baker's performance:
There seemed to emanate from her violently shuddering body, her bold dislocations, her springing movements, a gushing stream of rhythm. . . . It was as though the jazz, catching on the wing the vibrations of this body, was interpreting word by word its fantastic monologue.
I've posted a video of Baker dancing which I should guess dates from 1926-27. Here she's not doing a "savage" dance but a "plantation" bit which of course perpetuated another set of sterotypes about African Americans. At about 1:45 in the video you can see the Through the Trenches step.
Baker published a memoir in 1927 which deeply offended French war veterans. In the book, Baker stated:
I've heard a lot of talk about the war. What a funny story! I swear I don't understand it at all but it disgusts me. I have such a horror of men with only one arm, one leg, one eye.
Of course, in the mid twenties there were probably millions of disabled war veterans in France and their protests forced Baker to disavow these comments and she later staged a benefit for them.
But this didn't end Baker's problems. In 1928 she left Paris for a tour of central Europe. In Vienna, The New York Times reported that Baker required a police escort because of protests by students "who declared their intention of preventing colored artists from playing in Vienna." The next day, the Times reported that the Nationalist Party had petitioned Austria's chancellor to ban Baker's performance. According to the article:
the deputation [to the Chancellor] said the party is receiving thousands of letters daily protesting against "brazen-faced heathen dances and scenes" which, if permitted, are likely to provoke riots.
Baker's performances were allowed to proceed however, and the Times reported that they were opposed not only by right-wing parties but by the Catholic church which held three days of "atonement" services at a church adjoining the Johann Strauss Theater where Baker performed.
To give some idea of the performances which provoked such outrage, here's another clip of Baker performing.
In both of these videos, you get the sense that Baker's facial expressions were an important part of her performance. She was particularly noted for crossing her eyes. Her biographer, Phyllis Rose, thinks this was a way of deflecting attention from her sexual attractiveness. But it's also reminiscent of the kind of "mugging" that Louis Armstrong incorporated into his act. Also, in the second video particularly, I think you can get the sense of how important Baker's rear end was to her dancing. Rose quotes one hostile French critic as saying that he "was willing to bet that she had never thought of founding a new aesthetic on the mobility of her rear end."
Instead of tap, Baker's dance drew from popular American dances of the time such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom and a step called "Through the Trenches" which, according to Baker's biographer Phyllis Rose "mimicked the way soldiers moved in a crouch to avoid sniper fire."
Baker's dance played into French stereotypes of "African" dance as openly lascivious and created an enormous sensation. Of course, rather than emanating from an African jungle, Baker's dance reflected the idiom of black Broadway - Baker had danced in Sissle and Blake's Shuffle Along - and its roots in the newly emerging music called jazz. The French critic Andre Levinson wrote of Baker's performance:
There seemed to emanate from her violently shuddering body, her bold dislocations, her springing movements, a gushing stream of rhythm. . . . It was as though the jazz, catching on the wing the vibrations of this body, was interpreting word by word its fantastic monologue.
I've posted a video of Baker dancing which I should guess dates from 1926-27. Here she's not doing a "savage" dance but a "plantation" bit which of course perpetuated another set of sterotypes about African Americans. At about 1:45 in the video you can see the Through the Trenches step.
Baker published a memoir in 1927 which deeply offended French war veterans. In the book, Baker stated:
I've heard a lot of talk about the war. What a funny story! I swear I don't understand it at all but it disgusts me. I have such a horror of men with only one arm, one leg, one eye.
Of course, in the mid twenties there were probably millions of disabled war veterans in France and their protests forced Baker to disavow these comments and she later staged a benefit for them.
But this didn't end Baker's problems. In 1928 she left Paris for a tour of central Europe. In Vienna, The New York Times reported that Baker required a police escort because of protests by students "who declared their intention of preventing colored artists from playing in Vienna." The next day, the Times reported that the Nationalist Party had petitioned Austria's chancellor to ban Baker's performance. According to the article:
the deputation [to the Chancellor] said the party is receiving thousands of letters daily protesting against "brazen-faced heathen dances and scenes" which, if permitted, are likely to provoke riots.
Baker's performances were allowed to proceed however, and the Times reported that they were opposed not only by right-wing parties but by the Catholic church which held three days of "atonement" services at a church adjoining the Johann Strauss Theater where Baker performed.
To give some idea of the performances which provoked such outrage, here's another clip of Baker performing.
In both of these videos, you get the sense that Baker's facial expressions were an important part of her performance. She was particularly noted for crossing her eyes. Her biographer, Phyllis Rose, thinks this was a way of deflecting attention from her sexual attractiveness. But it's also reminiscent of the kind of "mugging" that Louis Armstrong incorporated into his act. Also, in the second video particularly, I think you can get the sense of how important Baker's rear end was to her dancing. Rose quotes one hostile French critic as saying that he "was willing to bet that she had never thought of founding a new aesthetic on the mobility of her rear end."
posted by Whistling Dixie at 11:05 AM
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