History on Display: Martin, a Ballet Film by Gordon Parks
©David Finn Archive, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC
One of the later chapters of The Swans of Harlem discussed a ballet film by 20th century Renaissance man Gordon Park. Parks is best known for his photojournalism, in which he documented poverty and the civil rights movement from the 1940s through the 1970s, and his groundbreaking blockbuster film, Shaft (1971). He brings those two talents together in the documentary ballet film Martin (1990), a ballet about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a card-carrying ballet fan and history buff, I felt compelled to learn more.
Martin is a ballet with a prologue and five acts corresponding to significant moments in Dr. King’s life: the bus boycott (one of the five Swans of Harlem danced the part of Rosa Parks*), the march on Selma, his time in a Birmingham jail, his assassination, and his funeral. Gordon Parks not only directed and produced the film, but he composed the music.
To my disappointment, I was not able to watch the entire ballet. One full-length copy is available on YouTube, but the copy was so degraded that it was painful to watch. Instead I was able to see three segments: the prologue, Act III and Act V.
In the prologue, Gordon Parks narrates an introduction that deals primarily with the days before and after King’s assassination, played against a powerful montage of Parks’ photographs from the period. Occasionally a very young dancer moves across the screen and then freezes in a pose that resolves into one of the photographs—an enormously powerful technique and one that makes it clear that this ballet was designed for the screen, not the stage. Parks ends with a statement of his intent for the production: “As Martin was committed to a vision, this ballet is committed to the memory of that vision”
I did not find the choreography for Act III, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which includes a voice over of the text of the letter, and Act V, Mourning Place, which overtly references the resurrection of Christ from the tomb, particularly compelling, though the dancing itself was excellent. Martin is ultimately interesting as a historical statement, and a historical artifact.
I’m glad I took the time to watch it.
*I’m sure I’m not the only person who wondered whether Gordon Parks was related to Rosa Parks. The answer is no.
The Swans of Harlem
As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been fascinated by ballet and its history for most of my life. So when I began to see notices for a book about the forgotten Black ballerinas who danced for the Dance Theatre of Harlem I was eager to get my hands on it. It lived up to my hopes.
Karen Valby’s The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood and the Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History is more than simple dance history. As its subtitle openly declares, it about how Black women’s stories are doubly erased from history and about the efforts of a group of women “to write themselves back into history.”
The Swans of Harlem begins in 2015, when Misty Copeland became the first Black woman to be promoted to principal dancer at American Ballet Theater. Stories about her undoubted accomplishment ignored those of Black ballerinas before her. Five of those women formed the 152nd Street Black Ballet Legacy Council, named after the home of the Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) where they danced fifty years before Copeland,. Their goal was to bring their story back to light; they succeeded with the help of Karen Valby. The extent to which the book is a collaboration between dancers and author is demonstrated by the fact that there are two acknowledgement pages, one for Valby and one for the Swans.
It would have been easy to tell the history of DTH as the creation of one heroic (male) figure, its founder Arthur Mitchell, who was determined to make art in general and ballet in particular accessible to black children—an impulse born from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. And, indeed, Mitchell strides across the pages of the book just as he strode through the lives of the dancers who worked for him—brilliant, beautiful, imperious, obsessed, generous, difficult, and angry. But he is the background against which Valby shares the stories of five important dancers, the paths they took to DTH, their experiences as dancers, their lives after DTH, and the legacies they have created. Their names: Lydia Abarca, Gayle McKinney-Griffith, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells, and Karlya Shelton.
The Swans of Harlem is alternatively instructive, heartbreaking, and inspiring. It demonstrates how easily groups of women and people of color are removed from history in favor of stories of individual exceptionalism. Not just for ballet fans. Honest.
Shin-Kickers from History: The Griffin Sisters and Vaudeville
In the 1910s, Emma and Mabel Griffin were a well lnown vaudeville act. Performing as the Griffin Sisters, they combined comedy routines with music and dance numbers. (Mabel was the straight woman. Emma got the punchlines.)
They had started working as chorus girls in variety shows in the 1890s. By the beginning of the twentieth century, they were a recognized act on the white vaudeville circuit. They earned good money—sometimes as much as $200 a week.* (Though still not as much as comparable White performers.) But, like other Black performers of the period, Jim Crow laws meant their travel and booking arrangements were often difficult.
In the 1910s, they increasingly performed for Black audiences eager for entertainment. (Performing for Black audiences didn’t lessen the difficulties of traveling in the South.) It was a conscious business decision. They worked to expand Black vaudeville circuits, particularly into the South. In 1913, they founded their own theatrical agency, with the goal of getting Black performers the same terms as their white counterparts. They leased theaters in Chicago and Washington, as the first step in building the Griffin Sisters Vaudeville circuit.
Their plans came to naught. The physical stress of constant traveling caught up with them. In 1913, Emma collapsed on stage. She was hospitalized for more than a month. In 1915, Mabel suffered from a stroke. They continued to perform when they could, but their performances were intermittent. Occasionally one sister had to join forces with another performer when the other could not perform until 1918, when Emma died of bronchitis at the age of 44.
They set the stage, so to speak, for the Black female performers, and theater owners, who followed them.
* Roughly $6000 today.