Broadway Video Analysis

The new Cinderella and leisure-time musicals reflected the lifestyle of middle class Americans in the 1920s—middle class, white Americans. But whites were not the only race who experienced relative financial affluence. Waves of African Americans from the south—where lynching was still a terrifying and common reality—and immigrants from the West Indies came to Harlem in the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s to take advantage of wartime jobs and the real-estate boom. In Harlem, a surplus of apartment buildings were built and remained unoccupied. Many of the people who flooded into Harlem were able to save money and buy their first homes. In the 1920s, the population of Harlem grew from 80,000 to 200,000 people.

In addition, the influx of blacks into Harlem created a community that began to celebrate black achievements. In the early 1920s, “The Harlem Renaissance” erupted in a tide of artistic and intellectual creativity in the form of poetry, writing, music, dance and visual arts. The cakewalk and the ragtime music craze had given whites a taste of African American entertainment. Now black artistry became the new chic in New York.

In this new era of art and recreation, the pulse of jazz music and the corresponding response of jazz dancing could not be separated. Black dance reflected the innovative energy of American jazz music.

Langston Hughes credited the all-black musical, Shuffle Along with giving a “scintillating send-off to that Negro vogue in Manhattan” known as the Harlem Renaissance… “'It gave the proper push—a pre-Charleston kick—to the vogue that spread to books, African sculpture, music, and dancing (cited in Woll, 1989, p. 60).

The popularity of black social dances [discussed later in this unit] and a growing appreciation of jazz music may have primed Broadway audiences for the entrance of Shuffle Along. Written by black songwriters Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle for black performers, Shuffle Along has been heralded as the break-through musical that forced white audiences to recognize black contributions to Broadway musical theatre. Shuffle Along showcased the best in black talent. The show launched the careers of both its cast members and creative artists, and it opened the gates to a flood of black musicals in the 1920s.

Prior to the opening of Shuffle Along, there had been no successful all-black musical for years. Even Shuffle Along had financial difficulties during its pre-Broadway tour. Creators Blake and Sissle left unpaid bills scattered in the wake of the show. When Shuffle Along arrived in New York City, it opened in the dilapidated 63rd Street Theatre on the fringes of what was considered “Broadway.” The lack of financial resources impacted the production value of the show. Reviewers noted both the hand-me down costumes (borrowed from a recently closed show) and the less-than-lavish sets. The show was also criticized for its thin revue-type plot, which was often interrupted by unrelated skits and dances.

Criticism of the show did nothing to stem the tide of audience members who flocked to see Shuffle Along. New York City was forced to convert 63rd Street into a one-way street, due to the traffic that continuously rushed towards the theater (Woll, 1989).

Combined with a score of hit songs were an enormous variety of dances that audiences had never before seen in one show on a Broadway stage. The sheer force of these songs and dances, performed by an extraordinarily talented cast, made Shuffle Along a hit. The thin storyline had been created to showcase the individual talents and acts of the cast. Song and dance acts were changed often:

· Miller and Lyles, two lead performers, incorporated comedy and acrobatics into a “Fisticuffs” skit that featured a flipping and tumbling fist fight.

· Charlie Davis, a featured dancer, was expert in fast tap dancing and the Buck and Wing [footwork that included stamps and chugs accompanied with waving arms (Knowles, 2002)]. Two of his tricks included “Over the Top” and “Trenches,” steps he borrowed from Toots Davis, a dancer he admired from the Darktown Follies.

· Tommy Woods was a featured dancer, who “did a slow-motion acrobatic dance. ‘Everything he did was in tempo,’ says Sissle. ‘He’d start with a Time Step [traditional stamp and shuffle tap dance step] and go into a flip, landing right on the beat’” (Stearns & Stearns, 1979, p. 134). Woods borrowed his acrobatic-type dancing from vaudeville, incorporating jazz music to make it “swing.”

· Other acts included eccentric dancing, Soft Shoe tap dancing [a form of tap dancing that emphasizes elegant style and is performed in shoes with no taps] and legomania.

The following video talks about the significance of Shuffle Along and includes writer Eubie Blake in his 90s playing and singing bits of songs from the show:

In 2016, a reinvention of Shuffle Along came to Broadway. Shuffle Along: The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed revisited the amazing contributions of Shuffle Along!

Social issues continued to play in the theatre. Woll argues that the original Shuffle Along forwarded both positive and negative legacies to black musical theatre. [Sound familiar?] The show stirred up enthusiasm for black shows, songs and dances. In doing this, it created many opportunities for black performers to work on Broadway. But the songs, dances and book did little to dispel white perceptions of blacks as simple, primitive people. It became clear from the reviews and ticket sales for the black shows that followed that black actors and dancers were still expected to perform in certain characteristic boxes. Shuffle Along was aptly named. Small strides were taken away from the prejudicial legacy of minstrelsy, but the expectations of white audiences and critics severely limited freedom of creative expression and the full expression of black person-hood on the Broadway stage. White audiences still expected to see “darky” entertainment elements like those seen in minstrel shows. They expected to see the cast make fun of stereotype versions of themselves.

The two male leads in Shuffle Along, Flourney Miller and Aubrey Lyles--who wrote the book for the musical--appeared in blackface. In an interview, Miller said, “When we were starting out in the early teens, …we had to black up to get a job—to make audiences think we were two white men blacked up. Lyles had straight hair and my skin was light, so I left my wrists uncovered” (cited in Stearns & Stearns, 1979, p. 133). Anyone who asked was told that the two men were white. By the time Shuffle Along came shuffling along, Miller and Lyles were well-known performers. They kept the blackface as part of their recognized “schtick” [comic gimmick].

Creators Sissle and Blake took a chance with their unprecedented portrayal of black romance in the show. Prior to Shuffle Along, black romances were comical caricatures of white stereotypes. Black “relationships” between men and women usually showed an exaggerated play between a bossy woman and her pleading lover. Sissle and Blake wrote a song for the show called “Love Will Find a Way.” It was a ballad, declaring a straightforward love interest between performers Lottie Gee and Roger Matthews. The slow, melodic music and earnest lyrics could not be mistaken for a clumsy comedy romance:

Come, dear, and don't let our faith weaken,

Let's keep our love fires burning bright.

Your love for me is a heavenly beacon,

Guiding me all through love's darkest night…

Sissle and Blake, along with producer, Harry Cort, also used Shuffle Along as their own vehicle on the road to racial integration. Author Allen L. Woll tells the story of the slow integration of the show’s audience:

Variety assumes that the show would attract a black audience: “A few blocks westward is a Negro section known as San Juan Hill. The Lenox Avenue colored section is 20 minutes away on the subway, so Shuffle Along ought to get all the colored support there is along with patrons who like that sort of entertainment.” Yet, when Variety sampled the audience in November, 1921 (after the price hike), the reviewer found the clientele almost 90% white.

What was surprising about the Shuffle Along audience is not the absolute number of black patrons but their placement in the theater. James Weldon Johnson credited Shuffle Along with breaking the rigid barriers of segregation in New York City’s legitimate theaters that restricted blacks to the balcony. Variety’s critic noted on opening night that “colored patrons were noticed as far front as the fifth row,” as though he were surprised by such a site. While the show brought black customers into the orchestra, it did not end segregation entirely. Two thirds of the orchestra was reserved for whites, and blacks were seated in the remaining third. Once again, the box office controlled the seating patterns. Variety calmed its readers by noting that “the two races are rarely intermingled.”

...Nevertheless, Shuffle Along marked the beginning of the end of segregation in New York City’s legitimate theaters. With each succeeding black show produced during the 1920s, seating restrictions gradually disappeared. (Woll, 1989, pp. 72-3)

The careers of many of Shuffle Along’s company were launched during the run of the show. Besides those performers mentioned above, two female dancers took first steps towards international performing careers when they danced in Shuffle Along. One was a leading lady, and one started out at the end of the chorus.

In 1922, Florence Mills replaced the female lead in Shuffle Along, and became an immediate favorite with audiences. The combination of her energetic dancing and emotional expression won both black and white hearts. Mills spoke of her dancing:

I belong to a race that sings and dances as it breathes. I don’t care where I am, so long as I can sing and dance. The wide world is my stage and I am my audience. If I didn’t feel like that I wouldn’t be an artist. The things you do best for other people are the things you would do just as well for yourself.

Our singing and our music are part of our history and tradition. We put a “folk-spirit” into everything we do. We have no great symphonies. But in our songs palm trees grow and the sun shines through them. The jungle grows dark and grows light. It is our laughter and our tears; it is our home and our exile. It’s getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. When I sing and dance on the stage of the theatre, I am often a million miles away. Maybe I’m down south, maybe farther away than that. When I work the hardest I often see folks sleeping in the sun and places lazy with heat, where it’s quiet and still. (cited in Egan, 2004, p. 270)

Author Bill Egan wrote about Mills, “A revival of the memory of Florence Mills does more than present an inspiring story. It provides a valuable role model today for younger African Americans struggling to understand their history and define their sense of identity. In an earlier era [the 1920’s], many African Americans held an optimism that reason and logic would in time prevail over the injustices of racial persecution and discrimination…Florence Mills never wavered from her belief that persuasion and leading by example could overcome prejudice. Her life and its remarkable achievements are a shining testimony to this truth” (2004, p. xvi).

Josephine Baker was fourteen or fifteen when she first auditioned for the chorus of Shuffle Along. Laws at the time stated, however, that she had to be sixteen to be hired. Within months, she had snuck into the chorus of a tour of the show. In her position at the end of the chorus line, she called attention to herself with her comedy antics, crossing her eyes and purposefully mixing up steps when she danced. Audiences roared with laughter. Sissle and Blake rewarded Baker with an offer to bring her chorus end-girl routine to Broadway, and they paid her $125 a week. She was the highest paid chorus girl of her time.

As mentioned earlier, nightlife thrived during Prohibition. In New York City, white residents turned their eyes and their shiny new automobiles north to Harlem to bask in new “black” experiences. Jazz music and jazz dance became the latest, greatest pastimes. And white America’s growing obsession with jazz cracked the door open for racial integration. The black poet and activist, Langston Hughes [remember him?] wrote:

White people from downtown began coming to Harlem to sit in the bars and cabarets, to watch the black dancers, to stare at black people.

The lindy-hoppers at the Savoy even began to practice acrobatic routines, and to do absurd things for the entertainment of the whites, that probably never would have entered their heads to attempt merely for their own effortless amusement. Some of the lindy-hoppers had cards printed with their names on them and became dance professors teaching the tourist. Then Harlem nights became show nights for the Nordics. (2002, p. 177)

Prohibition and pleasure-seeking drove both black and white revelers into Harlem clubs, in which dancing to jazz music, drinking and watching the local talent were the only nightly obligations. For the first time, white clientele heard live performances of jazz music that expressed anger, joy, frustration and sexuality to a beat that was impossible to ignore. And the dancing in black clubs expressed the same emotions. White enthusiasm for black music and dance stretched racial barriers. In many ballrooms and clubs, black and white dancers mixed on the dance floor, but when the music stopped, the races separated.

As the popularity of Harlem entertainment grew among white audiences, clubs catered to all levels of racial tolerance:

· Owned by white mobsters

· Exclusively white clientele

· All-black wait staff

· Known for extravagant shows that featured a chorus line of “high yeller” (racially mixed with very light skin) female dancers, all under 20 years of age and over 5’6”

· Strictly enforced race boundaries. Performers never mingled with customers

· Clientele was an integrated mix of Harlem locals, visiting blacks and well-to-do whites from downtown

· Integrated clientele sometimes even danced together

· The "place to be seen” for aspiring professional dancers, who often got jobs teaching white clients who wanted to learn how to do the black dances

· Duke Ellington and his band performed.

· Drummer/band leader Chick Webb became known for his musical connection to dancers

The new relationship between white and black patrons in clubs was a fragile one. Another nightclub—this one downtown—was the Douglass Club, on West Thirty-first Street. Tom Fletcher, author of One Hundred Years of Show Business, called it “the favorite ‘slumming’ place for the city’s wealthy and famous” (cited in Haskins & Mitgang, 1988, p. 47). Black entertainers performed there for tips, and they enjoyed a lifestyle experienced by few blacks during that period. At the same time, there was never any doubt about their “place” in the social order. Though the entertainers were highly admired by the white clientele at the club…

...when racial tensions were high, they were as endangered as ordinary blacks, and sometimes in greater danger by virtue of their fame. In the summer of 1900, a fight between a white man and a black man on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-first Street touched off a riot act after the white man was killed. A vengeful white mob massed outside the clubs and theaters where well-known black entertainers were performing. “Get Cole and Johnson!” “Get Williams and Walker!” the mob shouted. Instead of trying to help the blacks who were being beaten by the mob, white policemen joined in the beating. (Haskins & Mitgang, 1988, p. 49)

Floor shows at the clubs often forwarded racial stereotypes. Female dancers were usually light-skinned, and themes sometimes shamelessly reflected a white perspective on black entertainment. The 1981 musical, Sophisticated Ladies, spotlighted Duke Ellington's music and the entertainment of the jazz age. This number "The Mooch" showed a typical revue theme, black "jungle" dancing--utterly politically incorrect by today's values.

(Kultur Video, 2005)

(Farris, 2010)

Harlem nightclubs and national radio helped to spread the popularity of jazz music like wildfire.

[Note: “Jazz” is a general term referring to music with characteristics described below. HOWEVER, there are many types of “jazz” music and this American music genre has a history and evolution of its own. This very brief summary is offered to provide you with a basic definition, so that you can better understand the relationship of jazz music to dance.]

Jazz is a music genre that was born in America. And like jazz dance, jazz music had its foundation in the lives of African-American slaves. Although music in Africa varied widely from country to country and from tribe to tribe, jazz music was heavily influenced by “five characteristics shared by the various tribes that distinguish their functional music cultures from European tradition” (Waterman, cited in Martin & Waters, 2006, p. 6-7):

Jazz music has:

1. A steady pulse/regular beat.

2. Call-and-response: A solo drummer, instrumentalist or vocalist plays/sings a line of music and the group answers back.

3. Syncopation: Unexpected emphasis of a beat that is not in sync with the steady pulse.

4. Percussion: Use of drums and use of instruments or even body parts as drums is dominant in African music, where often there are no other instruments.

5. Polyrhythm: Multiple, different rhythms played at the same time or added in to increase the complexity of the music.

These five characteristics differed greatly from the elements of imported European styles of music. Compare the music—and social dance—in the first video below to the music in the second. [Listen to about 30 seconds of each if you are short on time.]

Video 1:

Video #2: Music from Ghana

Imagine the impact that Africanist music and rhythmic elements had on dance.

Like jazz music, “jazz dance” is a general term applied to dance that has most or all of the characteristics below. The term has been debated in the world of dance for decades! Especially controversial among dance teachers and historians is the application of the term to dance forms that many insist are not jazz, such as the “jazz” dance offered in many regional dance studios--which often uses pop music--and the “contemporary jazz” fusion that follows the creative flow of the individual choreographer, rather than following jazz characteristics that evolved from African American dance.

1. A connection to the earth: In contrast to ballet, where the dancer “pulls up” and elevates, jazz dancers feel a pull from the ground, with moves in extended/consistent bent knee position or with upper body bending towards the ground. Movement is centered in a gravity of the pelvis, which gives jazz dance a sensual aesthetic.

2. Freedom of movement in the spine: Jazz movement makes use of the whole body and exhibits a freedom of movement in the spine that is very different from European dance styles, where the body is held upright, in a restrained posture. [Like the prim and proper Quadrille!] This is a physical, rather than sociological, characteristic. This characteristic shows a physical element that you can see, and it should not to be confused with "free-spirited" dancing or a performer's feeling free to express himself. It is very specific to the whole body's movement in dance, especially as that relates to a loose use of the spine. After centuries of rigid, proper, western European posture, African Americans brought upper body and pelvic movement to dance. The head, chest and pelvis respond freely to the movement of the rest of the body as opposed to remaining upright.

3. Isolations: Individual body parts move independently from others, e.g. shoulder rolls or isolated hip pulses. [Note: arms or legs moving are not generally considered isolations.]

4. Syncopated rhythms: Movement incorporates the unexpected emphasis of a beat that is not the steady pulse that keeps the tempo of the song. When you count music with the bass drum beat: "1, 2, 3, 4" an example of syncopation would be a surprise movement between those beats, e.g., "1, 2 & a 3, 4."

5. Call-and-response: A variety of dynamics [explosive, powerful, percussive, subtle] is incorporated in movement that responds directly to those dynamics in the music. This characteristic speaks to a dancer's showing the instruments DRAMATICALLY through movement. You can "see" specific notes and rhythms speaking through movement. In "call-and-response," an individual note, phrase or section of music impacts the movement so strongly, that it looks as if the dancer is channeling the instrument, (e.g., a trumpet BWAP! corresponds to an electric ZAP! in the dancer's body) OR calling back to it. This characteristic goes beyond matching dancing with music. Dancers from the beginning of time have, hopefully, danced along with the music, matching their steps to the beat and style of the music. "Call-and-response" goes beyond music framing the dancing. It is a dramatic response of the body that displays a dramatic musical impulse so strongly that the move wouldn't really make sense without the music.

The five jazz dance characteristics are all physical characteristics that you can see, as opposed to something the dancer feels or a message the choreographer tries to convey. For example, "freedom of movement" is a body characteristic, not the feeling of freedom or freely moving around the stage.

Compare the jazz dance characteristics to those of jazz music. They are heavily intertwined. Jazz music and jazz dance incubated together in the heat of the south. Plantation owners, worried that slaves could communicate long distances with their traditional African drums, prohibited slaves from owning them. Body slapping, clapping and stomping became new percussion sounds.

So began the evolution of American music and dance. Traditional African forms were brought to America by slaves, then enough traditional European elements were adjusted and new elements added that the music and dance were slowly transformed into the distinctly American art forms of “jazz music” and “jazz dance.”

“The instruments of early jazz are virtually all European…Despite the prominence of rhythm as a key ingredient of African music, the basic instruments of the jazz drum set—snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals—are those of the European marching band” (Martin & Waters, 2006, p. 9).

Two other European elements that contributed to American jazz music are musical harmony [two or more complimentary notes played or sung at the same time] and musical form. Form refers to the length of parts of a song, in which a line of music comes to a predictable close at the end of 8, 16 or 32 measures of music. [This sounds complicated if you haven’t studied music, but listen to almost any song on your iPod, and you automatically know when the “end” of a line is coming. If the song has lyrics, the line often ends in a rhyme of the line before. The number of beats of music for each line is usually 8, each part of the song is set and usually matches the other parts.]

The blending of elements from many sources matched America’s new, high energy blend of cultures. Critics of jazz music at the time also said the music reflected the brash, young, rebellious qualities of Americans.

It was no accident that jazz dance showed a similar evolution. As slaves’ actions were limited by chains and by rules set by plantation owners, their dances changed to adapt to the limitations. Additional elements were incorporated by slaves who watched white southerners dance at events. This blend of African-American dance with European elements became American jazz dance. Distinct jazz dances were developed in different territories by slaves who had different white influences and fewer or more limitations on freedom.

European musical form added repeated patterns and predictability to the passionate undercurrents of African rhythms, allowing jazz music to accommodate formalized, commercial dance and making the counting of music and musical phrases accessible to dancers of all skill levels. The excitement of jazz music ignited new dance styles. And the popularity of dance, aided by the invention of the radio, spread across the country like wildfire.

To tie this back to the stage, we need to remember that the early American stage dancers often choreographed their own dances, incorporating anything they could use to entertain their audiences. So jazz dances appeared on stage here and there with black performers who performed the dances they knew from the South. Other dances were “theatricalized” for maximum audience impact. [Remember the Cakewalk from In Dahomey?] In addition, tap dancing—though it was not called “tap” until the 1910s when Ned Wayburn added metal taps to his dancers’ shoes— had been a staple of the American stage for decades. For the most part, however, jazz dance, prior to the 1920s, was primarily black social dancing in response to jazz music played in dance halls, clubs, and at family gatherings. Take a look at this video and you’ll see why black social dances gave a high voltage shock to white audiences in Harlem clubs and why they provided new possibilities for the Broadway stage.

Video: Black Social Dance

(2008)

The 1920s Broadway stage became the site from which jazz dance was popularized and delivered to the nation. Social dances from Harlem, theatricalized for the stage, were featured in black musicals viewed by both black and white audiences. In addition, professional white chorus dancers and dance stars raced to train with black teachers to learn the latest jazz dances. White financial backing enabled “black” dance studios to open. White versions of black social dances began to appear in musicals. Black dancing grew because of the increase in white Broadway shows. It was the utilization of black dance and jazz music which transformed musical theater into a unique, American art form.

According to Danielle Robinson, a dance historian and professor of dance cultural studies, the white appropriation of black jazz dancing limited the opportunities for black Broadway dancers. At the same time, the jazz dance craze and the quantity of white dance professionals who wanted to learn the latest dances created a new career in dance for blacks: professional dance teacher.

It was the…plentiful performance opportunities for white dancers who could dance “jazz” that were the catalyst for this new profession. White jazz dancers, especially female ones, were the primary clients of the black Broadway studios, not professional black performers. Furthermore, it was white celebrity women who were most able to market black dances (such as the Shimmy, Charleston, and Black Bottom) directly to the American public through films, magazines, sheet music, and theater shows. Black dances, not black dancers, were the stars of the Jazz Age—a fact that may have limited the success of any visibly black dancers, while simultaneously enabling the careers of black dance teachers, working behind the scenes. (2006, p. 25)

So was this new relationship between black teachers and white students a step towards increased racial understanding? Or was it a continuation of an historic relationship in which whites viewed blacks as subservient members of society? Robinson argues that it was a little of both. She believes that black teachers were empowered with a new career, but “black jazz teachers formalized a relationship between black and white dancers that reified the notion that black people, bodies and dancing existed to support white pleasure and profit” (2006, p. 21).

Charlie Davis, a Broadway performer from the musical Shuffle Along, was the first black teacher to open a studio. Billy Pierce also opened one on 46th Street, and as we discussed earlier, Buddy Bradley taught and coached many of Broadway’s most famous white stars.

I strongly believe it was during this decade that theatrical adaptations and formalizations of jazz dances created the “theatrical jazz” [also called “Broadway jazz”] genre still used on stage today.

The development of theatrical jazz mirrored the development of jazz music. With a strong foundation in African styles and steps, European formatting was incorporated to present the dances. Remember, these dances were social dances done in clubs. There were no positions in which the dancers stood to dance. There was no one direction that all the dancers faced. Dancing was improvised in the moment to whatever song the band played. So added elements like lines, formations, and patterns of step combinations transformed the key steps and styles of the social jazz dances into performable and watchable dance numbers set to specific songs.

This formalization may also add further insight into the path that these dances took from Harlem clubs to the Broadway stage to the films that delivered them to the general American public. When black dancers performed the dances, the upper body and hips were relaxed and responsive to the movement of the legs and feet, often making the dancer look “out of control.” When white dancers performed newly learned jazz dances, centuries of erect posture were displayed in their bodies. Taking the jazz dances and “whitewashing” them with repeated step patterns and upright posture may have made them more “user-friendly” to the general public. In addition, the formalization of the dance style made possible the idea of "training" jazz dancers for the stage.