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Katherine Dunham's Southland: Notes for Exam Preparation

Southland: Context and Creation

  • Katherine Dunham’s Southland (premiered January 1951 in Santiago, Chile) is described as a dramatic ballet Americana addressing the long history of lynching in the United States.
  • In the program notes, Dunham wrote: "This is the story of no actual lynching in the Southern states of America, and still it is the story of every one of them." She delivered the prologue on stage in Spanish, stating (paraphrased): though she had not smelled burning flesh or seen a black body swinging from a Southern tree, she felt these things in spirit. The work intends to expose the ill and provoke conscience through artistic means.
  • Southland is framed as a protest against lynching and the destructive powers of hatred, created before key civil rights milestones (Selma march of 1965, Freedom Rides, sit-ins, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Emmett Till’s lynching in 1955).
  • The ballet is both a public act and a private rite of passage for Dunham, embodying how dance can heal while also protest politically.
  • The article situates Southland within broader Cold War-era tensions: over the 1940s–1950s, dissent faced charges of subversion; the era’s anti-Communist climate (HUAC, McCarthyism) affected funding, reception, and cultural diplomacy.
  • The author (Constance Valis Hill) emphasizes that Southland navigates nuanced moral questions: the necessity of protesting injustice, even when doing so risks personal and professional consequences.
  • Key historical context cited:
    • The late 1940s–1950s saw heightened scrutiny of civil rights activism amid anti-Communist rhetoric and investigations (e.g., HUAC; Paul Robeson case).
    • American hypocrisy between fighting Nazism abroad and tolerating racial terror at home.
    • The U.S. government used cultural diplomacy abroad, which affected Dunham’s reception domestically when Southland critiqued U.S. society.
  • Dunham’s prologue and statements foreground the work as a call for conscience and protest through art, not merely a depiction of historical events.
  • The work’s core argument: art can be a healing force and a catalyst for political and social change by making audiences confront the brutal realities of racial violence.

The Scenes: Structure, Imagery, and Dramaturgy

  • Southland employs a two-scene structure in the Chilean premiere, with a clear dramaturgical arc:
    • Scene 1: A plantation-magnolia tableau and a love story between Lucy and Richard within a historical Southern plantation frame.
    • Scene 2: The Basin Street Blues section set on a street where color, creed, or economic status relegates people to daily deprivations; a funeral cortège bearing the lynched man’s body passes through a smoky café.
  • Scene 1 details:
    • The magnolia tree is the centerpiece of the set, designed by John Pratt (Dunham’s husband). The tree helps juxtapose nostalgia with the brutal history of the South.
    • The antebellum mansion at the stage’s entrance; songs like Swanee River and Carry Me Back to Old Virginny contrast with spirituals Steal Away and Dry Bones, creating a tension between mythic nostalgia and real terror.
    • Lucy and Richard’s tender pas de deux culminates with Richard lifted toward a magnolia blossom, blending dramatic mime with movement (described as a mix of mime and motion).
    • A Love Scene script (written in Southern dialect) was drafted to guide rehearsal; the dialogue appears as stage directions within a detailed scenario. Characters include Lucy and Richard; the white couple Julie and Lenwood appear later as a foil to the plantation setting.
    • The scene integrates established Dunham repertory elements with new dramatic choreography, creating a seamless blend of historical “facts” and dancers’ biographies.
    • The Love Scene script uses the actual dancer names (e.g., Lucy = Lucille Ellis; Richard = Ricardo Avalos).
    • The Love Scene was reinterpreted from script to action during rehearsals; dialogue was replaced with motivated movement.
    • Julie (the white dancer in the company) and Lenwood (her partner) perform a sequence that exposes racial tensions; Julie’s assault by Lenwood serves as a catalyst for later racial violence.
  • Scene 2 details:
    • The Basin Street Blues opening sets the scene in a neighborhood where daily deprivations are masked by cynicism and commercial amusements.
    • The funeral cortège bears the body of the lynched man; Lucy’s arms wrap around the bass singer as the crowd’s energy shifts to mournful motion.
    • Visual motifs of chance and fate appear: cards falling from a gambler’s hand, a crying woman, and couples engaging in disjointed, trance-like dancing with the blind beggar who becomes the only character who “sees” the underlying truth.
    • The blind beggar embodies the true human tragedy, perceiving the systemic cruelty that others cannot name; he leaves to seek answers that humanity seeks in the face of repression.
  • The turning point of Scene 2:
    • A white couple (Julie and Lenwood) enter after the magnolia scene; the assault and ensuing lynching are staged through a dramatized accusation of rape by Julie, who points to an imaginary crowd wielding a lynching mob.
    • Julie’s manipulation of the crowd (an imagined lynching) is performed as a habanera sequence; she undoes her blouse and uses hair as a visual symbol, ultimately inciting the mob to burn Richard.
    • The lynching sequence culminates with Richard’s body swinging from the magnolia tree; Julie is drawn into confronting the consequences of her lie as she sees the disfigured body, triggering deep internal conflict.
    • Lucy’s mournful adagio solo follows, with backspiraling descents to the floor and a ritual of mourning; she eventually clings to Claudia McNeil as the final chorus of mourning sings the text of Strange Fruit.
  • The climactic piece is the recitation of the song Strange Fruit within the final moments, reinforcing the pervasiveness of racial violence and its haunting memory in American life.
  • Rehearsal methodology:
    • Dunham employed a collaborative process: dancers rehearse onstage while Dino di Stefano (the score composer) works at the piano; new scenes are created by blending existing Dunham repertory with new dramatic choreography.
    • The production employed a method that allowed dancers to internalize the material by encoding historical “facts” and personal biographies into performance, a concept later described as Vèvè Clark’s notion of "method dancing".
  • Notable performers and staging choices:
    • The white role Julie was played by Julie Robinson (the only white dancer in the company), with Lenwood Morris as her partner, using color-coded makeup to convey whiteness.
    • The company worked to align on-stage identities (Lucy = Lucille Ellis; Richard = Ricardo Avalos) to reflect real dancer biographies and foster authentic embodiment of historical experiences.
    • The production used a mix of company dances and patting juba rhythms from earlier repertory to anchor the plantation suite.
  • The evolving script vs. staging:
    • The original dialogue was written in Southern dialect and later replaced by action and choreographic intent; the character names were tied to the performing dancers.
    • The scene’s dramaturgy blends historical fact with fiction and uses choreographic action to convey social truth rather than merely relying on spoken text.

The Making of a Protest Dance: Process, Innovation, and Symbolism

  • Commission and premiere:
    • Commissioned by the Symphony of Chile; Santiago premiere set for January 1951; rehearsed in late 1950 in Buenos Aires.
    • The score was by Dino di Stefano, a Jesuit priest, arranged for orchestra and incorporating spirituals, blues, and American popular songs.
    • The set centerpiece, a magnolia tree, symbolized the warmth of the American South but carried a dark underside (dug into the Southland’s blood and shame): Dunham described it as a space where the “deep stain, a mark of blood and shame” mingles with perfume.
  • Design and dramaturgy:
    • The set begins with the antebellum mansion, moving to the magnolia tree and plantation dances, and then to a love scene followed by a brutal white-on-black confrontation.
    • The choreography blends mime and movement to create a seamless transition from personal romance to social violence.
    • Jean Pratt (Dunham’s husband) designed the set; the central magnolia tree is the visual anchor of the ballet’s critique of Southern life.
  • Script and dramaturgical method:
    • Dunham wrote a detailed scenario and working script with Southern dialect and stage directions; the dialogue was used for rehearsal but replaced by action as scenes evolved.
    • The characters Lucy and Richard were named after the dancers playing them, cementing a personal connection between performance and dancer biography.
  • The “method dancing” approach:
    • A process where existing Dunham repertory pieces (plantation dances, jubas, and other historical numbers) were integrated into the new dramatic framework, allowing dancers to internalize the historical material through formal movement.
    • This approach enabled a full embodiment of the play’s themes, creating a “world” in which the audience could understand the social truth behind the dance.
  • The artistic aim:
    • Southland sought to present a truth-telling performance rather than a detached historical tableau. It used dance to reveal pain, courage, and the possibility of transformation through collective action.
  • The text’s ethical and aesthetic stakes:
    • The work is a fusion of aesthetics and politics: it uses powerful, often visceral, scenes to provoke critical reflection about racism, violence, and the possibility of communal healing through protest.

Public Response: Reactions, Reviews, and Political Pressure

  • Immediate reaction at the Santiago premiere (January 1951):
    • Some audience members wept; others in the diplomatic corps sat rigid and unsettled.
    • The press coverage included a stark review that Dunham would later describe as a singular response that she would receive publicly in Santiago.
    • A Communist-influenced press coverage in Chile warned of potential withdrawal of newsprint if Southland received critical treatment.
  • The embassy’s pressure and the climate of fear:
    • The U.S. embassy in Chile, led by Claude G. Bowers, displayed paranoia about Southland’s political implications during a McCarthy-era context; there were internal warnings and threats to cast Southland as a subversive act.
    • Dunham’s company experienced a chilling suppression: within days of the premiere, Southland faced pressure to remove the lynching scene and a broader silencing of press coverage.
    • The embassy’s intimidation extended to other venues (Buenos Aires) and to Eva Perón’s event season in 1951, where Southland was not performed.
  • Paris premiere (1953) and critical reception:
    • Southland opened at the Palais de Chaillot on 9 January 1953.
    • Critical reception in Paris was mixed and ideologically polarized:
    • L’Humanité praised the ballet for its expressive power and its contribution to emancipating Black people by rising against racist violence.
    • Le Monde criticized Dunham for changing from her earlier anthropological image and questioned whether she remained an authentic “anthropologist.”
    • The Paris opening was emotionally exhausting for Dunham; she described critics’ responses as a repetitive malfunctioning mechanism, oscillating between praise and accusations of cerebralism or betrayal of racial origins.
  • Internal company dynamics and artistic tensions:
    • Some company members argued that Southland demanded too much emotionally and could threaten the company’s safety and reputation; others believed its impact outweighed the risks.
    • White dancer Julie Robinson Belafonte and others faced intense internal conflicts around performing the role of the white character and the word nigger in the choreography, testing color prejudices and intra-company sensitivities.
    • The process forced the company to confront colorism within itself, including hierarchies of lighter/darker dancers and the ethical implications of performing a white-trash role in a historically racist narrative.
  • The aftermath in South America and the United States:
    • Southland did not resume in Santiago after Paris; the embassy’s silence followed the Paris performance, and the company faced a period of under-support and financial pressure.
    • In Argentina and other parts of South America, Southland’s reception fluctuated, but the work’s reputation as a bold protest piece persisted in scholarly and artistic discourse.

The Aftermath: State Department, Funding, and International Reception

  • State Department dynamics and cultural diplomacy:
    • Although Dunham was not formally called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, she faced state-sanctioned consequences—she was repeatedly denied official representation by the U.S. State Department for many years.
    • In the mid-1950s, the State Department started sponsoring other U.S. dance companies for overseas tours (e.g., José Limón in 1954) while Dunham’s company did not receive equivalent support, despite similar or greater artistic significance.
    • Instances of deliberate scheduling and invitation manipulation occurred (e.g., Limón’s premiere on the same evening as Dunham’s in Montevideo; Dunham not invited to a Harlem- or embassy-hosted event in Greece that could have resulted in losses for her company).
  • Financial crisis and lawsuits:
    • By 1955, Dunham faced severe financial strain in San Francisco, longing for government support; she wrote about the risk of annihilation and considered a lawsuit against landlords who had discriminated against her interracial partnership.
    • She pursued legal action against landlords who reneged on rental agreements after discovering the interracial nature of herself and Pratt; this reflected ongoing racial discrimination in housing as part of Dunham’s larger fight against oppression.
  • International restrictions and refusals:
    • In 1956, a Chinese Opera invitation opened doors for cultural exchange, but the U.S. embassy blocked Dunham’s participation unless she surrendered her passport and paid heavy fines, signaling an explicit political motive to curb the presence of a Black-led company in China.
    • The embassy’s stance aimed to limit the cultural prestige of a Black dance company abroad and to prevent it from legitimizing Black excellence in international contexts.
  • Sixties era and legacy:
    • The State Department’s inconsistencies, indifference to Dunham’s work, and allegations of secret FBI scrutiny contributed to a sense of being blackballed by the U.S. government.
    • Despite some support in Europe and among some artists (Beatty, Ailey, Pomare, and others cited as inheritors of Dunham’s protest aesthetics), Dunham’s company ultimately dissolved in 1965 after its final Apollo Theatre performance in New York.
  • Overall impact on cultural diplomacy:
    • Southland’s international controversy highlighted conflicts between American ideals of freedom of speech and anti-lynching advocacy versus Cold War political pressures and the politics of cultural diplomacy.
    • The work helped catalyze a later wave of protest-oriented Black dance and performance in the 1950s and 1960s, influencing generations of Black choreographers and performers who used dance to critique racial violence and to affirm Black humanity.

Protest as Identity Formation: Healing, Dissent, and Ethical Implications

  • Southland is framed as an act of protest that also serves as an identity-formation process for the dancers involved:
    • For the performers, engaging with Southland required confronting their own color biases, fears, and the social costs of challenging racial hierarchies.
    • The choreography demanded that dancers transform personal emotion and collective trauma into a shared performance that could educate, mobilize, and move audiences.
  • Healing through art:
    • Dunham argued that dance is a healing mechanism as well as a political act; the work’s “fiction” becomes a healing agent that helps confront brutal social realities and catalyze social change.
    • The dancers themselves described Southland as the beginning of knowing the human quality of life and the value of life itself; it forced them to confront fear and to find solidarity in the face of oppression.
  • Ethical implications:
    • Engaging with the lynching narrative required grappling with the moral responsibility of representing violence in performance, especially in a cross-cultural and international context where political pressures could threaten performers’ safety.
    • The use of the “n-word” in the work and the decision to stage Julie’s accusation of rape tested the boundaries of artistic responsibility and the ethics of representation in the service of political critique.
  • Legacy and influence on later protest art:
    • Southland prefigured and inspired a later generation of protest performances by Black choreographers (e.g., Talley Beatty, Donald McKayle, Eleo Pomare, Alvin Ailey) whose works addressed civil rights, racial violence, and self-definition.
    • Dunham’s conviction that artistic daring might require risking one’s position to advance a larger moral point remained a guiding principle for these artists.
  • Final reflections from the artist:
    • Dunham’s letter to Berenson (1953) emphasizes personal innocence about Southland’s charges and her belief that it did more good for America’s international image than its critics may admit.
    • She maintained that the act of creating and performing Southland was essential to her well-being and to the dancers’ moral and artistic development, even as the company faced suppression and financial hardship.
  • Key quotes and ideas:
    • "Dancing is a healing process as well as a political act" (as cited in the context of Southland’s dual purpose).
    • "Your daring has to be backed up with a willingness to lose that point" – a philosophy Dunham attributed to the need to push for meaningful changes even at personal risk.
    • The argument that protest in art can reveal deeper truths about humanity and democracy, and that art can reveal the contradiction between American ideals and the reality of racial violence.

Notable Names, Dates, and References (contextual anchors)

  • People:
    • Katherine Dunham – choreographer, dancer, and activist; creator of Southland and its dramaturgical framework.
    • Lucy Ellis (Lucille Ellis) – dancer who played Lucy; described the process and emotional impact of Southland.
    • Richard (Ricardo Avalos) – dancer who played Richard; his character’s lynching was a catalytic event within the piece.
    • Julie Robinson Belafonte – the white dancer portraying Julie; her performance involved a controversial articulation of racial violence and its consequences.
    • Lenwood Morris – played Lenwood; involved in the couple’s dynamic within the plantation scene.
    • Claudia McNeil – sang the Strange Fruit text as part of the final mourning sequence.
    • Dino di Stefano – composer who provided the score, blending spirituals, blues, and American songs.
    • John Pratt – Dunham’s husband and designer of the set; conceived the magnolia-tree centerpiece.
  • Key historical events and dates:
    • January 1951 – Southland premieres in Santiago, Chile.
    • 1940 – Dunham’s Broadway breakthrough with Cabin in the Sky.
    • 1944–1946 – Postwar period, Jim Crow still pervasive; notable lynchings include: the Suwannee River lynching in 1944 (a fifteen-year-old Black boy) and the Monroe, Georgia quadruple killing in 1946.
    • 1936–1946 – Reports of 43 lynchings during this period (the Tuskegee Institute data cited); many cases went unprosecuted (e.g., 1943-44 timeframe).
    • 1949–1950 – HUAC’s continuing investigations and McCarthy-era pressures; the national climate of suspicion of dissent.
    • 1951 – McCarthy-era politics influence Southland’s tour and reception in South America.
    • 1953 – Paris premiere; mixed critical reception; Le Monde and L’Humanité commentary; Berenson critique and Dunham’s defense.
    • 1954–1956 – State Department cultural diplomacy debates; competing sponsorships and political pressures; Limón’s company as State Department-supported touring company in 1954; Dunham denied equivalent support.
    • 1955–1956 – San Francisco financial crisis; Dunham’s legal actions against landlords; China invitation and embassy-driven obstacles.
    • 1965 – Katherine Dunham Dance Company’s final performance at the Apollo Theatre in New York; Southland’s influence acknowledged by later choreographers and scholars.

Notes and References (contextual scaffolding)

  • Hill, Constance Valis. Katherine Dunham’s Southland: Protest in the Face of Repression. Dance Research Journal (Fall 1994): 1-10. Reprinted in Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance, edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz.
  • The article discusses Southland as a protest piece that predates and informs later civil rights-era performance traditions, while also detailing the risks and costs borne by Dunham and her company as they navigated race, politics, and international diplomacy.
  • The work’s material includes direct quotes from Dunham’s program notes and interviews, as cited in the Notes section of the article (Kaiso!, Clark & Wilkerson; interviews with Dunham, 1993).
  • The broader historical anchors include the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaigns, the Emmett Till case (1955), and the McCarthy era retrenchments that shaped American cultural diplomacy and foreign policy in the 1950s.