Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches

18. Donald McKayle, Jazz Dance Then and Now

18 Donald McKayle, Jazz Dance Then and Now Bob Boross Many of the pioneers of theatrical jazz dance are still with us, making it imperative for their firsthand experiences and recollections of the evolution of theatrical jazz dance to be recorded. One such person is dancer/choreographer Donald McKayle. Known for his classic modern dance works like Rainbow Round My Shoulder and Games, he also worked with many of the pioneers of theatrical jazz dance as it was being formulated. His piece District Storyville made use of vernacular jazz movements in retelling the beginnings of jazz music in New Orleans. I was able to interview McKayle when he was in residence with the Youth Performing Arts School in Louisville, Kentucky, and this is his story of the beginnings of theatrical jazz. I started in the middle 1940s to take classes, and there was no jazz dancing as such being taught. There were people teaching tap—in Harlem especially— Norma Miller, Mary Bruce—and she had kids who could tap and do wonderful things. There were these lines of girls, basically, and there were groups of tap dancers. So those were the first kinds of lessons that would presage what we have today.1 McKayle noted that in the 1940s, there were classes in ballet, tap, acrobatics, modern, and ethnic dance, but no jazz classes to speak of. His early training came at the New Dance Group studio, at that time located on 59th between Madison and 5th Avenue in New York City. There were classes in modern dance with Jean Erdman and Sophie Maslow, and within a one-block radius 125 Figure 18.1. Donald McKayle. Photo courtesy of the Donald McKayle Archives at UC Irvine. were classes in Indian dance and flamenco and the School of American Ballet . Balanchine was starting all of his work, which led to the founding of Ballet Society and finally the New York City Ballet. McKayle’s first exposure to theatrical jazz dance was in nightclubs and in a concert organized by New York Times dance critic John Martin. Jack Cole was performing in nightclubs with Evelyn and Beatrice Kraft, presenting authentic East Indian dances that eventually he merged with the swing beat of the Lindy. He remembers the Martin concert as a benefit for the Spanish Refugee Appeal in the late 1940s at the Ziegfeld Theatre. “And it had Ethel and George Martin, Bob Alexander, Carol Haney—and they did ‘Sing, Sing, Sing.’ It was fabulous. Whoa, what is this?” he exclaimed at this new form of jazz-inspired movement. The Lindy was very important to the Cole style and feel. “Jack had lots of sequences based on the Lindy, because every time you auditioned for him, 126 · Bob Boross you had to do a lot of footwork. Which was based on the music and the shifting and partnering, but taken solely without a partner. I think he used that and just took it somewhere else.” Along with most who rubbed shoulders with Cole, McKayle remembers him with fear as well as reverence. “Jack would put you through it, and you had to look like you could survive. And if you didn’t survive, he would just run right over you. He was a scary guy!” Another modern dancer who ventured into early theatrical jazz was choreographer Daniel Nagrin. He was assistant and then husband to choreographer Helen Tamiris, and he added a theatricality to modern dance. When I first worked with Nagrin, it was the end of the 1940s into the 1950s. He was assisting Helen and doing his own personal choreography. And so he developed things like Strange Hero, with the Stan Kenton music, and it was all about the gangster as a hero in Hollywood. And it was a wonderfully theatrical dance, absolutely. And because he had this wonderful theatrical quality, he did not have a technique that was purely modern dance. It was another early use of jazz dance in a concert setting. In the 1950s, choreographer Katherine Dunham had a school in New York City, but as she was often on the road, classes were taken over by teacher Syvilla Fort. “She dealt with the blues, swing, things like that, and there were, of course, dances of the Caribbean.” But McKayle feels that the Dunham school training was not ideally suited for the dance demands of Broadway. “A lot of people who were on Broadway went...