Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston (review)

Anthea Kraut and Zora Neale Hurston have been living together for most of the new millennium. Looking over the publishing information at the front of Kraut's book—a reworking of her doctoral dissertation—informs us that portions of chapters appeared in previous journals and anthologies as early as 2001. Dance researchers adhere to habits of meticulous research and detailed detective work in completing our tasks. We have to: most scholars—not to mention lay people—have little sense of what we do or how dance research (except dance anthropology) could be of interest or relevance to other disciplines. In other words, we lack credibility. To compensate, dance scholarship has become one of the most thoroughly researched interdisciplinary pursuits of our era, and dance scholars take up residence with their topics. This work is no exception.

With admirable dexterity of language and a minimum of jargon, Kraut opens the door and invites us in to a world of subtle readings and intertextual implications that surround this little-known piece of American cultural history and performance politics. Who knew that the illustrious Hurston was an accomplished dancer, choreographer, and producer of traditional dances in staged concert versions? And who would surmise that this information, as analyzed and deconstructed by Kraut, could resonate with as much meaning for literature, gender studies, and history scholars as for those of us in performance studies?

Utilizing a theory of invisibilization, "… to borrow Brenda Dixon Gottschild's term for the systematic omission of the Africanist influences on American performance practices," (x), Kraut paints a landscape fraught with the assumptions of white privilege that placed Hurston in the "damned if we do, damned if we don't" trap that too often straitjackets Africanist creative endeavor. One example: Hurston's efforts to place traditional Caribbean and African American dances on the American concert stage as an antidote to stereotypical interpretations are, themselves, received as reinforcements of the stereotype.

In Chapters 3 and 4 Kraut zeroes in on "The Great Day," Hurston's most elaborate folk (or traditional) revue, discussing in detail the backstory in creating this work and the issues arising in performing "authenticity." Indeed, authenticity and essentialist performance politics as played out in black and white America in the 1930s—particularly the left-leaning but Eurocentric New York concert dance milieu—are keynotes of this work. In Chapter 6, "Black Authenticity, White Artistry," the interactions that Hurston engaged in with Doris Humphrey, Ruth St. Denis, Mura Dehn, Helen Tamiris, Irene Castle, and theater director Irene Lewisohn are subjected to Kraut's scrutiny to scope out the ways that racialized relations affected the depth and quality of these interactions, largely at Hurston's expense.

Throughout Kraut managed to unearth amazing print documentation (newspaper reviews and articles, personal letters and accounts) to tell this story. And the extraordinary visuals belong in the "a picture is worth a thousand words" category, with dance as a microcosm for the racialism that pervaded society as a whole.