Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance by Brenda Dixon Gottschild (review)

February 2014 brought with it the festive spirit of one world now commonplace for any Olympic season. The idea that we can, and will, unite through our diversity was fostered through stories of athletes who work tirelessly to earn the chance to represent their countries on the world stage. Coincidentally, it was also during this month that the United States celebrated “Black History Month”—a time to remember that all citizens of a country should be recognized for outstanding efforts both past and present. Businesses, advertisers, and television pick up on this, and their messages remind us of extraordinary contributions. Even driving through a Wells Fargo ATM to hastily complete a transaction, I was greeted by a screen that read, “Wells Fargo Honors Black History, which is American History.” Something about reading those words on the bank machine seemed to offer more substance than the fun-filled community bonding presented by the commercials for the Winter Olympics, and in so doing prompts questions about approach, tactic, and the power of recognition through the written word. Granted these messages are nothing new, but how they are approached, delivered, received, and reiterated is still worthy of scrutiny—making it imperative to ask how accomplishments in a common history can be acknowledged without reifying separation. In what ways might such recognition be palpably more genuine? Can re-placing slowly re-write? What can dance do to move toward a post-race climate, and is that the model that is optimal, or is there another way to more effectively problematize American society’s consideration of race?

Despite the somewhat contrived attempts at cultivating a collective citizenry heretofore shared, there are certainly many whose faithful treatments have had lasting impact. It is in this spirit that it feels appropriate to consider Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s history of Joan Myers Brown in Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina. To those well-versed in dance studies, Dixon Gottschild needs no introduction; her ideas are seminal, and her writing has truly shaped the course of the discipline. Whether writing about the Balanchine ballerina (1996) or ballroom dancers Harold Norton and Margot Webb (2000), as a scholar and performer, Dixon Gottschild has consistently viewed histories as multilayered and interdependent. Her analysis of Joan Myers Brown (or “JB” as she is referred to in the monograph for both clarity and as a term of informality¹) is no different, as it aims to secure a place in canonical dance history for an African American ballerina who found herself in a discipline with little reverence for black dancers.

Through Myers Brown’s story, other prominent African American dancers who served as her mentors and/or teachers—for instance, Essie Marie Dorsey, Sydney King, and Marion Cuyjet—are also highlighted; their unique stories collectively inspired Myers Brown to invest her life in dance. Nonetheless, questions pervade, namely, why did Myers Brown and other African American women want careers in a dance form that to many seems elitist and has historically remained segregated? According to Dixon Gottschild, for Myers Brown, ballet was much more than the scope of its technical vocabulary; when understood in this way, instead of as disconnected steps, its potency and potential markedly shift. Dixon Gottschild claims that for the “black ballerinas in this book, the ballet ideal existed in partnership with black-based dance forms, and jazz, tap, and African-based—then called ‘interpretive’— dance were equally valued experiences” (128). With this in mind, further inquiry about the state of ballet today, and its practitioners, teachers, mentors, and pedagogy is initiated. Specifically, was the idea of ballet as more than a defined vocabulary particular to African American ballerinas of Myers Brown’s generation? Do ballerinas in the twenty-first century see the art as a “partnership”? Does the training...