Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA), installed during the 1930s as a way to provide relief from the Great Depression, hired many people from the arts. Within the WPA, a stated goal was to build up the power of those disenfranchised, including African Americans, at a time when segregation was synonymous with racial inequities, and political exclusion of African Americans was for all practical purposes, an apartheid state. One program within the WPA was the Federal Dance Theatre, headed by Helen Tamiris. While the program confronted a variety of prominent social issues of the post depression era, I am most interested in what the primarily white leadership of the Federal Dance Theatre sought to accomplish for the black community, and to offer a critical perspective on some of the failures and successful alliances generated from theatrical dance performances. By providing African Americans with a platform to recognize historical injustices, How Long Brethren attempted to provide a space for community development and realization of identity. However, through this attempt to provide a space for community development, the performance simultaneously reinscribed a silent constituency for American political life that was both reflective of the times, and also, I argue, impactful as a setback for black political power in years to come.

By looking at Tamiris’s How Long Brethren, one can see that whiteness continued to dominate social and political life. While this performance was progressive in its confrontation with sensitive topics regarding African American oppression, the cast consisted of solely white, female dancers. This idea that white dancers were cast to protest racism against African Americans is symbolic of the proliferation of white influence in nearly all aspects of society. This encompasses W.E.B DuBois’s theory that “the mass of men, even of the more intelligent men, not only knew little about each other but less about the action of men in groups and the technique of industry in general. They could only apply universal suffrage, therefore, to the things they knew or knew partially” (DuBois, Of The Ruling of Men). Ultimately, in order to perceive others as being worthy of suffrage and equal treatment, human nature requires an understanding of those individuals' way of life. While African Americans had technically been granted suffrage by the 1930s, this brings into question the extent to which white Americans were willing to understand and question the continuously oppressive conditions of African Americans. Despite their right to vote, African Americans were still faced with Jim Crow Laws, the KKK, and other forces of discrimination.

As stated by DuBois, “Great as are our human differences and capabilities there is not the slightest scientific reason for assuming that a given human being of any race or sex cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a reasonable chance.” This quote is critical when analyzing How Long, Brethren as a democratic paradox. That is, in attempting to demonstrate the struggles of an underrepresented group, Tamiris ultimately misrepresents and undermines the horrific reality of an African American’s experience in this country. The first step in attaining greater equality of opportunity and expression is by exposing faults in society. However, even more important than the reveal of these faults is that those subject to them are granted expression of their experiences.

In order to establish a framework for thinking through black political life in the early 20th century, I plan to look primarily at DuBois’ idea of democracy. One aspect of DuBois’s message revolves around an understanding and acceptance of individuals different from yourself. By not doing so, society will fall victim to excluding “the ignorant, the inexperienced, the guarded, and the unwilling” (DuBois, Of The Ruling of Men) Because nobody can ever know an individual better than that individual them self, society interferes with democracy by attempting to interpret and speak for others. The reactions to the content of this dance is something I plan to thoroughly analyze. In addition, I will be considering the interactions between the actors and the audience within a performance, as a performance in itself. I want to dig deep into the concept of spect-actors by Augosto Boal, which is discussed and analyzed by Diana Taylor. The idea that “performance asks spectators to do something, even if that something is doing nothing” (Taylor, 86) is why I plan on devoting much research to examining the historical period in which the Federal Dance Theatre took place. Democracy is centered around individuality and self development, which to a certain extent are bolstered in How Long Brethren.

In Susan Manning’s Black Voices, White Bodies: The Performance of Race and Gender in “How Long Brethren”, Manning cites Tamiris’s How Long Brethren as having received “more critical acclaim and a longer run” than all other Federal Dance Theatre works in New York City. Examining why this may be, and considering how one can measure the success of a production are essential to my research. A notable outcome of How Long Brethren was the unique audience it attracted. Straying from the status quo, this production attracted flocks of viewers unfamiliar with dance culture. The fact that all ticket sales for How Long Brethren were discounted opened it up to a more diverse audience (Manning, 25). This not only meant ethnic and economic diversity, but political diversity as well. The novelty of a diverse audience meant varied responses to the way in which women were portrayed. For those accustomed to modern dance of the 1930’s, it came as a shock to witness women performing not in relation to men. Instead, How Long Brethren worked as “a vehicle for choreographic metaphors of social progress” (Manning, 25) as it was choreographed by a woman, for an all female cast to perform. While, this unity of women was distinct and progressive for the 1930’s, I believe it to have overshadowed the intended topic of confrontation, discrimination against African Americans.

As a dedicated leftist, Tamiris was committed to confronting issues of social justice. How Long Brethren allowed her the opportunity to do so on a public platform, the theatre. In attempt to express the conditions of the African American experience in America, Tamiris collaborated with the Negro Chorus and made African American work songs the driving force of the dancers’ movement (Manning, 26). The seven songs throughout the piece were all taken from Lawrence Gellert’s Negro Songs of Protest, all of which he collected during his travels throughout the South. Of the many works within the Federal Theatre Project, Tamiris made How Long Brethren distinct through her decision to collaborate with the Negro Chorus. Bringing black and white performers together on stage was unusual for the time period. However, I believe that the nature in which the black singers were set apart from the dance production on the far side of the stage, demonstrated the white out culture of America.

Given the subject matter of How Long Brethren, I find it ironic that Tamiris cast white dancers to protest racism against African Americans. Considering her leftist political beliefs, one would expect her to embrace the display of black bodies on stage in order to confront discrimination in the most realistic and tangible form possible. By incorporating African Americans into the performance solely through their voices, I feel that Tamiris conveyed the idea that white society gets recognition even when there exists underlying efforts from the black community.

While black voices carry the entire performance, the attention still remains on the white dancers. The irony of white dancers demonstrating injustices within the black community is something only recent scholars have grappled with. In Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City 1928-2942, Ellen Graff grapples with some potential explanations for Tamiris’s casting decisions. Given that the dance took place amidst the Popular Front, the time period is thought to have played a critical role. Graff additionally points to the fact that the majority of the dancers, including Tamiris herself, were first generation American Jews. In this sense, Tamiris may have felt connected to the oppression and racism experienced by African Americans. Graff expresses how while white dancers may not have experienced dancing with African Americans, “many white dancers identified deeply with the Negro struggle, seeing in it a parallel to the entire contry’s economic struggle” (Graff, 96). Coming out of the Great Depression, African American protest songs were thought to parallel white dancers’ “determination to take control of their economic lives” (Graff, 96).

In response to Graff’s arguments, Manning points out how to a certain extent, How Long Brethren is a continuance of the practice of blackface performance (Manning, 31). While performances like How Long Brethren may have been a breakthrough for the role of women in society, I agree with Manning in that this cannot legitimize “the performance of the white female body as high art partly through white dancers’ metaphorical blackface” (Manning, 27). Infact, I believe How Long Brethren to be evidence of how deeply ingrained white out culture was, and in some cases continues to be, in America. Throughout history, white bodies have spearheaded the circulation of ideas, and taken credit for innovation and progress.

Manning addresses another potential reason for Tamiris deciding on an all white cast by pointing to Margaret Lloyd’s Christian Science Monitor. Lloyd defines How Long Brethren as being more than a call for African American equality, but “a call to end social injustice more generally” (Manning, 33). By choreographing for an all white cast, Tamiris may have felt that the message she was aiming to convey would be more applicable and relatable to a wider audience. Lloyd additionally points out that Tamiris’s upbringing in an impoverished family living in lower New York may have given her a sense of sympathy towards African Americans (Manning, 33). The lack of confusion and questioning in response to Tamiris’s all white cast speaks to the normalcy of Euro-American bodies controlling the messages and ideals put out into society. Manning points out that while many people in the 1930s took note of the leftist politics of How Long Brethren, they failed to recognize its “metaphorical minstrelsy” (Manning, 28) of the piece. Because it wasn't questioned why white women were playing the role of black people, it came to be viewed as conventional and insignificant.

While many reviewers identified the leftist politics of How Long Brethren, very few discussed the irony in white dancers protesting discrimination against African Americans. Beginning in the 19th Century, blackface minstrelsy became a popular form of entertainment (Manning, 37). White performers could essentially represent other cultures however they see fit, while these non-white groups dealt with living in a world where their identity was molded and manipulated by white performance. While Tamiris’s performance did not feature blackface minstrelsy, Manning describes it as containing “metaphorical minstrelsy” (Manning, 37). However, she points to a much deeper meaning for Tamiris taking up this practice. One idea Manning brings up is that by casting all white, female dancers, Tamiris was able to “legitimize their challenge to traditional images of the female dancer” (Manning, 37). Unlike previous works which displayed women in an erotic and sexual form, Tamiris used the subject matter of African American discrimination to reconstruct what it means to be a female performer. Additionally, Manning describes how an all white cast may have signified Tamiris’s displayal of “social legitimacy on the immigrant, working-class, Jewish body” (Manning, 38). While the Negro Songs of Protest lent authenticity to the piece, the casting of white dancers extended the storyline beyond that of the African American experience (Manning, 39).

The two challengers of Tamiris’s white cast, Baltimore’s Afro American and Pittsburgh’s Courier, made use of photo spreads to express their aggravation. In the Baltimore Afro American, a photo of Eva Jessye’s black choir was placed over the cast of How Long Brethren. The caption attached to the photo spread pointed to the “contrasting interpretations” of African Americans versus the How Long Brethren cast of African American oppression (Manning, 39). The image directly addresses the unsatisfactory “substitution of the white female dancer for the black subject” (Manning, 39). Featuring a photograph of Tamiris’s dancers bent over and posing, the Pittsburgh Courier sought to convey a similar message. In the caption, the writer mocks the Dance Magazine award, which had given How Long Brethren the title of “best group choreography”, by replacing it with “best color choreography” (Manning, 40). They additionally took the only image of the Federal Theatre Negro Choir and captioned it: “The cast is all white with the exception of a Negro chorus directed by Bob Moman which will supply the vocal interpolations when the dances are offered to Harlemites next week” (Manning, 40). This article is criticizing Tamiris’s idea that Euro Americans could empathize with and represent black experience. Outside of the black press, one of the only sources to question the “racialized casting of Tamiris’s leftist masterpiece” (Manning, 40) was an anonymous audience member who responded to a survey being distributed throughout the first week of How Long Brethren playing at Nora Bayes Theatre asking, “Why not Negro dancers?” (Manning, 40).

As a citizen of the 21st Century, it may appear shocking that this question was not asked by nearly everyone that witnessed the performance. Manning suggests that one answer to this may be that the “Federal Theatre Project segregated its personnel'' (Manning, 40). However, there was no set in stone rule that accounted for this. In fact, it appears that this occurrence was nothing more than societal norms imprinting its way into the Federal Theatre Project. There were a few instances in which interracial casting occured. Manning includes the example of African American Add Bates, who performed with Charles Weldman’s company. Bates played the role of the General in Candide, which shared a program with How Long Brethren (Manning, 41). One of the dancers in How Long Brethren, Fanya Geltman, actively attempted to recruit African American dancers into the Federal Dance Theatre (Manning, 41). Just two weeks before the first showing of How Long Brethren, a group of black dancers performed a “Negro Dance Evening” at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (Manning, 41). However, they performed only once, and their work based on Negro Songs of Protest would go on to be manipulated and misrepresented by Tamiris and the cast of How Long Brethren.

Taking place in the midst of the Popular Front, the political activism of the cast of How Long Brethren played a critical role in revealing the intentions behind the performance. The Popular Front consisted of working-class and middle-class parties in favor of democratic reforms. Many reviews of How Long Brethren focused more on the protests of the cast rather than the actual choreography (Manning, 34). One notable act of political activism was only two weeks into the run of How Long Brethren, the entire cast refused to leave the theatre overnight in order to protest proposed funding cuts to the Federal Theatre Project (Manning, 34). Many reviews compared the repetition of line formations throughout How Long Brethren with their continuous protests. The contrasting reviews of the performance provided direct evidence of the political divide in America at the time. Owen Burke compares the United States to the Soviet Union with regards to artistic patronage by claiming that “Dance isn’t going to exist as a private industry, and the dancer knows it...A dancer is entitled to be allowed to make a living at his own kind of work dancing, and he intends to do something about it” (Manning, 34). However, Henry Gilford expresses his support of the performance and the Federal Theatre Project as an entity in terms of grass-roots nationalism (Manning, 34). He enthusiastically expresses how “so much aware are dancers and audience that they have something worthwhile, something extremely important to the dance and the other arts, in the Federal Theatre, that they are taking no chances of its suddenly disappearing for some false economy that may originate in Washington, or elsewhere” (Manning, 35). Aside from their clear political differences, however, both contributions expose how much How Long Brethren embodied the political mindset of the Popular Front.

The requirement of the Federal Theatre Project that “ninety percent of federal Theatre funds should go toward labor costs, and only ten percent toward material costs” (Manning, 28), meant that How Long Brethren emphasized the embodied movement of the dancers more so than extravagant production elements. The labor that went into the piece mattered in terms of theatrical production. Whether that be as dancers, set designers, or technicians, the bodies indeed, at least fiscally, were considered the primary value of their work. With this in mind, it is understandable that Tamiris would employ a cast of twenty dancers, twenty singers, and a small orchestra (Manning, 28). There was none other than ramps and boxes to provide levels throughout the dance, and lighting was used to set the mood rather than props.

Due to the extensive number of dancers cast, the African American singers were placed far off to the side (Manning, 28). Once the production moved from the Nora Bayes Theatre to the 49th Street Theatre, the singers were moved to the orchestra pit (Manning, 28). I find this interesting in that the orchestra pit is at the level of the audience members, the polis, the demos. By placing the African American chorus at this level, it feels as if they are simply members of the audience observing a story about their own struggles. They are contributing to the storyline through their voices, but they are never in the spotlight. It took over two months for the Federal Negro Chorus to even have their individual names listed on the program, as the dancers had recieved from the beginning (Manning, 28).

While I believe that Tamiris’ decision to set each dance to a song taken directly from African American voices in the South, the stylistic decisions she made when choreographing detracted from the overall message. As expressed in Manning’s review of How Long Brethren, the song choices Tamiris made certainly reflected her leftist critique of racism against African Americans (Manning, 29). However, Tamiris manipulated certain aspects of the songs in a way that I believe downplayed the severity of discrimination in America. In the scene “Pickin’ Off de Cotton,” the white female dancers display the intense labor and injustices experienced by black cotton pickers. The dance consisted of much repetition, heavy breathing, and looks of exhaustion. Aside from the fact that the dancers were attempting to convey an action they had never suffered through or endured, Tamiris replaced the word “Nigger” with the word “Darkie” throughout the entire song. In order to genuinely address issues of racism and oppression in society, you must expose information and lyrics in their most primitive form. No gains or progress can be made through simplifications.

Through a close analysis of the second scene of How Long Brethren, “Upon de Mountain,” I detected the symbolic use of a line formation, along with contrasting colors, voice pitches, and body movement. The scene revolves around two groups of dancers. When the singing begins, there is a somber and uplifting tune playing simultaneously. Initially, it is only a group of four dancers dressed in brightly colored dresses huddled in the corner. Manning explains this group of four to be the scene of a mother comforting her three starving children. The way in which these dancers remain unified throughout the entirety of the scene, never leaving their small plot on the stage, parallels the difficulty of African Americans to find meaningful space in a world dominated by whiteness. However, despite the lack of space, they still manage to move collectively.

This ability to work together, even with limited opportunities and space, has and continues to be crucial for unifying the African American community. The way in which the plainly dressed dancers came on and ended unified represents the importance of community for African Americas when dealing with systematic oppression. Despite the high pitched, desperate singing that begins the scene, a transition occurs once the more plainly dressed dancers enter and pick up the pace of their movement.The music transforms into a low pitched, powerful rhythm, portraying a sense of strength in numbers. The plainly dressed dancers enter together in a line, separate for a little bit on stage, but then ultimately finish back together in a line. Manning associates the repetition of a line formation throughout How Long Brethren with protest (Manning, 30). The movement of the mother and her children seem to influence what the rest of the dancers do. I believe this to embody the idea of African Americans being united in protest through shared experiences, despite not everyone having the opportunity to protest in a public forum.

This concept of dance as a form of expression, protest and community overlaps heavily with ideas expressed throughout my dance class with Meyby Ugueto-Ponce. Throughout the three hour class, we worked through Afro-feminist philosophy/praxis, and Venezuela and the Caribbean, dance, religion, and literatures. During a particular exercise, the entire class was bound together in a clump, with all of our bodies touching. Everyone’s eyes were closed. All that we had was the feeling of each other's bodies. One of us would initiate a motion, and the rest would reciprocate. Meyby instructed us to “move like a machine”, that is, to move as if our bodies were all one. I felt that this exercise exemplified the ability of dance to foster a community, and allow for individuals to feel part of something common. Each dancer was reliant on everyone else to follow through with the movement.

Following the class, I got the opportunity to interview Meyby and learn more about her dance background. Meyby grew up “listening to musical all of the time.” Meybey’s aunt had a significant presence in her life growing up, and her aunt “loved to party.” Meyby described how her aunt took care of her entire family, as well as many people in her village. She was “a lady of the house, and everything she did was with music.” However, Meyby was initially terrified to dance. She explained how “it entered into my head that I didn’t know how to dance. I was scared to learn salsa.” She was scared because of her status as a black woman. She explained how “the system makes you think your hair is ugly and your nose is fat.” Meyby described how drastically different she felt from the rest of the students at her school because she was black. “I was dancing with Mestizos, and they thought they were better.” Dance has played a significant role in fostering a community in Meybey’s life. She is currently directing a group of women on the topic of women and slavery. They all know each other well due to dancing together for many years.

In order to better understand Tamiris’s work, it is important to understand the political atmosphere during this time period. Following the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt sought out to save America from the “dark realities of the moment” (Fishel, 111). Unlike any past president, he recognized the measure of the restoration to lie “in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit” (Fishel, 111). With this understanding, Roosevelt created the Work Progress Administration in hopes of providing work opportunities to the masses. From his radio fireside chats to his inaugural address in 1933, Roosevelt made a continued effort to appeal to the people. Fishel notes how “his own physical affliction and the way he bore it earned him deserved admiration and gave encouragement to those who had afflictions of their own, even a darker skin” (Fishel, 111). He presented himself in an approachable and personable manner. One of the president’s secretaries presented a list of letter salutations addressed to Roosevelt. The list included everything from “My Pal!’’ to “Dear humanitarian friend of the people” (Fishel, 111). With his “understanding of human exploitation and underprivileged” (Fishel, 111), Roosevelt was an attractive candidate for African Americans.

However, despite Roosevelt’s appeal to underprivileged citizens, he in fact did very little to aid African Americans. Fishel describes him as “more of a symbol than an activist in his own right” (Fishel, 112). When it came down to it, Roosevelt was in fact a strategic politician whose main objective was gaining political backing. An example of this is when Walter White of the NAACP attracted an audience through the support of Mrs. ELanor Roosevelt with the intention of pleading for Roosevelt’s support of the antilynching bill. However, FDR refused due to his need for Southern votes in Congress (Fishel, 112). Nevertheless, FDR managed to gain the support of African Americans during the 1936 election. Political rallies led by New Dealers, most notably African Methodist Episcopal Bishop, proliferated throughout New York City (Fishel, 112). FDR’s presidential victory essentially swayed the African American population from the Republican party to the Democratic party.

While Roosevelt’s ideals may have appeared beneficial to African Americans at the federal level, their effects at the local level were minimal. Most of the New Deal programs remained on very political grounds. The first New Deal Agency intended to assist the impoverished, Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), was largely impacted by racial discrimination (Fishel, 113). In Jacksonville, Florida, despite African American families on relief outnumbering white families three to one, the money was distributed based on the entire city population. This meant that “15,000 African American families received 45 per cent of the funds and 5,000 white families got 55 per cent” (Fishel, 113). Due to the industrial codes of the NRA, African American workers mostly “earned less money for equal time” and were “frozen out of skilled jobs” (Fishel, 114). Despite the continued efforts of African Americans such as lawyer John P. Davis to modify these policies, NRA officials defended the organization by explaining the “difficulty in bucking local customs, pointing out also that the NRA was responsible only for industrial workers” (Fishel, 114). The TVA and AAA were criticized for similar reasons. Noris, Tennessee, which has been established along with the TVA, was an all-white model town (Fishel, 114). The ways in which whites were given priority of skilled jobs and the labor crews were segregated demonstrated how the TVA essentially “aims to maintain the status quo” (Fishel, 115).

While African Americans were graduating college at a faster rate than the availability of professional opportunities, the 1930s marked a crucial time in which African American leaders were participating in government affairs more than ever before. Negroes were beginning to be employed as “architects, lawyers, engineers, economists, statisticians, interviewers” and more (Fishel, 115).

The president’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, played a critical role in influencing FDR’s decisions in favor of the African American community. In doing so, she alleviated some of the pressure off of her husband to confront issues of racism and discrimination throughout his presidency. However, certain aspects of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislative program had significant impacts on the African American community. After receiving motivation from Section 7a of NRA and from the Wagner Act, labor unions were strengthened. With this solid foundation, many labor unions confronted the issue of African American inequality. While there continued to be “craft and railway union prejudices” (FIshel, 117), A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters acted as a leading figure for African Americans.

The role of the Communists greatly impacted America’s outlook on African Americans. In the years leading up to 1935, Communist ideology “committed their followers to support a separate state for Negroes, the so-called Black Republic” (Fishel, 118). In the case of the Scottsboro boys, Communists accused the NAACP for the unsuccessful attempt to prove nine black boys innocent of rape (Fishel, 118). While the NAACP continued to work with Communist assistance, it remained cautious against close cooperation with them (Fishel, 118). However, African American organizations slowly found themselves largely dependent on Communists support. Groups such as The National Negro Congress began to lose sponsorship, and were thus forced to rely on Communists to maintain them (Fishel, 119). Over time, the NAACP found itself with “a base too narrow for its superstructure, and its bones creaked from inaction at the community level” (Fishel, 119).

The Harlem Riots of 1935 signified how the “sneers, impertinence, and personal opinions of smart-aleck investigators, supervisors and personnel directors” (Fishel, 120) would not be simply accepted by the black community any longer. The looting of food and clothing stores demonstrated how “the Negro had learned from the white how to use violence and lawlessness when order and the law were not sufficient” (Fishel, 120). As the 1930s came to a close, “the economy flourished as the industrial bastion of the embattled allies”, and polls showed proof of African Americans’ commitment to President Roosevelt and the New Deal effort. Aside from politics, the 1930s represented a decade of remarkable growth for the black community. This included everything from Jesse Own becoming an Olympic champion, to interracial conferences (Fishel, 121). Despite these progressions, however, the United States’ entrance into World War II exposed persisting inequality throughout the country. For example, soldiers continued to be segregated by race. In The Crisis, writers criticized the appointment of white officers to lead African American troops (Fishel, 121).

In response to the March on Washington Movement, which advocated for fair employment practices of African Americans, FDR issued the Executive Order 8802. This renowned decision created the FEPC, and brought about government intervention with employment discrimination (Fishel, 122). The movement of African Americans to Northern cities led to overcrowding, and more concentrated racism. The black community connected the Nazi ideology of Aryan supremacy to the American ideology of white supremacy (Fishel, 122).

Despite the continuous segregation, World War II marked an important milestone for African Americans in US history. The forced collaboration of citizens brought about by the war gave African Americans the opportunity to contribute to the war effort.

In Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City 1928-2942, Ellen Graff analyzes the ways in which 1930s dances associated with the Communist Party, like How Long Brethren, were extremely influential in developing “modern dance.” In a review of Stepping Left, Wendy Kozol points out the “struggle for legitimacy and dominance” experienced by competing visions of modern dance (Kozol, 282). Similarly to modern debates about the role of politics in the arts, Graff explains the 1930s to be a “critical period in the development of American dance” (Graff, 13). The unstable economy following the collapse of capitalism made room for immense political activism, as was demonstrated by Tamiris’s dancers. Graff explores how dance performances were common in “Communist Party pageants, union hall performances, and benefits to raise money for international causes like the Spanish Civil War” (Kozol, 283).

Graff’s exploration of dancers challenging the traditional distinctions between dancers and audience members demonstrates the attempt by radical dancers to dismantle barriers between “privileged art forms and political activism” (Kozol, 283). Dance was becoming less about perfected technique, and more about using dance “as a weapon in class struggle” (Kozol, 283). This meant dancers could utilize the stage as a platform to convey messages about social injustice and inequality. This shift towards political expression rather than technique came as a shock to audiences, and was often criticized as a form of agitprop. This created a major obstacle for dancers in the 1930s, as they were forced to decide how much to concern themselves with the “visual experience of dance” (Graff, 45). That is, would dancers aim to attract large audiences by appealing to the stereotypes of what modern dance “should” be, or do they dance for the sake of conveying their message? Ultimately, dancers were compelled to hede to the expectations of their viewers, and shift away from “kinesthetic and experimental” dance (Graff, 45). While still working collaboratively, dancers grappled with “how to dance the oppression of the working class, the exploitation by a capitalist society, the threat of facism, the horrors of racism, yet not depend on mimetic action?” (Graff, 60). Graff explains how dancers in the 1930s were engaged in a “dialogic negotiation between aesthetic and political imperatives” (Kozol, 284). Anti-communist incetives during and following the Cold War worked to silence on politics within dance. This benefited more technical choreographers, while preventing political expression and rallying cries. Opportunities to train students at universities opened up for choreographers, however these opportunities took dancers away from “the working-class movement, from an explicitly political agenda, and from the structures of social activism within urban communities” (Graff, 169).

While progressive for the time period, Helen Tamiris’s How Long Brethren was limited in its portrayal of African American oppression. In Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy by Nancy Fraser, she questions if we should “conclude that the very concept of the public sphere is a piece of bourgeois masculinist ideology, so thoroughly compromised that it can no shed no genuinely critical light on the limits of actually existing democracy? Or, should we conclude, rather, that the public sphere was a good idea that unfortunately was not realized in practice but that retains some emancipatory force?” (Fraser, 62). With the stage acting as the public sphere in How Long Brethren, it is evident that the theatre often became a white washed arena. If “full parity of participation in public debate and deliberation is not within the reach of possibility” (Fraser, 66), then how do we come closest to that ideal? Fraser suggests that allowing for a “plurality of competing publics” rather than a “single, comprehensive, overarching public” will allow for maximum participation and expression of ideas (Fraser, 66). However, we can see through the casting of white dancers in How Long Brethren that performances dedicated to minority perspectives were manipulated by white ideals.

Works Cited:

Manning, Susan. “Black Voices, White Bodies: The Performance of Race and Gender in How Long Brethren.” American Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 1, 1998, pp. 24–46., doi:10.1353/aq.1998.0006.

“Image 3 of How Long Brethren?” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/resource/musftpplaybills.200220830.0/?sp=3&r=-0.423%2C0.026%2C1.949%2C1.336%2C0.

Anderson, Jack. “A Champion of Racial Justice When Little Prevailed.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Aug. 1995, www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/arts/dance-view-a-champion-of-racial-justice-when-little-prevailed.html.

Cooper, Elizabeth. “Tamiris and the Federal Dance Theatre 1936-1939: Socially Relevant Dance Amidst the Policies and Politics of the New Deal Era.” Dance Research Journal, vol. 29, no. 2, 1997, p. 23., doi:10.2307/1478733.

Graff, Ellen. Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942. Duke University Press, 1999.

Kozol, Wendy, and Ellen Graff. “Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942.” Labour / Le Travail, vol. 42, 1998, p. 282., doi:10.2307/25148909.

Woods, B. (2007, July 25). The Independent Review:What does "How Long Brethren" represent now? Retrieved from https://indyweek.com/culture/archives/independent-review-what-how-long-brethren-represent-now/

Brent. “Remembering Tamiris, Part 7: How Long, Brethren?” Remembering Tamiris, Part 7: How Long, Brethren?, 1 Jan. 1970, nddaily.blogspot.com/2016/03/remembering-tamiris-part-7-how-long.html.