Jose Limón and his 1950s story-ballets introduce topics of nationality, race, gender, and sexuality to re-shape the model of race and sexuality in the “American” identity. Limón introduces the issue of race throughout his performance, the audience, and theatre space in his representation his The Emperor Jones (1956), based on this play and of the same name, commissioned by the Empire State Music Festival, scored by Heitor Villa-Lobos and premiered on June 11, 1956 in Ellenville, New York. This analysis of The Emperor Jones is taken from the March 1957 performance on the DVD, José Limón: Three Modern Dance Classics. This film features the original all-male cast with Limón as Brutus Jones; Lucas Hoving as Smithers, whom Limón credits as “The White Man;” and six company members performing the two roles of “The Emperor’s Subjects” and “The Little Formless Fears.” Through Limon’s construction of a white privilege and queer staging of male bodies, he reveals complex relationships between race and sexuality. I argue that Limón’s performance in The Emperor Jones, based on the play by Eugene O’Neill, serves the functions of expanding and modifying how race, gender, sexuality are considered a part of American history and character.
To understand Limón’s The Emperor Jones, one must first understand the inspiration behind it. In Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, Brutus Jones, an African-American Pullman porter escapes from a chain gang to a West Indies isle. He tricks the local “natives” into believing that only a “silver bullet” can kill him, and with this authority he quickly makes himself emperor. In the opening of the play, Jones discovered, through Smithers, a local white trader, that the “natives” are planning a rebellion. Jones p...
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... Unlike Jones, the environment does not contextualize Smithers’ character and Smithers himself doesn’t derive his motivation from it; rather he uses his environment to fit his needs. Because Smithers is not limited to a specific region, he has the ability to travel freely, unregulated by gravity or implied social boundaries. Smithers’ movements mock the hefty struggle between Jones and the dark jungle of history.
Through Limón’s commanding integration of O’Neill’s story into his choreography in The Emperor Jones, Limón created a context that supported an analysis of racism. By using this particular context to emphasize his non-white form, Limón also intervened in the continuation of racial stereotypes. Limón’s The Emperor Jones was a positive presentation by a prominent modern dance choreographer to represent African-Americans and dissipate racial stereotypes.
Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over
Gill, Glenda Eloise. No Surrender! No Retreat! : African American Pioneer Performers of Twentieth-Century American Theater. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. Print.
Tobias, T. (2008, July 7). Mark Morris Rethinks Prokofiev's `Romeo' as Lusty, Gender Bending, Not Tragic. Retrieved February 27, 2010, from Seeing Things: Tobi Tobias on Dance et al.: http://www.artsjournal.com/tobias/2008/07/mark_morris_rethinks_prokofiev.html
In this essay Mura expresses his anger towards the Broadway production Miss Saigon. Mura “protest . . . [actor equality] against the producer’s casting . . . [Mura] felt disturbed that again a white actor, the British Jonathan Pryce, was playing
...n there are no limitations of morality or law. A comparison of man's fruitless journey is described as "they move like migrants under a drifting star and their track across the land reflected in its faint arcature the movements of the earth itself" (McCarthy 153). Thus, the setting powerfully influences the novel's theme and its characters rather than being a detached element of the narrative (147).
The character, Sir Gawain is an interesting character. He has many different qualities both good and bad. Though he has bad qualities, his intentions behind them are completely innocent. His good qualities far outweigh his bad ones. He makes many decisions though not always the best ones. These decisions have lasting effects on other characters from the story. The ethics of sir Gawain are a main theme throughout the story. Sir Gawain has some interesting motives to his actions that are a focus in the beginning of the story. Throughout the entire story, Sir Gawain is growing as a character. Gawain has many appealing qualities, interesting ethics and motives, and some of his decisions are questionable, but all the while he is growing
That a beautiful Venetian girl should fall in love with “a veritable negro” seemed to many implausible, in fact “monstrous.” The words are Coleridge’s, but the sentiment was widely shared and, on the nineteenth-century stage, was increasingly taken into account by “orientalizing” the hero, making him appear to be what one of the century’s best-known actor-directors declared he emphatically was: “not a negro” but “a stately Arab.” (129)
Black people have long struggled to define themselves in a predominantly White world. This holds especially true in the world of dance. Cleverly entitled "Simmering Passivity: The Black Male Body In Concert Dance," DeFrantz’s article chronicles the experience of Black male dancers forced to conform to unidimensional stereotypes in order to perform and capitalize amongst White crowds. Often repressing important aspects of themselves to fit into these roles, these Black dancers “simmered passively,” waiting for the opportunity to show their full abilities and true identities. DeFrantz points to the life and choreography of Alvin Ailey to support this position. Dancing during the 1950s, Ailey, like other Black male dancers, was pigeonholed as a black “brute,” considered only capable of aggressive, hyper-masculine, and animalistic styles. In 1954, Brooks Atkinson wrote a New York Times review describing the Blackness of House of Flowers. He writes, “Every Negro show includes
In the 1964 play Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, formally known as Le Roi Jones, an enigma of themes and racial conflicts are blatantly exemplified within the short duration of the play. Baraka attacks the issue of racial stereotype symbolically through the relationship of the play’s only subjects, Lula and Clay. Baraka uses theatricality and dynamic characters as a metaphor to portray an honest representation of racist stereotypes in America through both physical and psychological acts of discrimination. Dutchman shows Clay, an innocent African-American man enraged after he is tormented by the representation of an insane, illogical and explicit ideal of white supremacy known as Lula. Their encounter turns from sexual to lethal as the two along with others are all confined inside of one urban subway cart. Baraka uses character traits, symbolism and metaphor to exhibit the legacy of racial tension in America.
It is human nature to tell stories and to appreciate and participate in theatre traditions in every society. Every culture expresses theatre and may have their own traditions that have helped pave the way for how they are today. The involvement of African-Americans has increased tremendously in theatre since the nineteenth century and continues to increase as time goes on. African-Americans have overcome many obstacles with getting their rights and the participation and involvement of Theatre was something also worth fighting for. American history has played an important role with the participation of African-Americans in theatre. Slavery occurrence in America made it difficult for blacks in America to be taken seriously and to take on the characters of more serious roles. With many obstacles in the way African-Americans fought for their rights and also for the freedom that they deserved in America. As the participation of African-Americans involvement within the theatre increase so do the movements in which help make this possible. It is the determination of these leaders, groups, and Theaters that helped increase the participation and created the success that African-Americans received throughout history in American Theatre.
Appearing in the 1903, The Souls of Black folk had emerged, a collection of 14 proses, written by one of the single most intellectual blacks in America, W. E.B. DuBois (Oxford Companion). This dynamic collection of essays reflect on African American history, sociology, religion, politics, and music. DuBois begins saying “The problem of the 20th century is the color line (5). This quote pronounces DuBois bases for his collection, that is being different form the others (Whites) makes you feel like you are being shut out from their world by a vast veil; hence the color line(8). On the other had we have Birth of a Nation, which comes out later in 1915 (TCM). Ironically it becomes the top selling film in White America during that time, but degrades everything that DuBois and another activist stood for. While DuBois hopes to educate White and Black America on their boundaries, the color line, the film’s director, D.W. Griffith, undermines these ideas. Defiling images of African Americans by distorting the perception of Blacks using stereotypical examples such as the mammies, mulattos, and bucks, Griffith tries to justify that blacks were inferior to Whites. In spite of the many controversies that are expressed in the film, it had become a known as the most innovative, American Epics and was a top seller during its time because of Griffith’s technical breakthrough and format. While comparing and contrasting these two pieces I hope to reveal to you this why this ‘double consciousness’ exist, even todays society as a result of these stereotypes displayed in “The Birth of a Nation.”
Lindheim, Nancy "Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night." University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities 76.2 (2007): 679-713. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 6 Nov. 2009.
I think this play is a lot about what does race mean, and to what extent do we perform race either onstage or in life:
Effiong, Philip U. In Search of a Model for African-American Drama: a Study of Selected Plays
Through discourses in theatrical, anthropological and philosophical discussions, Butler portrays gender identity as being performative rather than expressive. Gender, rather than being drawn from a particular essence, is inscribed and repeated by bodies through the use of taboos and social