66 LEGACIES
BOOK REVIEW
DANCING IN BLACKNESS: A MEMOIR
BY HALIFU OSUMARE (WINNER OF THE 2019 SELMA JEANNE COHEN PRIZE IN DANCE AESTHETICS) REVIEW BY DR ‘H’ PATTEN
Born Janice Miller on the Island of Galveston (Gulf of Mexico), Texas in 1946, Halifu Osumare’s dance career spans over six decades. As Dancing in Blackness (2018), her latest literary offering demonstrates, Osumare is an extraordinary artist, a dancer, choreographer, producer, cultural activist, scholar, and dance historian in the true vein of the African Griot tradition. Dancing in Blackness is a valuable memoir charting the personal journey of a female dance practitioner; an important historical legacy as the black female story is often overlooked. Osumare’s book is significant as it maps many defining moments within the genealogical story of Black dance in America, skilfully marrying social and artistic history. Osumare’s personal genealogy of dance is divided across an introduction and six chapters, depicting the important eras of her career.
CitiCentre Dance Theatre in 1983 in Oakland, California, which performed works by Halifu Osumare © Photo credit © Harry Wade
Halifu Osumare © Elton King
The introduction outlines her political activism and contribution to the Black Arts and Black Panther Movements, contextualised against the hippie movement of white America. Osumare relates this to the reader as organically as she does her engagements with major black dance icons such as Alvin Ailey. For Osumare, dance embodies “the personal, social, cultural, and spiritual–body, mind and soul” (p.5), always in relation to environmental and socio-political influences. Quoting the pioneering anthropologist and choreographer Katherine Dunham, she defines dance as ‘a series of “rhythmically patterned movement performed by a sentient being”’ (p.5). Hence, Osumare’s memoir is a dialogue between dance, race, and her own deeply personal life experiences.