Donald McKayle Presentation for Dance.pptx

Presentation about Donald McKayle

1. Donald McKayle

2. Background Information Born in NYC - July 6, 1930, died April 6, 2018, An American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, director, and writer. Grew up in a racially mixed East Harlem community of African-American, Puerto Rican, and Jewish immigrants. He was the second child of a middle class, immigrant family of Jamaican descent. His father worked as a maintenance man at the Copacabana nightclub before becoming a mechanic while his mother worked as a medical assistant. In high school McKayle joined the Frederick Douglass Society to learn more about African-American history and heritage, a subject that was not taught in school. It was an inspiring performance by Pearl Primus that sparked McKayle's interest in dance as a teenager. Despite his lack of formal dance training, McKayle auditioned and was granted a scholarship for the New Dance Group in 1947. McKayle was ambitious and eagerly took advantage of the company's formal training in modern, ballet, tap, Afro-Caribbean, Hindu, and Haitian dance forms.

3. Genre of Dance Modern Dance being the main dance style, he developed an emotionally rich choreographic style inspired by several dance techniques.

4. History While growing up, segregation and racial issues heavily affected McKayle’s style and he displays these struggles in his choreography. McKayle's early works explore the universal human condition and reflect themes of unity and community through expressive and emotional movement. The American dance classic Games (1951) was McKayle's first major work and was responsible for launching his dance career. He combines rhythms, chants, play songs, and street games to create a childhood scene dedicated solely to playtime. Inspired by childhood memories, Games explores themes of poverty and discrimination in shaping the lives and attitudes of the youth.

5. Influence/Contributions Best known for creating socially conscious concert works during the 1950s and '60s that focus on expressing the human condition and the black experience in America. Worked alongside Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, and Merce Cunningham. formed and directed his own dance company, Donald McKayle and Dancers (1951–69), and was the head of the Inner City Repertory Dance Company from 1970 to 1974. McKayle was the first black man to both direct and choreograph major Broadway musicals, including the Tony Award-winners Raisin (1973) and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and he worked extensively in television and film. In 1963 McKayle was awarded the Capezio Dance Award, and in 1992 received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement.[20] In 2004 he received the Heritage Award from the National dance association for his contributions to dance education. He was the first to receive the Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Research from the University of California, Irvine where he was an instructor and the artistic director of UCI's dance troupe.

6. Video Presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXZ2ca066Lo

7. Description/Analysis of work Hailed as Donald McKayle’s masterpiece, this powerfully athletic piece portrays the life of men on a prison chain gang. The memories of love and joy that sustain them are personified by a dream figure who appears as sweetheart, mother, and wife. By turns lyrical and muscular, McKayle’s sharply theatrical choreography explores the characters’ physical trials and emotional despair with equal intensity. “It is clear why Rainbow [Round My Shoulder] has survived, in its own quiet way, as a classic of American modern dance,” praised The New York Times.

8. References "SDSCPA on Twitter" . Twitter . San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts. Retrieved April 9, 2018. http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-pioneering-black-choreographer-director-donald-mckayle-dies-2018-4?r=US&IR=T&IR=T Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick, No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 345. John Perpener, African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond ((Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 193. Melanye P. White-Dixon, "McKayle, Donald," in Selma Jeanne Cohen (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Dance , vol. 4 (New York: Oxford University Press 1998), 345. Gay Morris, A Game for Dancers: Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years, 1945–1960 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006), 147–165. Elisa Davis, Transcending Boundaries? The Struggle of African-American Identity in the Works and Career of Donald McKayle from 1950 to 1973 . Senior Thesis (Barnard, 2007), Gates, Anita (April 11, 2018). "Donald McKayle, 87, Broadway and Modern Dance Choreographer, Dies" . The New York Times . p. A25. Retrieved April 16, 2018.