The Dance: The History of American Minstrelsy - An educational play for ages 12 and up

Winner of the 2007 NAACP Theater Awards "BEST PLAYWRIGHT OF THE YEAR!!!"

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Reviews

"A seamless blend of entertainment and intellectualism, and a Q&A where everyone stayed." LA Weekly "Playwright White makes a very clear connection from minstrelsy." - Backstage West "The performance continues with intelligent interlacing of minstrel history explained through more modern means. " -Broadway World "an ambitious mixture of stagecraft and video imagery" - OW Dear Mark: I wanted to thank you so much for recommending The Dance/Jason & Aaron to us. We hosted their lecture/performance last night and they were just incredible. I knew it would be powerful, but it was beyond my expectations. We had an almost full house and the crowd laughed until they hurt and then cried at the end. I'll do whatever I can to get the word out about them and their work. The very people who were hesitant or opposed to your exhibition and The Dance have been the most vocal about how important all of this is and thanked me for my persistence in trying to dialogue with them, so a huge well done and thank you to all of you! Best, Rebecca Trawick Director/Curator Wignall Museum , Chaffey College "I'm a junior in high school and I think its really great for youth because I believe we deal with the issues you presented in the play quite often, and its all around us." -Eden Jeffries "The performance was done in such an elaborate and historically sweeping way, from the very beginning of minstrel history to contemporary, the ambiguity of racial stereotypes in America was shown." - Pomona College Press "The Dance" ends up being a brassy, satiric look at the history of minstrelsy that is rendered entertaining by making it a minstrel show itself." - Times Square "a bracingly astute satire on the history of minstrelsy" -Sikivu Hutchinson Entertaining, riveting, shaming BY JOSEPH MCDONOUGH ENQUIRER CONTRIBUTOR The expanded Cincinnati Fringe Festival has added the School for the Creative and Performing Arts as a welcome venue this year for seven of its productions. Two radically different shows opened back to back in SCPA's black box theater Thursday night. The Dance: The History of American Minstrelsy is the more polished and serious of the two. The Dance comes from Los Angeles and is finely written by Cincinnati native and SCPA grad Jason Christophe White who performs with Aaron S. White. Both men are terrific as they act in blackface and give, in an entertaining and riveting way, an hour-long history of America's shameful minstrelsy tradition. It's an educational show that dispenses a lot of information: the lack of authentic African or slave music in minstrel songs; the names of white and later black minstrel stars in the 19th and 20th centuries; and the ways white culture used the popular minstrel shows as a means to define and perpetuate black stereotypes. But it's the exaggerated acting out of these stereotypes by two African American men in grotesque blackface that makes this show both a bit uncomfortable to watch and theatrically compelling. These two high-intensity minstrel clowns eventually give us a full gamut of over-the-top racial stereotypes - black, white, Mexican, Irish - both as a means to keep their history lesson humorous and as a way to add another level of reflection to the material. These are certain to be two of the better performances of this year's Fringe Fest. THE OFFICIAL LA WEEKLY REVIEW !!!!! THE DANCE Jason White and Aaron Whites keen-eyed and riotous hourlong history of blackface minstrel shows lets the facts do the talking, from 2500 B.C. to Al Jolson. Were shown the mongrelized usurpation of African rhythms, musical structure and dance for the entertainment of white audiences reluctant to get any closer to black culture than an Irishman in greasepaint. Unspoken, but just as powerful, is an arsenal of props stuffed apes and toy basketballs, sombreros and gold chains which invite the audience to reflect on the deep entrenchment of racial stereotypes in our culture. The duo build a devastating indictment against thug life media stars, posturing gangstas with gats chasing just as injuriously after the dollar as the painted-up and banjo-wielding performers of a century earlier. With this memorable and worthy show, White and White accomplish two rare hat tricks: a seamless blend of entertainment and intellectualism, and a Q&A where everyone stayed. Admission is free. Inthacut Productions at the Kaos Network CineFreestyle Theater, 4343 Leimart Blvd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru Dec. 17; online reservations at www.seethedance.com. Amy Nicholson The Dance Perfoms at KAOS It's quite an experience to watch black face that is I've never had the... opportunity? pleasure? chance? to see a minstrel show live and in action feet from my own brown face I didn't know what to expect To be quite honest, I didn't really give it much thought prior to the play that is It was another night at the theatre It was supposed to be just another night at the theatre My brothers, my peers, my generation painted their brown faces black Fought the weight on their very own hands to apply black face paint, white wide mouths, and big red lips. How did you do that? How did you release that weight? How were you able to bring your hand up to your face? I'm awe-struck I mean, we're the same age for goodness sakes We go to the same spots Know the same people Listen to the same music Care about the same things Have the same struggles Are birthed from the same mothers You're just like me But you just left me You're surppasing me here You're understanding something more complex than I can imagine Somwhere within you you found what it takes to perform blackface I just want to let you know that it's hard It's hard out here in the audience I'm sure it was hard for you It just had to be But it's hard out here too What do you expect me to do? Am I supposed to laugh knowing what I know? Do I laugh like "they" laughed? Strangely I found myself a minstrel just doing what you wanted me to do You told me it was a satire So I laughed Even though it was awkward to laugh at minstrelsy like "they" laughed But you needed me You needed my reaction You needed to feed off of me As a fellow performer I know you needed the fuel my energy my approval You needed to know I was entertained Hmm... Think about that Isn't that ironic? There have been times when I left stages in tears starved of an audience reaction Malnurished I couldn't do that to you Even though I felt like a minstrel You needed me So I laughed I laughed the way "they laughed" even though I didn't want to I just want you to know that it was hard But thank you Thank you for the education It's an uncomfortable way of learning but that means I'll never forget But more than that... Thank you for speaking with an advanced vocabulary as you explained Thank you for speaking to us as educated, black men after the show It was scary how well you portrayed that minstrel clown Terrifying actually So thank you for letting them know who you really are and where you came from That you're an educator That you're not oblivious A thinker Jendayi A. Croom The history of American minstrelsy is explored at local theater. By Craig Rice OW Conributing Writer Several years ago the area around Leimert Park enjoyed a reputation as a bastion of artsiness in the inner city. Contributing to this was a goodly assortment of coffee houses, restaurants, ethnic shops, and jazz clubs with a decidedly afro-centric bend. Various committed individuals have stayed the course during a spell of relative inactivity, and are coaxing a resurgence of positive energy in the neighborhood. Among them is Ben Caldwell, former instructor at Cal Arts who continues a long tradition of teaching video to aspiring artists in the community via his KAOS Network workspace. Recent recipients of his mentorship are a consortium of artists, products of film and theatre departments at Cal Arts and UCLA, organized under the title CineFreestyle. Currently they are staging their maiden production, an ambitious mixture of stagecraft and video imagery called The Dance. Minstrel shows in which white entertainers donned black face and spoke in a high exaggerated form of black slang to perform song, dance, and comic routines reached their zenith in post Civil War America in the nineteenth century, and may be said to have provided white Americans with their initial insight, however distorted, of the dark race, a perception that plagues us to this day. As the creators relate during the course of the piece, elements of minstrelsy can be found in many of our present day performance arts. While the presentation touches on ideas put forward in Spike Lees Bamboozled, the spin on these themes of race, sexuality, and existing in contemporary society reek of originality. And what a concept it is. During a time frame estimated to be in the ball park of approximately an hour, the audience is subjected to nonstop bombardment of racially provocative jokes delivered in equally offensive dialect, intermingled with numerous historical references that might be a bit of an overload for mainstream audiences. Both the performers, Aaron White and Jason White are actors of undeniable talent which explains their ability to give depth to what could be a one dimensional characterization of the Sambo personality. With the able support of Val Morell providing sound and off stage production assistance, they constantly riff on complex satires that include perceptions of beauty and all the myriad hues of human emotion that influence ones notions, individually and in groups, on race in America. Originally conceived three years ago, this piece has had a long gestation period in an academic environment before this, its initial presentation in an off campus venue. Bearing in mind the previously mentioned historical allusions, the actors observations are topical as well when they don heavy gold plated necklaces to suggest that the bling-bling materialism of the hip-hop generation is merely another manifestation of the minstrel mindset that continues to hamstring us all. As with any work of art, what the viewer takes away from this performance is deeply personal, informed as much by ones individual experiences as by what one witnesses on the stage. Just as the performers put on make-up before appearing on stage, so to do all of us put our morning ritual as we prep for our own individual roles in the dance of life. KAOS Cinefreestyle Theaer is located at 4343 Leimert Blvd. in Los Angeles. www.seethedance.com. Hello, my name is Eden Jeffries and I attended your play last night for the second time. I just wanted to let you know that i absolutely love it! Your strategy of presenting the audience with historical information by integrating issues and realities of our community today and even issues from the past is very effective. The way that you guys have people cracking up at some points and on the verge of tears at others is really great. I'm a junior in high school and I think its really great for youth because I believe we deal with some of the issues you presented in the play quite often, and its all around us. However, many youth so ignorant of this information and also ignorant of how their actions are affecting the way in which black people become regarded by others. I hope more and more of them are able to see it. This play really gets you thinking and is a great conversation piece. I also wanted to point out that it was actualli helpful watching the documentary (I have that too :-)) and then seeing it again, because it made even more sense to me. Well I really really hope you guys the best, its a phenomenal piece, you're phenomenal actors, and I'm sure I will be aback for a third time! Thank you so much! Shadow Dances By Sikivu Hutchinson Bert Williams is dead, long live Bert Williams. In an era of virtual gratification, when images of cartoonish buffoonish blackness are at our fingertips 24/7, the politics of the American minstrel tradition has become a fitting metaphor for the role racial stereotypes play in commodity capitalism. Lurking behind the scowls, the gratuitous ghetto lore, and the macho swagger of sultans of gangsta rap like 50 Cent is the distorted legacy of minstrel performance. In December, on a bare stage at the Kaos performance space in Leimert Park, writer/performers Jason and Aaron White staged a piece called The Dance, a bracingly astute satire on the history of minstrelsy. Using broad accents, props, and ethnic costumes, White and White critiqued the cultural and historical legacy of the minstrel tradition, highlighting the connection between the performance of black stereotypes and early caricatures of Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans as symbolic of the project of white identity formation. First introduced to the U.S. in the late eighteenth century by white actor/musicians, minstrelsy was initially performed as popular entertainment for exclusively white audiences. During the antebellum period, minstrelsy became a medium for disenfranchised white immigrants to establish ethnic solidarity with the dominant Anglo population. Disdained by Anglo American society as a wild culturally backward people, first and second-generation Irish-Americans used minstrelsy as an aesthetic form of bootstrapping. Minstrelsy was an attempt to articulate Irish affinity with Anglo-American ideals of morality, individuality, and reason. By caricaturing the primitive ways of the black Other, Irish minstrels could squarely locate their people within Anglo-American models of liberal humanism and civilization. In one sequence, White and White commented on the use of European American music as a backdrop for minstrel performance, hinting at the strategic nature of the aesthetic choices made by white minstrels who were no doubt seeking to protect their audiences from the potentially subversive rhythms of music made by African American artists. The sentimentality and romanticism of white Southern plantation culture was chillingly evoked by Aaron White in a dead-on lip synch rendition of Al Jolsons infamous Mammy song. That Jolsons blackface performance in the Jazz Singer was the first talkie motion picture in the history of American film is a powerful reminder of the absolutely signal role that the black Other played in the articulation of nineteenth and twentieth century white subjectivity. White and White ably illustrated the grotesquerie of minstrelsy by bugging their eyes and contorting their faces, alternating between frenetic outbursts of choreographed movement and robotic gestures. Their channeling of black minstrel artists conveyed the deep pain and spiritual angst that both performing and watching minstrelsy elicited in blacks, whose bodies were literally used as vehicles to enact the rites and entitlements of a nascent post-bellum American empire. In this respect, minstrelsy was not just a racially offensive entertainment but a powerful political tool that allowed whites to know what it meant to be white. The grotesque bumbling of the blackface minstrel let whites know that they were, in the words, of Toni Morrison, civilized and not savage, rational and not primitive, in short, the exemplars of a New World beacon of democracy and individual liberty. And just as nineteenth and early twentieth century white culture could only see itself when set against the projected backdrop of the abject black racial Other, so twenty first century white culture can only see itself through the lens of black hip hop commodification. In one of the more problematic scenes of the performance, White and White reenacted the hip hop shuffle (or buck dance), gyrating to a misogynist hip hop rant while maintaining the servile posture of the minstrel. While this offensive soundbite accentuated how destructive misogynist hip hop is to black femininity, the absence of commentary or exploration of the inclusion of this specific song excerpt was curious. Nevertheless, the association of the hyper-masculine nihilistic bravado of mainstream hip hop with minstrelsy is relevant in several senses. In one ribald sequence Jason White seized a Marilyn Monroe cutout, whose face is covered with a piece of cloth, and begins maniacally dry humping it, evoking the history of white racist propaganda about black male rapaciousness. Yet it soon became evident to the audience that the joke is on Whites hapless minstrel, for the Monroe cutout actually had the face of Aunt Jemimathe polar opposite of the virginal, innocent, eminently desirable blonde white femininity that Monroe iconography signifies. White Americas projection of rapaciousness onto black masculinity is also being carried out in an insidious way with the global export of the hip hop empire. The nineteenth centurys bug eyed chicken eating malaprop-spewing black sexual predator has morphed into the twenty first centurys sub-literate ghetto hip hop entrepreneur pimping a bankrupt mafioso version of black lived experience for white suburban consumption; beholden to no one except his white male corporate benefactors at Time/Warner, Sony, Interscope, and the rest. Indeed, by deploying stereotypes of black male perversity and hypermasculinity, a subtext in both of these traditions is the degradation of black femininity. For, be they cast as bitches, hos, Aunt Jemimas, Sapphires or jezebels, black womens bodies become serviceable props for patriarchal male ego gratification and identity formation. Just as gangsta rap cannot establish its legitimacy without the bitch/ho/demanding baby mama literally and figuratively positioned in the representational foreground for ridicule and abuse, so minstrelsy was dependent upon the projection of hypersexual immorality and emasculating matriarchal tendencies onto black women. As the cutting insights of The Dance suggest, the script of minstrelsy continues to pervade mainstream perceptions of blackness and black cultural production, despite the dominant cultures belief in colorblind meritocracy. Resplendent in its blackface, corporate America shadow dances all the way to the bank while pumping yet another model of black pathology down the hungry throats of the masses. Dark history revealed in American minstrels Posted April 28, 2006 Renee Bamford Staff Writer Jason and Aaron Whites performance The Dance, a powerful reflection on the depth of racial stereotyping within our culture, explored the painful truth about the history of American minstrels. Roughly 40 audience members attended the show on April 21 in Allen Studio Theatre at Pomona College. Prior to the performance was an open discussion that focused on the audiences perspective of the reality of racial stereotypes and the pain that follows. The performance informed the public about the truth of American minstrels and the tragedies that followed in being an African American during the period when minstrels were widespread and popular in the 19th century. I look at this performance as art, said Ina Friedman, a retired theater lover. This performance was both educational as well as entertaining. The Dance took 150 years of minstrel history and broke it down into a one hour segment containing comedy skits that modernized typical minstrel performances. American minstrels traditionally performed for white audiences as a means of entertainment and portrayed African Americans in a humorously demeaning setting. The actors in the performance, Jason and Aaron White, were two clowns with their faces painted with black makeup. The blackface clowns held several stereotypical African American characteristics such as exaggerated lips and widened eyes, as well as an uneducated view of them acting in a lazy, primitive manner and loving fried chicken. The performance was done in such an elaborate and historically sweeping way, said John Murphy, a local community member. From the very beginning of minstrel history to contemporary, the ambiguity of racial stereotypes in America was shown. However because of the prevalent stereotypes in this day and age, the White brothers did not stop at African American stereotypes but included other races that are victim to current stereotypes including Native Americans, Asians and Hispanics. While the performance was intended to be informative to the audience, the skits definitely pulled in light-hearted laughter in scenes such as when the White brothers danced to songs they called authentic African music including My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas and Grillz by Nelly. In this way, The Dance associated American minstrels with current events so that younger audience members could relate to it. At the conclusion of the performance a picture of an African American man subjected to a lynching on a tree in an apparent urbanized setting came into the spotlight. The laughing ceased as the reality of the racist history of our country was displayed blatantly in the sudden darkness of the theater. Following the performance was an open question and answer segment where audience members spoke directly to Jason and Aaron White about American minstrels and racial stereotyping. One audience member explained how it was an awakening to actually see the history come alive and to see how these stereotypes are still going on in modern day America. Upcoming performances of The Dance and further information about the theatrical play can be found at www.seethedance.com.

IInthacut