Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

To con­ceive of and fash­ion an artis­tic ex­pres­sion out of child's play, that ex­pressed in the Black Girl: Lin­guis­tic Play which turns out to be more than "play", and to gain im­me­di­ate ac­cep­tance of it from a very mixed au­di­ence, black, white, Asians and the very mixed, was a deeply emo­tion­al and sat­is­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for Camille A Brown and Dancers. It cer­tain­ly was for the au­di­ence at the Joyce The­ater in New York.

To height­en the ex­pe­ri­ence, the mul­ti­me­dia dance/play was per­formed last week as the Latin Amer­i­can-born Pope of Ital­ian ori­gin was pass­ing through, urg­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to greater hu­man­i­ty, at the same time that the big­ot­ed Don­ald Trump led in the Re­pub­li­can Pri­maries: how crossed-up we are in this para­dox­i­cal world of strife and beau­ty!

The play/per­for­mance re­veals it­self in three very dif­fer­ing scenes. First the Dou­ble Dutch.

"Dou­ble Dutch" is that hand-clap­ping, slap­ping, rhyth­mic danc­ing; yes it's danc­ing of Black Amer­i­can girls (and it's art) and it took on new mean­ing for those out­side the cir­cle of black girls and their ex­pres­sions of life. It was for me, a se­mi, not rank out­sider, an ex­pres­sion of cel­e­bra­tion of rhythm, of life with the re­sources of hu­man­i­ty, of rev­el­ling in what the Cre­ator has giv­en, that which parts of hu­man­i­ty count for noth­ing. The per­for­mance re­veals the stages of the Black girl ex­pe­ri­ence.

Camille and Cather­ine Fos­ter beat out an amaz­ing­ly com­plex ac­com­pa­ny­ing rhythm with their feet, face-mak­ing and lan­guage-speak­ing that evoked laugh­ter, not skin-teeth grin, but with an un­der­stand­ing of the mean­ing be­ing trans­mit­ted in a man­ner that on­ly art can–it's open to the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the in­di­vid­ual.

The sec­ond act was pas­sion­ate, fright­en­ing at times as Fana Fras­er (Trinida­di­an dancer) and Beat­rice Capote danced, slam­ming each oth­er against the wall of graf­fi­ti art of the in­ner cities. Anger mixed with a sense of sad­ness of Black girls, friends, but some­how forced to com­pete for space, at­ten­tion, time, recog­ni­tion and more in a so­ci­ety that is non-un­der­stand­ing of them, one which forces them to in­voke self-pity.

The act fin­ish­es in a warm com­ing-to­geth­er of the com­pa­tri­ots. It is a won­der­ful con­trast­ing ac­com­pa­ni­ment to the joy, splen­dour and po­ten­tial­ly ag­gres­sive stamp­ing of the Dou­ble Dutch, a game of ex­pres­sion which has crossed over sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of the Black girl in the cir­cum­stances of their trans­porta­tion to be part of a new world.

I wish I had a pic­ture of the two Black girls pinned against the wall by their cir­cum­stances.

The third act is soft­er and con­trast­ing with the two dancers Yusha-Marie Sorzano (an­oth­er Trinidad-born dancer) and Mo­ra-Am­i­na Park­er show­ing un­der­stand­ing love and sup­port for each oth­er.

In the dis­cus­sion amongst the per­form­ers and au­di­ence mem­bers af­ter the per­for­mance end­ed, one of the things that stood out was the am­biva­lence with which some re­ceived the de­ci­sion by Camille to call the play/per­for­mance by its name: Black Girl. How would the mar­ket at the pres­ti­gious Joyce The­ater re­ceive it? Is the so­ci­ety ready for such a frontal "in your face" as­ser­tion of the Black girl? "Who was I be­fore the world de­fined me?" The ques­tion asked by Camille in her chore­o­g­ra­ph­er's note. "What are the un­spo­ken lan­guages with­in Black girl cul­ture that are mul­ti-di­men­sion­al that have been ap­pro­pri­at­ed and com­part­men­talised by oth­ers," asks Camille A Brown.

One oth­er mat­ter of great sig­nif­i­cance has to do with the sup­port­ing au­di­ence for the dance com­pa­ny, and the pre­sump­tion would be oth­er com­pa­nies and oth­er forms of artis­tic ex­pres­sion, is alive vig­or­ous and ever present. More­over, there is an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the im­por­tance of artis­tic ex­pres­sion for so­cial and com­mu­ni­ty life. Art is not about sup­port of politi­cian and par­ty. Fi­nan­cial un­der­writ­ing of the Black Girl show for Brown and her dancers was done by Ker­ry Clay­ton and Paige Roy­er, white Amer­i­cans. And this was achieved even though there were con­cerns about fill­ing the Joyce for a week of per­for­mances. They, in­di­vid­u­als and groups un­der­stand the need to nur­ture the artists and the art of the so­ci­ety. There are lessons here for those who would want to ap­pre­ci­ate the ca­pac­i­ty of the artists to re­flect on our ex­is­tence.