I do not usually pay attention to my physical reaction to performance. I am generally too preoccupied with parsing meaning from dancers’ motions to focus on my body’s response to theirs. I try to frame my understanding of their work in words, not emotions or movements. However, Dr. Bory’s Moodle assignment on Pearl Primus’ dance “Strange Fruit” challenged my language-centric reaction to performance.1 The assignment requested not that I provide a complex analysis of Primus’ choreography, but something even more challenging: that I consider my empathetic kinesthetic perceptive response (EKPR) to the piece and make meaning from my body’s reaction alone (Bory). I sat down to watch the dance with awkward awareness of my breathing, my shoulders, and my limbs, not sure if they would respond to the dance at all.
But they did. My whole body grew tighter as I watched “Strange Fruit.” I could feel my shoulders hunching closer together and my chest constricting as dancer Dawn Marie Watson’s body depicted each word of Abel Meeropol’s poem. Even my eyebrows cinched into a still, tight line, unable to remain relaxed as they encountered the tension in Watson’s limbs and the terror on her face. At the end of the dance, Watson’s single, decisive slashing motion depicting the word “crop” froze me completely (Strange Fruit, 0:03:40). I felt a lot smaller when the video ended than I had at its beginning. I felt like moving was impossible. Closing my laptop, reaching for my backpack, pushing my chair back from my desk—these motions would have to wait. Watson’s stillness, her fixation on a point just outside the screen, demanded my stillness too (0:03:44).
I watched the dance again. This time I noticed my motion as well as my frozenness. I felt my stomach twist during Watson’s frenzied crawl to “bulging eyes,” felt my whole body jerk alongside hers as she fell to the ground at “drop” (0:02:10; 0:03:05). Inside my initial frozenness was a host of little movements that paralleled the dancer’s motions. However, I did not write down these reactions. I did not take any notes for hours after I watched the piece, not until I began to write this Moodle post. Even then, I focused on the performance’s context rather than its content in my notes, researching Primus and Meeropol instead of describing Watson’s movements and my EKPR. My reaction, I felt, was better contained in my body than on paper.
As I reflect on my physical response to “Strange Fruit,” I find that it reveals my own relationship with the piece. I read my initial stilled, scrunched frozenness as a demonstration of my personal distance from Watson and her subject matter. Even though Watson dances the perspective of a white woman like me, that woman’s witness to a lynching is not an experience to which I have access (Boyer). My physical instinct to sit still instead of moving with Watson reflects that experiential distance.
Yet my detachment from Primus’ work also encompassed small movements that mirror Watson’s body. In the moments that I found the poem most emotional, including the horror of “bulging eyes” and the pain of “drop,” the intensity of my EKPR paralleled my emotional response to the piece (0:02:10; 0:03:05). I find that, by bringing the emotions the dance depicted into my own body, my EKPR strengthened my empathy with Watson’s character—even though we are separated by time, experience and identity. Focusing on my physical reaction thus cultivated my emotional understanding of the perspective Primus presents in “Strange Fruit.”
I remain dedicated to my usual language-based method of analysis. After all, I did not understand my EKPR until I had drafted, typed, and revised this Moodle post: without these words, I doubt I would have found meaning in my physical reaction. Yet focusing so intently on my body showed me that words alone cannot contain my understanding of or relationship to a work of art. As I continue to approach dances and other performances within Humes and beyond, I remind myself to pay attention to more than my notepad. My understanding, I am learning, comes from more than just words.
- The prompt also requested reflection on Talley Beatty’s dance “Mourner’s Bench” (Bory). For this revision, however, I focus exclusively on Primus’ piece, exploring my reaction to her work in expanded detail. ↩︎
Works Cited
Bory, Alison. “Reading Dancing, Making Meaning.” HUM 104, February 2025, Davidson College, Davidson, NC. Moodle assignment.
Boyer, Patricio. “Dance Analysis.” HUM 104, 27 February 2025, Davidson College, Davidson, NC. Section discussion.
Strange Fruit. By Dawn Marie Watson. Choreographed by Pearl Primus. Philadanco. Performance. Мария Дудина. “Strange Fruit by Pearl Primus.” YouTube, 19 May 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=38JoSbk3S3o.
