As dance became an increasingly large part of radical culture, the specific needs and uses in teaching working class children dance is addressed below.

‘Dancing with Workers’ Children’ by Kay Rankin from Workers’ Theatre. Vol. 1 No. 12. March, 1932.

I will recall Isadora Duncan’s “Art of the Dance” from which I quote the following excerpts. In the chapter, “I see America dancing” this great dancer analyses the future American dance as a “vibration of the American soul striving upward through labour to harmonious life”. She says further “no more would this dance have any vestige of Fox Trot or the Charleston–rather–the living leap of a child–one foot poised on the highest point of the Rockies, her two hands stretched out from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” She closes by saying, “When the American children dance this way it will make them beautiful beings worthy of the name of Democracy.”

When analyzing the above excerpts, a teacher of dancing would be impressed with the feeling of great patriotism, democracy, and beauty. However, a working class teacher of the dance would question the above statements. She would know first, that not through labour, but through an organized struggle of the working class can we hope to attain a harmonious life; secondly, that the jazz rhythms have become a definite part of the highly industrialised America, and plays its role in the life of the American worker; and thirdly, that the two hands of the American workers must stretch far beyond the Atlantic and Pacific to the workers of other lands. The working-class teacher will thus realized that the dance, as well as every other art, cannot be divorced from the economic and, therefore, social system. The dance must be used to teach workers’ children that they belong to the working class. Thru the dance, we must aim to draw every working-class child closer to the workers’ revolutionary movement.

I. ORGANIZATION OF DANCE GROUPS

Dance groups of workers’ children is one of the best ways of winning these children to the revolutionary movement. The girls especially will flock to the group as soon as it is announced. Now comes the question of the announcement. How to begin. There are three distinct ways. One–go to an already organized workers organization, either adult or child’s, and volunteer to teach a group of children. After you start, these children will bring others from the neighborhood or schools. You can also draw up a leaflet–together with the children–announcing the class and inviting all workers’ children to join. This leaflet can be distributed throughout the neighborhood by the children. Two–start with this leaflet distribution yourself. Choose a working class neighborhood. The leaflet should announce the opening of a children’s dancing class. Distribute this leaflet to the tenants and their children. Three–the best method, however, is to go straight to such organizations as neighborhood centers, churches, playgrounds, where the children are definitely influenced by bourgeois propaganda, offer your free services there as dancing teacher and win these children over to the working class organizations.

II. THE MEMBERSHIP OF THESE GROUPS

This can be almost unlimited, for even in large groups, children can be taught in relays. This brings us to the structure of such groups. From the very first, we must strive to develop self-discipline and elf leadership among the children. If they feel the class is their own, they will be more interested in arriving on time, practicing hard, etc. In one group the following method worked very well: The twenty five children in the group were divided into five squads with a more capable child at the head of each squad. All squads came together as soon as the lesson started. The secretary of the group (elected by the children) called the role and read the minutes of what had been learned in the previous lesson. Then, for the next ten minutes, all squads worked at some exercises together, lead by the instructor. Now, when the signal was given, the squads went to assigned places and each squad worked with the squad captain, while the teacher gave each squad a few minutes of individual attention. This worked very well since it kept the children occupied the entire hour. No one had to wait while others were getting criticisms or instruction. This is an especially good method in planning group dances of different sections.

It is also wise to have the squads divided according to the ages of the children. Where only one teacher is available, it is best to include children over nine years of age, for at that age children can already understand and participate in working class activities.

III. THE QUESTION OF HEADQUARTERS.

This should be solved before even attempting to call the children together. Where the work is done through an organization, get that organization to supply a headquarters, or to help you find one. Otherwise, you can go to the local school, church, etc., and ask them to allow you the free use of the hall for a free children’s class in dancing.

IV. NOW COMES THE QUESTION OF THE MATERIAL

Since we have not as yet a proletarian dance form, what can we teach the children that is suitable for our purposes. Here again we must remember the question of teaching the children to govern themselves and to express themselves freely. You can teach youngsters any dance movement at all, but this dance movement must be taught not only as an abstract thing, but must have a definite analogy or purpose, whether it be for building the body into one that will be strong enough to fight with and for the workers, or any other reason we can give the children. You should remember here also, that if we suggest a theme and allow the children to express this freely in improvisation, they will create out of that very feeling a new type of movement.

I have been told by some dance teachers that they are willing and anxious to carry on this work, but when it comes to a question of suggesting working class themes, they are totally ignorant of material. From this we come to the following conclusions: If the dance teacher is a worker or of a working-class family, she will gather her material from her own environment, just as the children will transfer that material to their own environment. If however as is most often the case, this teacher happens to have been drawn in from the bourgeoisie or intellectual elements, then it still does not mean that the task is impossible. To such a teacher we would recommend reading. Read all the working-class literature that is available at Workers Book Shops and elsewhere. Visit these children in their homes, study their conditions, and if you are a dancer, you will translate and express those conditions of body and environment into the language of the dance.

Often those who are new in this work make the sad and serious mistake of using such subjects as Red Army March, The Red Flag, etc.

These subjects are alright as far as they go, but they lead to two dangerous tendencies. One–“waving the Red Flag” belongs to the field of demonstrations and pantomime and not to the dance. Two–there is little value in bringing to children a realization of the class struggle in abstract terms. A Red Army March expresses a condition that is as yet foreign to the average American workers child. We must teach these children to express their own lives, all they see and feel about them. And the dances that grow out of these expressions must be analyzed for the children in terms of their economic and social status and not as abstract visions. You can glean a little of what I mean from the book of Kaethe Kollwitz, German revolutionary artist. This is a book that will yet prove invaluable to class conscious students of the dance.

This setting to theme first and allowing the movements to come as a result of the theme is one approach. There is another approach to teaching children dances. The field of dancing when based upon revolutionary and proletarian thought, becomes unlimited. As I said before, it is dangerous to believe that we can only dance of fighting and open struggle. There is no subject, at all that cannot be related to the class struggle. I have taught children to express their feelings of trees, birds, earth, wind. There are myriads of means of using these subjects to give the children some working class education. One that I have used is that of two sides of a river. On one side stands a thickly wooded, dark forest. It is owned by a very rich man. The trees have grown so close together that no sun can come through to warm them. As a result they are becoming old, leafless, gnarled, and gray. On the other side of the river grows another wood. The trees are sturdy and green. Some have been cut away to allow the sun to build the remaining ones. This wood is owned by a group of workers. This theme can also be used to teach children to dance together in harmony just as workers on a Soviet collective work together.

There is yet another source of material. There are quite a few children’s working-class songs which can be sung and danced very effectively. The Young Pioneers of America have put out a pamphlet of new children’s songs, including many songs from “Mother Goose on the Breadline” printed in a previous issue of the “New Pioneer.” In one group, we are already working on some of these. We will put on a marionetteer show with some of the children acting as marionettes and the others as directors and chorus. The song we are working on now has great possibilities and the children are very enthusiastic over their accomplishments. This is the song:

“Little Miss Muffet ate such vile stuff—
It made her feel rotten inside.
Black coffee, stale bread
Miss Muffet saw red–
She joined with the workers and cried—

Don’t starve, Fight
Don’t starve, Fight
Don’t starve, Fight

V. A WORD CONCERNING THE TECHNIQUE OF THE DANCE

There is not room enough to elaborate, but just to remark, that the technique of a class will, of course, be limited to the technique of the teacher. However, the aim of the teacher must always be to break down the barrier of inhibitions and unnatural movements which the children acquire in such places as schools, and to link up the presentation of strong, free movement with the position of the workers child in society.

VI. ON MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT

It is important to say that one of the greatest means of getting children to forget themselves and to move unrestrainedly is through the use of definite and continued rhythm. This is one of the most important factors in getting children to dance. If pianos and pianists are not available, use percussion instruments, such as gongs, drums, tom-toms etc. In the absence of those, hand-clapping and accented stamping can be very effective. The essential thing is that the accompanist help the children by beating a clear precise rhythm, and by giving that beat the atmosphere for the dancing of the children.

Now then, as working class teachers of the dance, we must work with the following perspectives in mind: First–to organize and develop large dance groups of workers children (as is being done now by the members of the “New Dance Group”, a recently organized group of revolutionary dancers): Secondly–to win over these children in our Groups to the revolutionary movement and to the Young Pioneers of America, which is the only Revolutionary organization for workers and farmers children; and thirdly to look ahead always to training the most capable child in the class for future leadership in similar groups of working class children.

The New Theatre continued Workers Theater. Workers Theater began in New York City in 1931 as the publication of The Workers Laboratory Theater collective, an agitprop group associated with Workers International Relief, becoming the League of Workers Theaters, section of the International Union of Revolutionary Theater of the Comintern. The rough production values of the first years were replaced by a color magazine as it became primarily associated with the New Theater. It contains a wealth of left cultural history and ideas. Published roughly monthly were Workers Theater from April 1931-July/Aug 1933, New Theater from Sept/Oct 1933-November 1937, New Theater and Film from April and March of 1937, (only two issues).

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workers-theatre/v1n12-mar-1932-Workers-Theatre-NYPL-mfilm.pdf