Research Catalog

Interview with Carole Y. Johnson

Title
Interview with Carole Y. Johnson, 2018
Author
Johnson, Carole Y.
Publication
2018.

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AudioSupervised use *MGZMT 3-3468Performing Arts Research Collections - Dance

Details

Additional Authors
Yaa Asantewaa, Eva
Description
Online resource (3 streaming files [approximately 5 hrs. and 27 min.]) : digital +
Summary
  • Streaming file 1 (approximately one hour and 51 minutes), April 3, 2018. Carole Y. Johnson speaks with Eva Yaa Asantewaa about her family background, in particular her parents and grandparents; more on her father including his involvement with the YMCA [Young Men's Christian Association] in New York, New Jersey, and, during World War II, in Baltimore, Maryland; her mother's dislike of Baltimore due to the racism and segregation she encountered there; her interest in dancing, in particular ballet, from a very early age; her first dance classes as a child; the family's move to Philadelphia where she began to study dance in earnest; the nature of their neighborhood; her relative unawareness at the time of racism; her dance classes in Philadelphia, taught by Sidney King; (briefly) Marion Cuyjet; her continuing focus on ballet and discomfort with the social dance and Katherine Dunham technique taught in her classes; racism as a barrier to her studying ballet at the "white schools" in Philadelphia; taking class with teachers from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, including Alfredo Corvino and Antony Tudor, as part of a special, weekend program; reasons she did not ultimately pursue ballet even though she graduated from Juilliard [the Juilliard School] as a ballet major; Antony Tudor, in particular why she valued him as a teacher; Margaret Black as the teacher who helped her the most; her matriculation at Juilliard in 1959, after a year at Adelphi University [and graduation in 1963]; other (future) dancers of note who were at Juilliard when she was there including Bill Luther, Dudley Williams, Paula Kelly, and Sylvia Walters; first meeting Eleo Pomare by attending his classes upon the recommendation of Dolores Vanison; how Pomare and his classes turned her from a mere "mechanic" into a dancer who communicated something; the contrast between Pomare's insistence that dance not be "boring" with the approach of post-modern dance at that time; memorable roles she danced for Pomare; her view of herself as a constructor or crafter of dances rather than as a choreographer; dancers who worked with Pomare including Dyane Harvey and Chuck Davis; Rod Rodgers including the formation with him and Pomare of the Association of Black Choreographers; how her background contributed to her future role as a dancer and educator in Africa and Australia; the Dancemobile and the various people and institutions with whom she worked to bring it into being as well as its financial aspects; how this developed skills she later drew upon in Australia; working, in her capacity as a consultant to the New York State Council on the Arts, as an advisor to small dance companies on how to incorporate; the assertive approach of Michael Levy to negotiations on behalf of Pomare's company and her feeling that she has been influenced by both Levy and her father; her experiences at a summer camp in Vermont where she was the only Black counselor; encountering overt racism at a restaurant in Vermont and alerting the press to the incident; (briefly) touring with Cleo Quitman's company in the American South; how her parents had shielded her from overt racism; her first trip to Australia, to perform with Pomare and his company, in March 1972; the ongoing battle at the time for recognition of the civil rights and liberties of the Aboriginal people; the Tent Embassy and its origin as an ironic response to Australia Day; Baxhau Stone; an anecdote about how Pomare's company was initially booked to perform at a substandard theater; her staying on in Australia after Pomare and the company left, and getting to know [Jennifer] Jenny Isaacs, an Aboriginal arts officer; obtaining a government arts grant to work with urban Aboriginal people and teaching in Redfern, a suburb of Sydney; a group of Aboriginal people including Bob Maza and Solomon Bellear, who had been to the United States and their activities on behalf of Aboriginal people after they returned to Australia; more on the Tent Embassy and the large demonstrations and marches being held by Aboriginal people that had been in effect inspired by NAISDOC Day (National Aboriginal and Islander Observance Committee Day); her involvement in these events including the dance performance she organized at the Tent Embassy; the significance of this performance as an occasion for Aboriginal people to see urban Aboriginal people connecting with traditional Aboriginal culture.
  • Streaming file 2 (approximately one hour and 44 minutes), April 5, 2018. Carole Y. Johnson speaks with Eva Yaa Asantewaa about the first national Black dance conference (First National Congress of Blacks in Dance, 1973) beginning with brief mentions of earlier, related developments in Black dance including MODE (Modern Organization for Dance Evolvement), the publication FEET, and the formation in 1966 of the Association of Black Choreographers; how the complete absence of dance at Imamu [Amiri] Baraka's Atlanta theater conference [Congress of African Peoples Convention, held by the Black Arts Movement in 1970, in Atlanta, Ga.] led her, Katherine Dunham, Ruth Beckford, and others to realize there was a need for a national Black dance conference; various aspects of the First National Congress of Blacks in Dance: some of the participants, coverage of Black dance in the press at the time, and people who worked, as organizers and fund-raisers, including Shelby Freeman and Madeleine Gutman; her typically finding herself the only Black person at meetings about (putative) government funding during the early days of the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts); FEET as a way to give Black dancers visibility and a voice; the contents of and some of the contributors to FEET; lack of funding as the reason for its ceasing publication; other publications (covering Black dance) during the 1970s including Dance Herald; her relative ease (culturally-speaking) with the move to Australia; the nature and concerns of the people she associated with (artists, educators, Aboriginal, Torres Strait, and South Pacific Islanders) as a significant reason for her feeling so at home there; Glebe, the area where she lived, with [Jennifer] Jenny Isaacs; her government-funded grant to work with urban Aboriginal people; the history of mistreatment and discrimination, the low education rates, and the high rates of joblessness and incarceration of the Aboriginal population at this time; the lack of connection of urban Aboriginal people to their traditional culture including dance; various people and groups including Pastor [Donald] Don Brady and OPAL [One People of Australia League], who began to try to teach young, urban Aboriginal people their traditional arts; tribal differences among the Aboriginal people and the varying levels of "sacred" and "secret" (and "sacred-secret") of certain ceremonies and rites depending on the tribe; [Herbert Cole] Nugget Coombs and his work to fund and sponsor Aboriginal traditional culture including through the creation of the Aboriginal Theatre Trust, in Darwin, in the Northern Territory; how the Aboriginal view of gambling within the community may reflect certain values regarding the care of others; an anecdote about an Aboriginal elder, Uncle Henry Peters, telling a traditional story as a way to quiet unruly students; her impressions of Aboriginal dance performances she has seen including the intensity and focus of the dancers as well as the use of mime; her classes and workshops in Redfern including her surprise when the students had difficulty dancing to the rhythms of traditional Aboriginal music; Aboriginal beliefs about deceased people and art created by the deceased; more on the dance performance she held at the Tent Embassy; the extent to which the Aboriginal people sought inspiration and leadership from the Civil Rights movement in the United States; more on the above-mentioned Aboriginal people (including Bob Maza, Solomon Bellear, Bruce McGuiness, and Jack Davis) who had visited the United States in 1972 and the various programs for Aboriginal people that they created on their return; her experiences working with local people in the arts in Senegal and Sierra Leone; Saka Acquaye, a drummer; Albert Opoku [Albert "Bertie" Mawere Opoku] and his work to rediscover traditional dances that had been suppressed by missionaries; how she applied the methods she learned from Opoku in Ghana to her work in Australia teaching traditional dance to young (urban) Aboriginal people. In response to Eva Yaa Asantewaa's question about Johnson's founding of the Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Scheme [AISDS], an education program, Johnson speaks about] the six-week training workshop (the Six Week Workshop) she and Brian Syron held for Aboriginal people from all over Australia; the documentary film Tjintu Pakani: Sunrise Awakening, 1976] that Andee Reese [also known as Andrea Maddox and now as Andrea Kyndred] made about the workshop; how this program led to a three-month tour of performances held in Aboriginal communities around Australia; getting the communities involved in the organization of the performances; how this program led in turn to the funding of proposals for longer-term programs; ways in which the Aboriginal people were already teaching their culture to urban Aboriginals, for example the teachers being sent from Mornington Island in Queensland, to teach young people in New South Wales; the general shift towards greater respectfulness, at this time (around 1976), in the government's attitude toward Aboriginal people; the Careers in Dance program, which became part of the Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Scheme, and why that name was chosen; Chicka Dixon [Charles Dixon] and his including her dance group in his cultural programs at prisons; the creation of the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre in conjunction with Aboriginal participation in 1977 in the Lagos Festival [the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture]; her role in bringing about the participation of Aboriginal people in the Festival, both as performers and at the organizational level.
  • Streaming file 3 (approximately one hour and 52 minutes), April 16, 2018. Carole Y. Johnson speaks with Eva Yaa Asantewaa about funding sources for her projects in Australia including the Aboriginal Arts Board (part of the Australia Council); (briefly) Robert [Bob] Evans; Brian Syron and her working with him to create the (above-mentioned) Six Week Workshop; some of her activities in the period prior to the Six Week Workshop and the formation of ASIDS, in 1976; sources of government funding for her projects, including the cost of housing and stipends for the students; the Nobel Laureate Patrick White and how he helped her obtain funding for a student trip to Memphis in May, a cultural program in Memphis, Tennessee; her forming of Bangarra Dance Theatre in order to create an entity distinct from NAISDA [NAISDA Dance College]; more on funding sources and government policy; the move, around 1988, from Glebe, to the Rocks (an area in Sydney); the eventual move [of NAISDA] to the Parklands, in the county of Gosford; the current location of Bangarra Dance Theatre under a pylon of the harbor bridge [Sydney Harbour Bridge]; the burglary of the school's brand new technical equipment; her policy of including teachers who could provide career opportunities for the students, for example, Chrissie Koltai; some of the students, including Wayne Nicol and Kim Walker; Michael Leslie, a founding student, who later became a panel member for Prime Minister Paul Keating's Creative Nation policy; Keating's support of the arts; Cheryl Stone, in particular, her invaluable assistance in managing the school and later Bangarra Dance Theatre; the reasons she felt that creating a dance company was so important and why it took so long to create it (13 years); AIDT (Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre), the school's student performing company, in particular its relation to Bangarra Dance Theatre; the problems of funding a grass-roots organization (such as Bangarra Dance Theatre); other students of note including Sylvia Blanco and Russell Page; Cheryl Stone and possibly Kim Walker as people she would consider mentees; encountering pushback, primarily from outside the organization, as a non-Aboriginal person running Aboriginal cultural programs; issues that arose as the organization expanded; the Australian government's greater encouragement of self-management by Aboriginal people of Aboriginal programs and how this led to staffing problems; the principle that Indigenous and ethnic dance should be taught by people from that tradition; the curriculum of the school, which included the teaching of three cultures: European, the popular culture of the day, rooted in the African American experience, and Indigenous culture; Adrian Russell Wills and the documentary Black is Inclusive; the overhaul of the school's administration around 1999; Kim Walker including his non-Aboriginal heritage; more on the founding of Bangarra Dance Theatre including funding sources; her hope to include students from the school [NAISDA] on Bangarra tours; ADAPT [Aboriginal Dance Apprentice Performance Training] and her hope that it would provide career opportunities for the students; the positive reception of Bangarra Dance Theatre with the public; funding and various people involved with the Theatre including Cheryl Stone as an administrator, and Raymond Sawyer, Ronne Arnold, and Stephen Page as artistic directors; Bernadette Walong, in particular her workshopping of the work Ochres; the style of movement that had evolved at the school [NAISDA] through the work of various artists including Lucy Jumawan; her current status with Bangarra Dance Theatre; receiving the Australian Dance Awards Hall of Fame; more on Ronne Arnold; her receipt of the [Australian] Government Centenary Medal 2003; her hope to document Black dance in New York in the 1970s, including putting together a book of FEET and Dance Herald; her application to the University of Newcastle, for the Ph. D. program.
Alternative Title
  • Dance Oral History Project.
  • Dance Audio Archive.
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • Sound recordings.
  • Oral histories.
Note
  • Interview with Carole Y. Johnson conducted by Eva Yaa Asantewaa on April 3, 5, and 16, 2018, in New York City (N.Y.), for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
  • For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3468
  • As of March 2023, the audio recording of this interview can be made available at the Library for the Performing Arts by advanced request to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, dance@nypl.org. The audio files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
  • Sound quality is excellent.
  • Title supplied by cataloger.
Access (note)
  • Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.
Funding (note)
  • The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Call Number
*MGZMT 3-3468
OCLC
1262763359
Author
Johnson, Carole Y., Interviewee.
Title
Interview with Carole Y. Johnson, 2018
Imprint
2018.
Playing Time
052700
Type of Content
spoken word
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
audio
Type of Carrier
online resource
volume
Digital File Characteristics
audio file
Restricted Access
Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.
Event
Recorded for for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 2018, April 3, 5, and 16 New York (N.Y.).
Funding
The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Connect to:
Added Author
Yaa Asantewaa, Eva, interviewer.
Research Call Number
*MGZMT 3-3468
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