{"id":56183,"date":"2018-04-11T20:46:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T20:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56183"},"modified":"2018-04-11T20:46:40","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T20:46:40","slug":"review-with-dougla-dance-theater-of-harlem-recalls-past-glory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56183","title":{"rendered":"Review: With \u2018Dougla,\u2019 Dance Theater of Harlem Recalls Past Glory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review: With \u2018Dougla,\u2019 Dance Theater of Harlem Recalls Past Glory<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2018-04-08<\/p>\n

Brian Seibert<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nAlicia Mae Holloway<\/a>, center, and fellow members of Dance Theater of Harlem<\/a> performing in \u201cDougla.\u201d
\nAndrea Mohin\/The New York Times<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The enthusiastic applause for Dance Theater of Harlem\u2019s<\/a> revival of \u201cDougla,\u201d at the New York City Center<\/a> on Friday, started as soon as the curtain rose. The opening image was of a stage full of proudly posed men and women, all in floor-length skirts decorated with little red pom-poms. More of those pom-poms crowned their heads like rooster combs.<\/p>\n

Geoffrey Holder<\/a>, who choreographed \u201cDougla\u201d in 1974 (and died in 2014<\/a>), also designed its costumes, and the dance is largely a costume pageant. But it wasn\u2019t just the spectacle that people were cheering.<\/p>\n

Long a staple of Dance Theater of Harlem\u2019s repertory, \u201cDougla\u201d has not been performed by the company since 2004. That year, debt forced the troupe into hiatus, and when the company re-emerged in 2013, its roster had shrunk by more than half…<\/p>\n

…\u201cDougla\u201d is a rather old-fashioned work. The title is a word used, especially in Mr. Holder\u2019s native Trinidad<\/a>, to label people of mixed South Asian and African descent<\/a>. As part of its representation of such people, the choreography indulges in a kind of cartoon imitation of Indian dance. While wood blocks crack, heads nod and wobble like the tops of bobblehead<\/a> dolls. The motion is theatrically effective \u2014 that\u2019s why it\u2019s repeated even during the bows \u2014 but close to caricature…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDougla\u201d is a rather old-fashioned work. The title is a word used, especially in Mr. Holder\u2019s native Trinidad, to label people of mixed South Asian and African descent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,21,1196,8,20],"tags":[28419,6725,28420,12040,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-56183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-latincarib","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-brian-seibert","tag-dance","tag-dance-theater-of-harlem","tag-geoffrey-holder","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56184,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56183\/revisions\/56184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}