Month: January 2024

Wild, Wicked and Wonderful—Josephine Baker 

Adele Fasick4 Comments

Josephine Baker’s name is known to many Americans and Europeans, but her life and achievements remain rather confusing. She was a woman who acted as she chose and seldom explained herself. Even. the location of her body is somewhat of a mystery. In November 2021, her coffin was reburied at the Panthéon in Paris, an honor that few women have ever received. Her body, however, remains buried in Monaco where her friend Princess Grace built a mausoleum for her. Much of Baker’s life remains a mystery even to her biographers 

Josephine Baker was born June 3, 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was raised by her mother in a very poor, disorganized family. No one has been able to definitively establish who her father was.   

Josephine Baker

At that time, St. Louis was a very segregated city and many residents were descended from people who had been enslaved for several generations. Josephine’s mother was poor and Josephine began to work while she was still very young. While she was growing up, Josephine worked and lived with several white families for whom she did cleaning. She was often mistreated and sometimes abused. As a child, she saw evidence of the results of the race riots of 1917 during which the homes of many Black families were destroyed. Later she wrote that she had prayed, “Oh God, why couldn’t you have made us all one color?”  

Josephine’s schooling was erratic. For one thing, she frequently changed her residence as she moved from one employer to another, so she missed many classes. She became part of a street entertainment group which moved around the city giving performances wherever they could. When she was 13, she discovered she was pregnant and married her first husband; however, her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and a hysterectomy. Her husband was chronically unemployed, and he soon disappeared from Josephine’s life.  

As Josephine’s skill as a performer grew, she had more opportunities to perform with vaudeville groups in Midwestern cities and eventually in New York City. The biggest change in her life came in 1925, when she went to Paris with a group of performers. Entertainment was not segregated in France, and the group soon became popular with audiences of both races. It was billed as “La Revue Negre” and Josephine became one of the stars of the show. When Josephine became a star, however, she broke her contract and joined a more prestigious group.   

Josephine quickly adapted to France. She learned to speak French fluently and could hold her own with French speakers, although she remained unable to read or write well in either English or French. Her lack of education never seemed to hold her back.  

The first time she returned to America after the trip to Paris was in 1927. There she discovered that the old rules of segregation were still observed. Even though she had been a star in Europe, she was refused accommodation at many hotels in New York City and had to find lodging in Harlem. She soon returned to France and spent most of the war years there. 

Back in France she married again and became a French citizen and a strong supporter of General de Gaulle. She lived in Morocco for a while and carried messages back and forth for the Free French who supported de Gaulle. No one thought to suspect an entertainer of being a spy.    

After the war, Josephine returned to the United States several times. A Josephine Baker Day was held for her in Harlem on May 20, 1950. She also visited South America and Japan but her life continued to be centered in Europe.  

No matter where Josephine Baker travelled or what she did, Josephine was busy and active. One of the major projects of her later life was to adopt orphans from many countries and raise them together. Her goal was to further the cause of international friendship. Many of the children thrived, but their lives were never calm while they lived with Josephine. She continued all her life to spend money recklessly and to evade paying her bills. Whenever she needed more money, she would arrange to go on a tour. 

Josephine Baker’s busy life finally ended on April 12, 1975 while she was just beginning another European tour. For those of us who never saw Josephine Baker perform, there are several videos about her available online as well as several biographies. One of the most detailed biographies was written by one of the children she had adopted toward the end of her life–Josephine Baker: the Hungry Heart by Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase (1993 Random House). It is an excellent introduction to a fascinating woman. 

A Woman Who Kept Dance Alive During Changing Times—Bronislava Nijinska

Adele Fasick1 Comment

Dance performances happen in the present time and then fade away. Musical scores have been written and published for centuries, as have the texts of dramas, but dance has been an elusive art. Before the development of modern photography, there was no way to preserve what dance performances looked like. And some of the people who have contributed most to the art of dance have been almost forgotten, including the younger sister of the great Vaslav Nijinski, Bronislava Nijinska.

Bronislava Nijinska was born in Minsk, Belarus, on January 8, 1891. Raising a family while traveling to so many different locations was difficult and eventually Nijinska’s father left the family. Her mother struggled to raise Nijinska and her brothers, but the children gew up spending much of their time on their own.

Bronislava Nijinska

Eventually each of the children entered the Imperial Theatrical School in Moscow, where they excelled in dancing. Vaslav Nijinsky, quickly became a star and was recognized as a genius when he first started performing. His younger sister was also an excellent performer, but she is remembered more for her work as a choreographer than as a dancer.

Nijinska probably would have followed the pattern that her parents had set, becoming an itinerant dancer in Russia after she graduated from school, but the world changed dramatically after the Russian Revolution and World War I. Nijinska spent much of her life moving from one city to another not only in Europe, but later in South America and the United States. During her long life, Europe was transformed and the world suffered through two world wars, but her allegiance was to her art and not to an individual country.

At first, after graduation from school, Nijinska joined Diaghilev’s ballet troupe which became the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. During the 1920s, many Russians fled the Soviet Union and moved to Western Europe. Vaslav Nijinsky and Diaghilev were leading figures in the group, but Nijinsky became ill and was hospitalized with schizophrenia in 1929, the same year that Diaghilev died. This happened during the period that Western Europeans were becoming aware of the power of ballet and interest in the art was spreading especially to Paris and London. 

Nijinska struggled for the rest of her life to set up a dance troupe that would continue the work these men had pioneered. Her devotion to the art of dance was legendary, but her fame never reached that of her brother or the men who controlled the major dance groups of the period. Nonetheless she was able to articulate some of the major beliefs of modern ballet. “Movement is the principal element in dance” she wrote, explaining why she emphasized the way dancers used their bodies rather than the achievement of graceful tableaus.  

Nijinska has never achieved the fame she deserves, but her latest biography will enable readers to discover why she accomplished so much. Lynn Garafola’s. La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern. (Oxford 2022) gives a rich, full picture of the life and work of Bronislava Nijinska. It is available now in many libraries and bookstores