19 pages • 38 minutes read
The Harlem Dancer
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Themes
The Public Self Versus The Authentic Self
“The Harlem Dancer” articulates how exterior appearances may not align with inner reality. One's public presentation may not in fact represent what one feels. This is shown through the speaker’s observations of the dancer and their suppositions regarding the audience’s feelings about her based on their behavior. The speaker’s views and those of the audience are revealed to be inaccurate by the end of the poem.
For the audience, the dancer is perceived as an “object” who is there for their pleasure. They delight in her “perfect, half-clothed body” (Line 2) and her movement. They track her in their “eager, passionate gaze” (Line 12) and throw “coins” (Line 10) down at her feet to seemingly claim their right to “devour” (Line 12) her. They consume her for their own enjoyment with little regard for her as a human being. In contrast, the speaker elevates the dancer, making her into a divine symbol. They view her as rising above the situation at hand and assume she is resilient enough to withstand the objectification of her audience. The speaker sees the dancer as better than those surrounding her, suggesting she is “gracefu[l] and calm” (Line 5), “proudly-swaying” (Line 6), and capable of “passing through [the] storm” (Line 8). These images suggest that the speaker sees the dancer as admirably unaffected by the audience’s lust.
However, the speaker has been objectifying her as well and has an epiphany when they suddenly observe “her falsely-smiling face” (Line 11). They, at last, “[know] her self was not in that strange place” (Line 14). The speaker realizes that she is not getting through it via grit and grace, but by dissociation. Her dancing is apart from her authentic self. The dancer’s journey is more difficult than originally seen by the speaker; when the speaker ceases to project their own ideas onto her, they realize she is human, which ends their own objectification of the woman.
The Real Primitive
Harlem clubs would often appeal to a white audience’s eagerness to watch a “primitive” experience considered “other” to themselves (See: Background). In 1917, there was erroneous information that suggested that Black people were more closely aligned with “primitiveness,” especially sexually. White audiences watched Black “exotic” dance routines in hopes of seeing a supposedly ancient and “savage” dance, in which the dancer would lose control, overcome by music and rhythm. McKay acknowledges this dehumanizing expectation in “The Harlem Dancer,” and then subverts it by showing the “primitive” and sexual behavior of the white audience rather than the Black dancer.
The audience is entranced by the woman, “applauding […] [and] laugh[ing]” (Line 1) from the beginning, which suggests they are clapping their hands en masse to encourage her to perform as they expect. They demand she entertain them with her “perfect, half-clothed body” (Line 1), showing its “shape” (Line 12), which is revealed by “light gauze hanging loose around her form” (Line 6). They are drawn over and over to her physicality—body shape and form—and want to see it further exposed. In this way, they become part and parcel to the “storm” (Line 8) the dancer passes through. To make a living, she must endure their assumptions.
While the “youths laug[h] with young prostitutes” (Line 1) and are seemingly already paying for the act of sex, they become insatiable when seeing the dancer, who is at once, for them, tantalizing and forbidden. Like disciples of Bacchus, they are “wine-flushed, bold-eyed” (Line 11) and are more than willing to “devour” (Line 12) the dancer in their “eager, passionate gaze” (Line 12). This drunken revelry feels threatening enough for her to dissociate from “that strange place” (Line 14).
By painting the young men in this light, the speaker demonstrates that it is not the dancer who is breaking down the code of civility—she “danced on gracefully and calm” (Line 5). Rather, the “boys” (Line 11) begin to act on baser instincts. It is the dancer who winds up “proudly swaying” (Line 7), guarding her “self” (Line 14), while the audience descends into the primal.
The Speaker as Waiter
The biographical note on Eli Edwards included with the publication in Seven Arts may offer a way to situate the first-person narrator of “The Harlem Dancer,” moving the speaker closer to the center of the action. Since, as Jericho Brown suggests, “[i]n contrast to other Harlem Renaissance poets, McKay always used the [sonnet] personally and directly rather than archetypally and subtly” (Brown), it is plausible to read the poem as autobiographical. If the “I” (Line 14) in the poem is—as Edwards’s bio phrases—“a young negro who makes his living as a waiter in a New York club” (The Seven Arts: Volume 2), then his reaction to the dancer moves from sympathy (understanding another) to empathy (sharing feelings with another).
Using this lens, the speaker’s notation that he “knew her self was not in that strange place” (Line 14) is not just an observation of the dancer but also of himself. The isolation the dancer has is also his own. The waiter, like the dancer, is employed at the club and understands the necessity of putting up with the crowd to earn a salary and tips. He, too, must wait for “tossing coins” (Line 10) and satisfactory reviews from the patrons or the bosses, who are likely white. Therefore, he, too, must move “gracefully and calm” (Line 3) through the crowded venue. His observation of the dancer’s dissociation from the tasks she performs to earn money may equate with his own disconnect from the “wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys” (Line 11) he serves. He, too, may “falsely-smil[e]” (Line 13) in order to cater to the white audience.
In this way, he sees the dancer as a hopeful symbol, someone who transcends the environment to show resilience like “a proudly-swaying palm” (Line 7). He knows well what it is like to be in this “strange place” (Line 14) and knows his soul does not reside there. He, too, hopes to “pas[s] through [the] storm” (Line 8). The position of the speaker as another employee of the club creates more empathy on the speaker’s part beyond casual observation , and it gives him more reason to comment on the dancer’s performance.
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