The Preservation of an American Classic : Donald McKayle’s 1951 ‘Games’ is revived by Lula Washington

“I saw a cop a walking down the street, swinging his billie and a strutting his beat. He’s gonna catch you, beat you hard, break all of your bones, so help me God.”

--Children’s street song from “Games.”

Sometimes the only way to get something done is to do it yourself.

Choreographer Lula Washington did, and as a result, the repertory of her local troupe now boasts an American modern-dance classic whose survival she has perhaps helped to ensure.

The work is “Games,” choreographed by Donald McKayle in 1951. This danced picture of city kids’ street games shattered by a police beating uses children’s chanted songs and dialogue to combine a sense of harsh urban reality with sassiness and charm. Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theater, which Washington directs, will dance the piece in a mixed-bill performance Feb. 11 at USC’s Bing Theater.

“It’s always been a goal of the company to do works by pioneer black choreographers like McKayle,” Washington said. “I’d especially wanted to do ‘Games.’ ”

Then last summer at a conference on minority dance in Massachusetts at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, that long-held desire turned into an immediate objective.

At the conference, Washington learned about “The Black Tradition in American Modern Dance,” a project created by the American Dance Festival, an event held annually in Durham, N.C.

Funded by the Ford Foundation, the project, now in its second year, aims at reviving and preserving works of prominent black modern dance choreographers--particularly those without their own companies. It places the works in the active repertories of troupes chosen by each choreographer. As part of the project, these productions are eventually seen at the prestigious 55-year-old Durham festival.

“Games” was the pilot work in the three-year, $300,000 project, but it was set on Chuck Davis’ company in Durham in 1986 (as a kind of prologue to the Ford-funded activity), Washington learned. After that, it was not scheduled to be remounted.

“That motivated me to go all out to try to get the work,” said Washington, whose 9-year-old troupe performs mostly her own choreography. Adding a classic to her company’s repertory “would give us more visibility on a national scale,” she said. “It would help people to take us more seriously.”

So Washington approached McKayle, who also choreographed the hit Broadway musicals “Sophisticated Ladies” and “Raisin” and whose works have been danced by Alvin Ailey’s company and others. She felt her company was at last strong enough to perform the piece and hoped the world-class choreographer would too.

“The timing was good,” said Washington, who had known McKayle for several years. “I asked Donald if he thought we could handle it now and he said yes.”

All that was left was financial backing, and the people at the local Brody Arts Fund, which supports multicultural projects, apparently liked the idea too, she said. They awarded her a $5,000 grant to mount the work.

Washington talks a lot about the low visibility of all Southern California concert dance, a “huge problem” exemplified by the absence of West Coast troupes from the first two years of the “Black Traditions” project.

“People don’t know you exist and what you can do,” she said, ascribing the dilemma largely to a lack of funds for national publicity and touring.

So far, besides “Games,” McKayle’s “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder” and “District Storyville” have also been included in the preservation project, along with dances by Eleo Pomare, Talley Beatty and Pearl Primus. The works were or are all being mounted on troupes from the South, the Midwest and the East.

American Dance Festival director Charles Reinhart said that a desire to please each choreographer, not a concern for geography, has been paramount.

McKayle said that though he has lived in Los Angeles since 1969, he didn’t select Washington’s present 12-member company for his works because it previously lacked enough dancers.

Washington did not dispute this, nor does she blame anyone for the larger situation.

“I just feel that the more people around the country--especially those that do festivals or other projects--that we can make aware of our existence, the better off we’re going to be. . . . With greater visibility, we would at least have been considered for the ‘Black Traditions’ program.”

The idea of challenging her dancers to act and sing as well as dance particularly attracted Washington to “Games.”

Filled with every-day gestures from mock fist fights to a game of jump rope, the work has been performed by the companies of Alvin Ailey (his junior troupe), Eliot Feld, Los Angeles’ Gloria Newman and the Inner City Repertory Dance Theater. McKayle ran the latter troupe in the early ‘70s, when the work was last presented here.

During a recent rehearsal with Washington’s company, McKayle, 58, said the idea for the dance emerged from childhood memories. One of them triggered “Terror,” the final, sordid scene of police brutality.

“I was 14 years old in the Bronx playing ‘Steal the White Flag’ and suddenly I heard one of the Puerto Rican kids yelling ‘La Jura! La Jura!’ which was a word for cop,” he said. “The next thing I knew, a cop was hitting a kid. Then a squad car came and took the kid away.”

McKayle praised the troupe’s execution of his choreography.

“ ‘Games’ needs youthfulness, it needs dramatic as well as movement ability and it needs a kind of absolute innocence of approach. It’s a work the company definitely can do and do well,” he said.

Angel Bates, 17, a four-year member of Washington’s company, said it was “an honor” to be working with a prominent modern dance figure. “Since I started dancing, I’ve known about certain choreographers like Alvin Ailey, Arthur Mitchell and Donald McKayle.”

Reinhart, who initiated the “Black Traditions” project, lauded the Los Angeles collaboration:

“If we’ve raised the consciousness one notch to the value of ‘Games’ and the project’s other works, then we’ve been incredibly successful,” he said.