In the summer of 1944, Black modern dancer Pearl Primus searched for authenticity. Over the past year, she had achieved critical success for her modern dance choreography that protested racial injustice in the South, informed by a leftist political mission. However, she thought something was missing. She explained to Dance Magazine, “I had done dances about sharecroppers and lynchings without ever having been close to such things.” In search of that missing component, Primus traveled from New York City, her home since she was a toddler, to the US South. A budding anthropologist, she went to live among Southern communities as a way to retool her protest choreography and make it more authentic. Unbeknownst to them, Southern community members would be recruited by her to provide inspiration for her performances and the leftist political stance that fueled those works. In identifying authentic expressive practices of the South through her anthropological practice, transferring what she found to her choreography, and then performing that repertoire on New York stages, she would further develop her ability to instill in Northern audiences the necessity of leftist activism.

1944 年夏天，黑人现代舞者 Pearl Primus 寻找真实性。在过去的一年里，她的现代舞编舞取得了巨大的成功，该舞蹈在左翼政治使命的指导下抗议南方的种族不公正。然而，她觉得少了点什么。她向《舞蹈杂志》（Dance Magazine）解释说，“我曾跳过关于佃农和私刑的舞蹈，但从未接触过这些事情。为了寻找这个缺失的部分，Primus 从她从小就回家的纽约市前往美国南部。作为一名崭露头角的人类学家，她去南方社区生活，以此来重新调整她的抗议编排，使其更加真实。他们不知道的是，她会招募南方社区成员，为她的表演和推动这些作品的左翼政治立场提供灵感。通过她的人类学实践确定南方真实的表达实践，将她所发现的转化为她的编舞，然后在纽约的舞台上表演这些曲目，她将进一步发展她向北方观众灌输左翼激进主义必要性的能力。