User:Nmuret/Revue nègre

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La Revue nègre is a musical show created in 1925 in Paris. Through its success and the personality of Joséphine Baker who is its rising star, it allows, among other things, a wider dissemination of jazz music and black culture in Europe.

History
The creation of the Revue nègre is linked to the emergence in France of so-called jazz music: it landed in Paris a few months before the end of World War I via jazz bands made up of American soldiers and the influence of musicians. Like Igor Stravinsky (Ragtime, 1919), poets like Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire or Blaise Cendrars, painters, before spreading in Parisian dance halls through the Charleston fashion. Other styles are revealed like New Orleans Jazz from London where Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts very early on. On the other hand, at the start of the 1920s, music hall and cabaret shows spread to a larger audience. In 1921, one could even speak of a "negrophilia": the Goncourt Prize was awarded that year to Martiniquan René Maran for Batouala, A True Negro Novel. La Revue nègre is part of the context of "black madness", it is both the product and the instrument of its amplification.

The creation of the "Revue nègre" took place in the Champs-Élysées theater, which had already known hours of glories and scandals at the time of the Ballets Russes period (1913-1917) and was looking for a second wind. In 1925, André Daven, artistic director of this Parisien theater, set out in search of a new type of show. His friend the painter Fernand Léger who worked on the Swedish Ballets, with mixed success, has also long been marked by Negro Art, just like his accomplices Apollinaire, Picasso, Max Jacob and some of the first surrealists: Léger suggests creating a show performed entirely by black people. Daven then meets an American, Caroline Dudley Reagan (who will become the companion of Joseph Delteil), who sets out in search of Daven for a troop made up of black people. It was in New York that Dudley, as a real impresario, succeeded in convincing twelve black musicians including Sidney Bechet, and eight singers including Joséphine Baker, that is to say twenty people in all, to leave for Paris, a city renowned for its liberality.

The artistic spirit of the review is unprecedented, mixing original jazz-band music and choreography, burlesque numbers, scenography with mobile decorations in front of which the partly naked body can express itself with vulgarity. One can say that this show constitutes an event in the sense that, one the one hand, it reveals for the first time in France an authentic "black culture" detached from colonialist pressures, and on the other hand, it allows a kind of popular essence to emerge in a place reserved for artistic experiences of modernist type.

The promotional poster was created by the young poster artist Paul Colin, whose brilliant career it helped launch.

The premiere took place on October 2, 1925, Joséphine Baker played the first part. In the crowded room, are notably present Robert Desnos, Francis Picabia and Blaise Cendrars. Success is there: Daven wins his bet.

Behind The Scenes
From May 10 to May 31, 1919, the first "Negro Art and Oceanic Art Exhibition" opened at the Devambez - Paul Guillaume gallery located at 45, Malesherbes Boulevard

In October 1923, La Création du Monde was premiered at the Chaps-Élysées Theater with music by Darius Milhaud based on L'Anthologie Nègre by Cendrars and with sets by Fernand Léger as part of the Swedish Ballets.

Just four days before the premiere of la Revue nègre, Daven, who attended the rehearsals, decided to limit the part reserved for the singer Maud de Forest, considered too "American blues" and to hire a new director, Jacques-Charles, a renowned music hall specialist replacing Louis Douglas, an Afro-American choreographer who is nevertheless accustomed to Parisian venues, who nevetherless remains present in the troupe of dancers.

It is this same Jacques-Charles who spots, among the eight choristers called the "Charleston Babies", Joséphine Baker, to appear in the opening scene and in the final scene, which will be entitled "The Wild Dance" featuring Joséphine, topless, and dancer-actor Joe Alex in an erotic-suggestive duet.

The jazz band is directed by Claude Hopkins.

The sets are made by Miguel Covarrubias, a friend of Caroline Dudley Reagan.

After the end of la Revue nègre (December 1925), the company, significantly reorganized, went on tour in Europe (Brussels, Berlin) then Baker broke his contract with Dudley and, back in Paris, began a new review at the start of the 1926 school year, at the Folies Bergère where she inaugurates her famous "banana skirt".

Boxer Al Brown was invited by Baker to participate in his review.