The Harlem Dancer

In “The Harlem Dancer,” the speaker observes a woman dance and sing before an audience of “[a]pplauding youths [who] laughed with young prostitutes” (Line 1) in a Harlem nightclub. While McKay wrote the poem at the same time he worked as a waiter in a New York club, within the poem’s context, the speaker’s role is more ambiguous. It is unclear what position the speaker holds, but as they watch the woman’s performance, they also observe those who attend the show. The speaker’s view of the woman is both admiring and sympathetic and suggests a self-identification with the inner life of the dancer. They, too, feel locked in a “strange place” (Line 12), dissociated from the actions around them.

Harlem was known for its embrace of eroticism, and the dancer appears to be an “exotic” performer. She is “half-clothed” (Line 2) in “light gauze hanging loose about her form” (Line 6), suggesting a sexualized routine for the clientele. This is confirmed later as the speaker notes “the wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls” (Line 11) are willingly “devour[ing] her shape with eager, passionate gaze” (Line 12). They toss “coins in praise” (Line 10), which suggests either appreciation or equates the dancer with the “young prostitutes” (Line 1) in the boys’ laps, performing an erotic service for money.

The speaker sees the dancer in a more angelic form. Her “voice was like the sound of blended flutes” (Line 3) and she moves “gracefully and calm” (Line 5) despite the more raucous crowd. Her curly hair is “shiny” (Line 9) and “luxuriant” (Line 10). To the speaker, she is a “proudly-swaying palm” (Line 7), holding steady “through [the] storm” (Line 8) of the rowdy response. This dignity and resilience make her “gro[w] lovelier” (Line 8) in the view of the speaker, aiding their self-identification with her. They see her, and by extension themselves, as apart from the rest of the environment.

The imagery the speaker uses also connects the dancer to what were considered Black spaces and iconography. Many Harlem clubs created floorshows that capitalized on such ideas, with backdrops and/or costumes that alluded to plantations in the American South, Caribbean locales, or African jungles. Black dancers, both men and women, often performed for all-white audiences, who objectified their physicality and sexuality.

This informs the speaker’s descriptions of the dancer’s melodious song being “like the sound of blended flutes / [b]lown by black players upon a picnic day” (Lines 3-4) and the image of her as a palm tree, which grows in more tropical climes. If one interprets the speaker as McKay himself, these images mirror the tropical landscape and culture of his native Jamaica, where Black lives exist outside of the white gaze. In the speaker's eyes, Black bodies and spaces are wholesome, and the performer’s grace subverts the stereotype of the “inherent” “primitive” nature of people of darker skin tones.

While the dancer works within these confines to earn money, the speaker notes this is not what she wants to be doing. Her expression is one of “falsely-smiling” (Line 11). The speaker believes the dancer’s inner life is separate from her action of performing: “I knew her self was not in that strange place” (Line 12). In other words, she has dissociated her “self,” or true personality from her role as a dancer. In this way, the speaker questions the system of utilizing Black bodies as entertainment, noting that the club itself is a “strange place” (Line 12) that both pays the dancer and commodifies her at the same time.

In the end, the speaker sees the dancer’s humanity and dignity—her grace, her calm, her resilience against objectification. By extension, the identification with the dancer also separates the speaker from those who objectify her. While the audience may glory in their objectification of her, the speaker offers her understanding and empathy instead as a kind of kin in “that strange place” (Line 14).