Simon – Four Black American Dances – Waltz (2025 Tobias Liu)

“My dad, he always gets on me. He wants me to be a preacher, but I always tell him, ‘Music is my pulpit. That’s where I preach,’” Carlos Simon once told the Washington Post.

In his “Four Black American Dances,” Simon is not exactly standing at a pulpit, per sé. But it’s certainly a lesson of sorts, an elaborately detailed yet compact discourse through the history of Black America. The fourteen-minute work is an action-packed commentary on the “centrality of dance as an expression of connection, ritual, celebration, and worship in Black culture” — a “gesture of reclamation,” as the Boston Globe put it.

Raised in a household in Atlanta where listening to anything except for gospel music was forbidden, Simon’s work is rooted in gospel music — Protestant music that traces its origins to Black spirituals and songs of enslaved people in America and the West Indies. In “Four Black American Dances,” Simon dives into the tension from which gospel music emerged from and explores the complex ways in which dance, history, and the Christian religion have braided together to shape the contours of Black American culture.

“Dance has always been a part of any culture. Particularly in Black American communities, dance is and has been the fabric of social gatherings. There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of dances created over the span of American history that have originated from the social climate of American slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow. This piece is an orchestral study of the music that is associated with the Ring Shout, the Waltz, Tap Dance and the Holy Dance. All of these dances are but a mere representation of the wide range of cultural and social differences within the Black American communities,” he writes.

Throughout the season, the orchestra will perform each of the dances. This program will feature “Waltz,” a “gesture of reclamation” towards the appearance of debutante balls in Black social circles during the 1930s.

“Cotillion balls existed for “upper-class” families as they allowed aristocratic families to vie for better marriage prospects for their daughters. However, cotillion balls were segregated and expensive, and did not include Black Americans. Debutante balls finally appeared in Black social circles during the 1930s, in large part due to the efforts of Black sororities, fraternities, and growing number of affluent Black Americans. The waltz was the dance of choice in these environments,” Simon writes.

• Tobias Liu ’26

Related articles