In the September 1969 issue of Dance Magazine, contributing editor Ann Barzel reviewed a two-hour television special focused on Jacob’s Pillow, part of National Educational Television’s “The Sounds of Summer” series.
Barzel wrote that, of the performances, “the best by far” was Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder. She continued: “The dance is a masterpiece and it was danced by an excellent group. An outdoor setting is often too realistic and destroys the theatricality of a dance. Also it handicaps the dancers by offering an impossibly difficult floor which may be a sandy beach or grassy knoll. In this TV offering the physical problem was solved by providing a special stage or dancing space that blended with the scene. Further, the outdoor setting was right for the chain-gang suite. The photography was plotted, not haphazard.”
McKayle’s 1959 work imagines the inner lives of men toiling in a prison chain-gang in the American South, who dream of freedom in the guise of a woman—a singular dancer who is at turns a sweetheart, mother, and wife. Set to a suite of work songs, it is widely considered a classic of American modern dance.