Dr. Hannah Thuraisingam Robbins

Obviously, this was the Depression era.

as you mentioned, and that led to them relocating from a fairly nice house initially to the Bronx and then to Harlem and trying to figure out how to make ends meet with both Edna and Mike losing their jobs in this time.

Dancing?

Yeah, absolutely.

So she's 16 years old.

Neither her mother or her stepfather have a job.

So she secures an audition at Harlem's legendary Cotton Club.

Yes.

And it's worth saying that the Cotton Club, although kind of legendary to us now, was a really complicated space.

It didn't allow black patrons in.

The black musicians and chorus people were not allowed to use the bathrooms.

They could only rehearse the final rehearsals in the building.

It was quite a tense setup.

But at the same time...

a number of major artists like Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Adelaide Hall, all working there.

And Duke Ellington was crucial.

Well, there is that.

guessing it's not a vibe like hey come on down the cotton club yeah and was she working solely as a dancer was she singing at this point and dancing as well she's been there for a while so she began as a dancer but she was singing as well like the chorus was multifaceted and she certainly started to get spots during this time she stars in her first broadway musical called dance with your gods and she would go do that and then come back and perform at the cotton club

She decides the only way to break her contract at the Cotton Club, given the environment, is to run away.

So she flees and she runs off to, I think, Philadelphia.