Have you ever wanted to do swaying Lindy Hop in the Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s? How to run through the mambo like a dancer in the Palladium Ballroom in the 50s? Are you posing in the 1980s trendy battles? Are they all in the museum? Now is your chance. Do you need a lesson? You'll also be covering it there at Museums in New York City.
In “Urban Stomp: Dreams and Dance Floor Rebellion”, you can select records and place them on the turntable. So far it's very normal. But wait. Here, it's not just a spin on the record and cue the music. People in video format will appear around you, dance and invite you to participate.
The exhibition, which will guide visitors to nearly 200 years of social dance in New York City, includes all the artifacts, photos, wall text and video footage you'll be expecting from the museum show. But scattered throughout are also video monitors featuring friendly experts who teach the basics of different dance styles. The video interactive dance floor is at the end of the show. The idea is that by the time you get there you know a bit.
This extraordinary approach stems from the show's subject matter. On the surface, “Urban Stomp” is about New York City as an incubator. “To create a new dance or borrow a dance from another location and create a new one,” said Sarah Henry, the museum's chief curator. But on a deeper level, it's about what Henry called “New York's constant churn and creativity.”
“Remixes, mashups, conversations of mutual influence dating back to the 19th century, urban promises – everything embodied on the dance floor,” Henry said.
The first tutorial video shows ballroom dances from the early 20th century, when the then white influencers Vernon and Irene Castle borrowed from Black Dance and worked with black rag time musician James Reese Europe, popularized. Nearby Vitlin has a castle instruction manual and some keys to Irene's hair, cut when the bob was fashionable. You can see those relics and learn how to dance the Foxtrot and the castle walk.
Not only is the museum trying to be more experiential, but the subject matter is dancing, so participation is incorporated into the exhibition. “It's one of the things we're trying to solve,” Henry said. “It's a way to do justice to dance at an exhibition. It's not just about it. You can't just put it in the box.”
The goal is “alchemy among the inert, very eloquent.” An invitation to the 1860 Prince of Wales Ball. Salsa Club flyer and ticket collage. “And there's three dimensions, what brings the body into space” – Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis trumpets, Celia Cruise platform heels, and Big Daddy Kane's flashy tracksuits. “That's the closest thing we're going to bring those people here, and when combined with historical footage and educational videos, you'll have the best chance of it coming back to life.”
And if dance comes back to life, that's the same with the exhibition theme. As scholar Derek L. Washington, another curator of the show, put it, “The dance floor is a space where people shape and reform ideas about identity, race and gender. It is a form of storytelling for people who may have been migrated, immigrated, and marginalized.”
In a sense, “Urban Stomp” is an expansion of “Rhythm and Power: Salsa Salsa,” Washington curated at the museum in 2017. It focuses on a mix of Afro-Caribbean and European music and dance, which became clumps under a salsa umbrella in the 1960s. We saw the influx of Puerto Rican immigrants in the 1950s and the predecessor of Salsa in the mambo mambo of the Afro-Cuban at the time. (The show was bilingual, just like “City Stomp.”)
After the Salsa Show, Washington turned to a community-based project called “Urban Stomp: From Swing to Mambo.” This extended the story to swing jazz and swing dance, like Charleston and Lindy Hop, developed by the black residents of Harlem in the 1920s and 30s.
The “Urban Stomp” exhibition, dating back to the 19th century and moving forward to the present, has surged in numbers in the 1980s and has made more connections, including Dominican vachata and meringue, now the city's largest immigrant group. The sections near the end include Vogue, Hip Hop, Hustle: Three genres that began in the same neighborhood (Harlem and the Bronx) at the same time (1960s to 80s):
“Vogue, Hip-Hop and The Hustle are having conversations with the previous ball,” Washington said. “It's a variety of ways to find and create spaces to dance and be inclusive or exclusive, different costumes and regalia.”
On tour of the exhibition, Washington pointed out a dress worn at Studio 54 in the 1970s and a dress similar to another gallery tango dress worn by Eileen Castle 60 years ago. “The same change,” he said. Similarly, visitors following the tutorial may notice the steps they have learned in the swing section, which is repeated with another name in the hip-hop part.
Washington highlighted how much attention the show pays to many types of diversity. Of course, gender, race, ethnicity. However, there is also diversity in age, boroughs and body shape. The tutorial reveals the diversity within each dance form so concise and essentially. Many types of salsa or vogue and the distinction between them (Salsa on2, Vogue Femme) or several generations of hip hop parties (cab patches, sturdy).
Most importantly, Washington said it was the views of leaders in each dance community. The lessons of Vogue are taught by Lefierce Labeija, the royal family of Labeija. Founded by Crystal Laveyja in 1972, the royal family was the first in the Ballroom House.
“We are proud to be able to show you who we are and what we are doing for 10 months,” said Jeffrey Bryant, the royal director of Labeija. While in the museum, he added that it was a radical statement saying, “We're here and we're just being paid.” ”
“A lot of our culture is now in pop society,” he said. “We don't mind you guys praise it, but we want you to know that it has a valid history. We want to use the platform to provide a little more education for people.”
As an example, Bryant provided a swanning drop to the floor called a dip. “I would like you to say that Kidi Riddarabayja is the name of Bryant's house.”
One of the show's salsa instructors, Carrel Flores, said that salsa-like afro-latin dances “often not part of the conversation.” “This is a real step because we are given the right place.”
The exhibition cannot be thorough, but we squeeze more dances in the final section called “Traditions Remixed.” The new city combination gathered here is Punjab Bangla, mixed with Columbia Cumbia, hip hop and Chinatown block parties, which branch out into New York style. Signs from the city's contradiction scenes say, “Anyone can ask them to dance.”
“It connects from start to finish of the show,” Henry said.
But the most attention in the final room is the dance floor, where it is invited to its music and moving body, virtual or life.
“People love the dance floor,” Washington said. “And the whole idea is people who are mingling with other people in the other dance community.”
During the opening reception, a multi-ethnic group of visitors danced the dub, a form shared by several Middle Eastern people. “They recorded it and sent it all over the place.
Connected events further promote sharing and mixing. On April 12th, there was a live music salsa party. Vogue Ball will be held on May 16th, with additional events and classes participating in the work.
And there will be that dance floor until “Urban Stomp” closes in February. Henry was standing next to her recently when a visitor who had no idea he had been working at the museum approached her.
“You can go out there,” the visitor told her. “Everyone can dance.”
