← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Dance Like A New Yorker
00:30:33
For over two centuries, New York City's social dance scene has given rise to trends that have been both popular and controversial.
Loading summary
Transcript80 lines
- [00:04]
Alison Stewart
Listener support WNYC Studios.
- [00:16]
Dr. Sarah Henry
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. There are 19 days left to join the 2025 edition of our public song project. Submissions are due April 28th. It's not too late to get involved for a chance to be featured on wnyc. Here's how it work. Send us a song based on something in the public domain. It can draw from a poem, a book, a movie. It could even be as simple as a cover of a song that you, your parents, your grandparents or their grandparents grew up singing. Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Bach, Beethoven. You don't have to pull from something that's newly in the public domain. As long as it's in. Follow me. The public domain. It's a fair game for the Public Song Project. To find out how to get involved, go to wnyc.org publicsongproject Again, that's WNBA nyc.org publicsong project Submissions must be received by Monday, April 28th. We're excited to hear your songs. Dance has always been a key part of New York City. From the ballrooms of the Gilded Age to sidewalk hip hop battles, dancing has been a way for New Yorkers to socialize, flirt, incubate new ideas, and synthesize cultures and traditions. A new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York tells the story of more than two centuries of dance in the city. It's called Urban Dreams and Defiance on the Dance Floor. It opens to the public this Friday, April 11, and we are very glad to talk about it with two of the show's curators. Dr. Sarah Henry, who is the museum's chief curator and deputy director. Nice to see you, Sarah.
- [01:55]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Good to be here.
- [01:56]
Dr. Sarah Henry
And Dr. Derek Leon Washington, a cultural anthropologist and a dancer, I'm told. Nice to meet you as well.
- [02:02]
Alison Stewart
Thank you for having me. Thank you.
- [02:04]
Dr. Sarah Henry
So why is dance important to the history of New York? Sarah, you go first.
- [02:09]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Sure. Well, dance is, as you said, woven through the fabric of New York City. And New York gives a great lens to understand the emergence of incredible dance forms that have influenced the world. And dance is a great way to look at New York City because these social dance places, the places where people come together to participate, are an embodiment of what New York's all about. It's a cultural crossroads where people get to meet folks that they wouldn't encounter otherwise. And also the dance floors themselves are a place where identity is navigated. Who belongs, who, maybe who doesn't belong, who's going to borrow from whom, who's going to Be influenced by whom? So together, these stories of New York City and the social dance world, they are actually an embodiment of what New York is all about.
- [03:01]
Dr. Sarah Henry
Derek, I'm going to ask you to put your cultural anthropologist hat on. What can we learn about the city through dance?
- [03:08]
Alison Stewart
We can learn about the people through dance. And through the people is the way that they identify themselves and also how they're identified, how they move, what they see important in them, lives in their lives, the different types of foods they eat, the ways that they create space and make space for joy, for defiant joy, for inclusivity. So what dance does is the different types of movements, the ways that people dance together or solo talks, as Sarah was saying, about the diversity of New York, of how, again, people create space. But also what this exhibition does from an anthropological and historical lens. It shows how people create chosen family.
- [03:50]
Dr. Sarah Henry
Listeners, we want to hear from you. Tell us, what kind of social dance.
- [03:54]
Listener
Do you like, how you learned? Call or text us at 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. Or you can reach out to us on social media at Olive nyc.
- [04:06]
Dr. Sarah Henry
What's a memory you have of dancing in New York? Where do you go today if you Want to Dance? 2124-339692-22433, WNYC.
- [04:18]
Listener
We're talking dance.
- [04:20]
Dr. Sarah Henry
This exhibit starts in the 8th 1800s. Sarah that's right. What was social dance in the city.
- [04:25]
Listener
Like in the 1800s?
- [04:26]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Well, for one thing, social dance was ubiquitous. So if you wanted to go out to enjoy yourself, dance was in everything. It was in private events, it was in public celebrations. If something big happened in the city, like you opened the Erie Canal, for example, or a famous visitor came from abroad, like Charles Dickens, it was always celebrated by dance. And these dance spaces, some of them were very separated from each other. So there were really the high social events that you needed to angle for a ticket to. But there were also dancing happening in the back room of taverns and in social halls and in people's homes. So dance becomes sort of a universal language that people can share. And there's a lot of innovation going on in the 19th century with immigrant groups coming in and migrants coming through the city. But there's also a real shared vocabulary of dance. So you the kind of dances that you see in. For example, we have dance cards in the exhibition. I love that you can read what the program was for the evening and you see the list of the dances that were being done at A fancy, fancy event like the Prince of Wales Ball. And then you see the list of dances that were being done at a labor union social or where they were raising money for a charity event. And the same vocabulary of dances were circulating around in the city at the time. And at the same time, sort of new influences and new ethnic influences were coming in and constantly evolving it. Because it's always a story of evolution. Cross fertilization, mixing and matching is the story of dance in New York.
- [06:06]
Listener
Derek, how does class factor into dance at this time?
- [06:09]
Alison Stewart
So class, also race are really specific at this time. So we have, as Sarah was saying, different immigrant groups and the idea of who was American and who belonged. But also when we're talking about class, we're talking about ethnicity and race. So the dances having those conversations in those spaces. But also the dance shows how people were reintroduced to their hips or how they weren't supposed to move their hips. Dance talks about the ideas of respectability and respectability, politics, of gender politics. So dance is a beautiful lens to look at all the different ideas and politics and how people projected power, but also how people contested power. Dance. But also, I want to make the point is when we're talking about dance, that dance is inseparable from the music. So we have to look at who's playing music, who is singing. So sometimes we have people of color or ethnic immigrants playing the music, or we have women singing as well. So dance, especially in New York, really disrupts what we think is respectable. It disrupts the idea of power, and it disrupts who we think is American.
- [07:19]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Yeah, that's why we gave the exhibition the subtitle Dreams and Defiance on the Dance Floor. Because the dreams have all to do with who you can be and what identities you can assume and who you can associate with and how you can express yourself. But the defiance also can be about who gets to claim space, who has the right to come and move their bodies in what ways. And so in a way, it becomes a little microcosm of the dynamics of the city as it changes over the years.
- [07:49]
Listener
Let's take some calls. Let's talk to Ann, who's calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Ann. Thank you so much for making time to call, all of it.
- [07:58]
Ann
I just love the subject because it's so funny. I'm born and raised in Brooklyn. My parents are from the South. I'm a black American. And, you know, black people, we dance until we're like 80 or 90 years old. We never graduate to cocktail parties. But I started dancing on my dad's feet like most little girls. And then my mother decided to teach me a dance one day and she held my hands out and we did the polka. And I thought that's what you're supposed to do, the polka. So I went to my first little dance and little boy asked me to dance. And I grabbed his hands and pulled him out and started pulling him from side to side in a polka. And he was looking at me like I was crazy. And no one else danced for me for the whole, for the whole party. You were afraid to come near me.
- [08:41]
Listener
But you knew how to do the polka.
- [08:43]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
I love that I knew how to.
- [08:44]
Ann
Polka, how to do the polka. I thought I was really cool.
- [08:48]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
And the polka was a huge sensation in New York in the 19th century. The whole lyric around, oh, you New York girls, can't you do the polka? And it spread across all different cultures.
- [09:00]
Alison Stewart
And then with the exhibition is that we look at dance from the past, but also the present. So even in communities today, the polka is still done. I was actually at a quinceanera two weeks ago and people were doing the polka do as well. So going back to the caller like this exhibition has a dance for everyone. So the title of one of the sections are you are invited. So for all body types, all people who want to move or even witness the exhibition is for them.
- [09:28]
Listener
My guests are Sarah Henry and Derek Leon Washington, the co curators of the new exhibit Urban Stomp. It celebrates over 200 years of social dancing in New York. It opens to the public at the Museum of the City of New York. It it's happening this Friday, April 11th. Let's talk to Pedro from Bergen County. Hi Pedro, thank you so much for calling in.
- [09:50]
Pedro
Hey Alison. Hey, everybody there?
- [09:52]
Alison Stewart
I don't know.
- [09:52]
Pedro
Can you hear me?
- [09:53]
Listener
Yes, yes, sound great.
- [09:56]
Pedro
Okay. Love the polka comment. Actually make me think. There is this great movie by the Finnish filmmaker Aki Cowdis Mackey and it's called Leningrad Cowboys Go to America. I don't know if you any of you have seen it. And it's about a kind of a polka group from Finland that come to the US and they have like this rock and roll polka thing going on. But they can't break into the, you know, into the rock and roll kind of scene. But they make it, but they make it huge in the Tex Mex quinceanera scene by playing, you know, polkas and nortenho's and you know, getting together with the accordion community. Anyway, awesome film. Aki Kauris Maki, one of the greatest filmmakers of all times. But anyway, I recommend that film. But that. That. That. That was not. My comment was that, you know, I grew up, you know, in my 20s in. In New York City. And I remember, you know, going dancing to the Palladium, Dance Theory, the Latin Quarter, the Pyramid, the World. And it was so fluid, that thing of, you know, and we were, you know, all types and colors, and we were going from one place to the other. And the plan, I mean, it wasn't even. The whole thing is, where do we go dance? I mean, the whole thing was going dancing every weekend. There was nothing else.
- [11:27]
Dr. Sarah Henry
Thank you so much for calling in, Pedro.
- [11:29]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
I love that because that brings attention to the last part of that title, which is on the Dance Floor. And this exhibition is about spaces in New York and how people occupy the spaces and encounter each other in the spaces. And on view in the exhibition are great photographs of a lot of the places that the caller just mentioned. But also we're bringing music, bodies and movement into conversation with each other. So in the exhibition, you get to see musical instruments, outfits that people wore dancing over the course of 200 years, video of people dancing, and then invitations to the visitors to move their bodies in space in the exhibition. So we actually have culture bearers from all different traditions inviting you to stand up and just learn a step or two from them along the way. And then a big reveal at the end, a giant dance party, of course, that you can dj. Our visitors get to DJ it. So that's really exciting.
- [12:28]
Dr. Sarah Henry
I'm interested in when people start to loosen up about dance. In the 1900s, when did people begin to use it as a form to express themselves through their bodies? Up until then, we'd had the dance cards. You had to be this many feet apart. And then people started loosening up, right?
- [12:48]
Alison Stewart
So during the ragtime era, so the late 1800s and especially the 1910s, when the music became more syncopated, when people couldn't help but, as I said before, reintroduced to their hips and to their shoulders and improvise with themselves and the music, but also with their partners. And also that's the time of the different influx of migrants and immigrants from different parts. As one of the callers were saying is, like, their family is from the South. So we had the great migration. We had just migration from Eastern Europe as well. So we talked about polka, we talked about these other types of rhythms all coming together. But part of the exhibition going back to that, there's another section that it's called. It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't got that swing so that's when everything changed, when jazz music became popular and people were swinging with the music and their bodies.
- [13:35]
Dr. Sarah Henry
Let's listen to some music. Here's Swing Brother Swing by Billie Holiday and Count Basie Orchestra.
- [13:52]
Caller
Hot rhythm stimulates me can't help but swing it, boy Swing it, brother Swing don't stop the dizzy devil Stop this foolish pattern Come on, swing me gate Swinging from a swing rain to go and there ain't nobody gonna hold me down say, listen, Bo hurry up and sen Let me go to town Stop this evil battle and this foolish traveler Come on kill me Jo.
- [14:39]
Dr. Sarah Henry
We got.
- [14:40]
Listener
A Texas says it was the late 90s.
- [14:41]
Dr. Sarah Henry
I was in my early 20s when I would go to swing 46 and the supper club to listen to live bands and swing dance.
- [14:49]
Listener
It was like being transported back in time.
- [14:53]
Dr. Sarah Henry
When did swing become the thing?
- [14:57]
Alison Stewart
So swing became a thing in the late 19, 1920s. So it was created by George Shorty Snowden, but also became really, really popular in the mid-1930s. And it became a thing because it started, of course, in Harlem, but it spread throughout New York City in the boroughs. And what's particular to swing as, like, you swing or you swing dance, and I still do, is that it invites people to dance, to come as they are, so they can dance solo, they can dance with a partner. With the exhibition, we talk about the beautiful history of swing in Harlem and throughout New York City. But we also show that it's alive and kicking, that it's happening now. And we even have a tutorial where they're showing fundamental swing steps, but also we call them culture bearers because they're showing fundamental steps, but also they're showing the cultural ideas around the movement of how you should hold a partner, how you should listen to the music. And the idea of Lindy Hop from Frankie Manning, which we also have some items from, is having a good time being present with yourself and being present with someone else.
- [16:00]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
And since we just heard Billie Holiday, I think we just have to share that. If you come to the exhibition, you can see some jewelry that she wore, including a flower ornament that she wore in her hair, along with items from other really important jazz musicians that bring that dialogue between the music and the movement right into the gallery.
- [16:22]
Listener
Let's talk to Stuart, who's calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Stuart, you're on the air.
- [16:29]
Stuart
Hi, all. I'd love to talk about the Barefoot Boogie. It's a volunteer run dance going on for, like, over 37 years. And it's very inclusive, all ages. It's a $15 recommended donation, but anybody's welcome. I do a light show there, drawings while things are happening. There's places to lie down and talk and visit. And it's a big dance floor at Camp Friendship. It's a, it's a lot of fun. And the next one is May 10th. It goes from 8 till 11 and I highly recommend it. And it's all volunteer DJ. So if you have a hot list you want to share, that's your, you can, the system's all set up for you and you could go for it.
- [17:15]
Alison Stewart
I've actually been Stewart. It's actually amazing. In California and Texas, I've done ecstatic dance, five rhythms and definitely I love barefoot boogies. So thank you for sharing that.
- [17:24]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
And I also want to say that as part of the exhibition, we're building up a map of places where you can go participate in dance. There's no way the exhibition can cover all of the thousands of ways to dance in New York, but we're hoping our visitors and your listeners will help us to build up that map and database for us all to use.
- [17:43]
Listener
We're talking about urban Stomp Dreams and Defiance on the Dance Floor. It's at the Museum of the City of New York. It's opening this Friday. We'll have more after a quick break. This is ALL of it.
- [18:04]
Dr. Sarah Henry
You're listening to ALL of IT on wnyc. Hi, I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with Sarah Henry and Derek Leon Washington, the co curators of the new exhibit Urban Dreams and Defiance on the Dance Floor. It celebrates over 200 years of social dancing in New York and it opens to the public at the Museum of the City of New York this Friday, April 11th. Listeners, we want to get you invited into this conversation. Tell us what kind of social dance that you like to do. How'd you learn? Give us a call. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC, what memory do you have of dancing in New York? Where do you go today if you want to get your dance on, give us a call. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC Sarah, there was a pushback. There was the city's cabaret law which was in went on far too long. Tell us a little bit about when it was enacted and why.
- [19:01]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Sure. Well, I think this connects to the story of defiance and what ways people can move their bodies and what other people think about that. So actually, even before the cabaret law was officially announced, there were all kinds of blue laws that said that limited what people could do in spaces like bars, restaurants that prohibited folks. You could actually get a ticket or get arrested. There is one quote in the exhibition about a blue law on Sundays that said if people take so much as one waltz step after midnight, they're going to be arrested. And that meant that for much of the 20th century and into the early 21st century, the opportunities for casual dancing and spaces of refreshment and entertainment were really limited. And they began to be repealed in the 21st century, which opened up a lot of spaces. But, Derek, one of the themes that we have at the very end of the exhibition is all dancing allowed. Because we see this exhibition as a place that's sort of the inverse of the cabaret laws. Do you want to add any of the detail about that law?
- [20:16]
Alison Stewart
So I definitely want to give a shout out to Dance Parade, who was really helpful in overturning the cabaret law around 2017. So the last part of the finale of the exhibition is called All Dancing Allowed. So it's our immersive dance floor, where we worked with about 40 plus culture bears and dancers, where a person can put a record on a turntable and then the lights, the music, the dance happens in different types of strings or we call scrims on the back wall, on the lights. And the idea is that however you want to dance, it's not a tutorial, however you are alone or with groups or with people, you can dance your own style, you can feel welcome. It's what I like to call radical inclusivity, the radical diversity of New York. But going back where you're saying all of anthropological, historical words, the idea is just having fun, being alive and having community. And that's what we want to convey with this exhibition is like we need to have fun sometimes. We need that moment to exhale. We need that moment to sometimes, if possible, touch another person and to swing them out, as we say, and Lindy hop. So we wanted to end the exhibition with all dancing allowed.
- [21:28]
Dr. Sarah Henry
The cabaret laws were put in place to keep certain institutions not available to everyone, right?
- [21:36]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Yeah, I think that's right. And it really became a cudgel that the forces could use against gay culture, for example, a real dampening of the way that spaces could be used and a legal mechanism for going in and like finding and arresting people and putting a damper on what kinds of people could gather and enjoy culture in these spaces. So it was a really big deal, a really big fight for the entertainment industry, and also just for communities that were finding spaces, needing to make space for their own culture and finding it repressed in a lot of ways.
- [22:16]
Alison Stewart
Right.
- [22:17]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Yeah.
- [22:17]
Alison Stewart
And quickly, in the exhibition, we have a section called Breaks and Breaking Barriers to where we talk about the queer community, but through a lens of Vogue and Houses, also Hustle and the hip hop pop movement as well. And then finally another section. Are we all siti yet? Traditions Remix. So we're talking about those spaces and also communities that have been marginalized, but they continue to create dance remix dances and really show why New York is the center of dance and social dance.
- [22:47]
Dr. Sarah Henry
Let's take a call. This is Peter from Rego Park. Hi, Peter. Thanks for calling, all of it.
- [22:53]
Peter
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. No, it's a great conversation. I just wanted to give a shout out to dance in classrooms. This is an amazing program we have here in New York City that starts teaching kids about social dancing in the fifth grade. And they do a lot more than that as well. But talking about building community and creating social space. One of the biggest parts of not only do they grow some great dancers, but it's very much about teaching the kids how to be respectful with each other. And I was fortunate to have my sons go through that program. They're now in their 20s, and they still have this repertoire where they can be out on the dance floor and grab somebody and start dancing and having a great time.
- [23:35]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Yeah.
- [23:36]
Peter
Just really brilliant. So I'm glad that you've created this exhibit.
- [23:39]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Yeah. Great. Social dancing is a socializing mechanism. It's also a way to bridge differences because dance is a universal language, and people don't need to speak the same language, spoken language, to be able to interact with each other and to reach across differences that might have separated them and to encounter people that they wouldn't have met before and have a way to create community on the dance floor.
- [24:03]
Dr. Sarah Henry
Let's talk to Regina, who's calling in from Staten Island. Hi, Regina. Thanks for calling. Wn.
- [24:08]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Hi.
- [24:09]
Regina
Hi, Alison. I love your show, Alison. I love the subject, and it's wonderful listening to your guest. I'm going to see the Buena Vista Social Club in May, and I'm all excited. And what I told your screener was that I grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and at that time, it was a little microcosm. There was the Puerto Ricans, the Italians, the Jewish section, the Polish section. And I learned to dance mambo and cha cha with my older brother. And they would dance in a settlement house. They would dance the lindy and then they would dance what we call Latin music. And I know there's groups of Latin, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, always dancing. I don't dance that much anymore, but. But I'm very, very happy to be part of this show.
- [25:00]
Dr. Sarah Henry
Thank you so much for calling. Let's get into it. Let's talk about the Afro Caribbean dance influences. Tell us about it. What's in the show?
- [25:07]
Alison Stewart
Yeah. So what's in the show? Going back to the crawler real quickly, we do have a video actually of a street party in Bushwick as well. So that's really important to show the cultural context of the dance, but also dance and movement. And many of the 35 plus films and videos that we have on monitors have never been shown publicly. And the idea, because we were able to create relationships with communities, but also we wanted to show the other aspects of these dance cultures about the Afro Latin aspects of the dance. So this is a central part of the exhibition. It's called Freedom Dreams From Mambo to Merengue. And some of the key highlights of that part is we have the suits of Tito Puente and Eddie Torres. It shows the interconnection between social dance and music. When Eddie Torres created the Tito Puente dancers. Also a Celia Cruz dressed to show how she moved and how she brought guadacha, rumba, cha cha cha and mambo to New York City. But also there's a beautiful display of her different dance shoes, A center that she was a dancer and how she danced on stage. But she asked people to either witness her dance, but also to dance themselves. I think an important aspect of this exhibition was you have Mambo from the Palladium, but also four different styles of salsa dancing. And the idea is that we're inviting different communities that are dancing these styles in New York City, but also to show that New York City is a nexus of these Afro Latin styles. And then lastly, before I pass it on to Sarah, is we're also including merengue and bachata. And this is really important as not just one of the most popular social dances, but also to be inclusive of how these communities, these Afro Latin dance communities are in constant conversation and mixing moves and re energizing moves. But also, as said before, New York City is a nexus, but also it's a circular flow between the Caribbean and New York City as well.
- [26:59]
Listener
Well, let's get some Celia Cruz in here.
- [27:01]
Alison Stewart
Yes.
- [27:46]
Listener
We'Re talking about urban stomp dreams and defiance on the dance floor. My guests are Sarah Henry and Derek Leon Washington. We're gonna have to wrap up. But I did want to get to the section titled Cypher. It focuses on the 60s and the 70s with hip hop Vogue. We got a shout out here to the New York City Hustle Dance community is alive and well. Can you explain what the cipher is?
- [28:07]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
I'm going to give that one to Derek to get us started.
- [28:10]
Alison Stewart
So the cypher. Well, first, a cypher is a circle. So it's a space where people dance, exchange moves, sometimes they battle. And I think what's important in this context is that it creates a barrier of safety. But in other times it keeps people out as well. And what this section of the exhibition talks about is within a five mile radius from Harlem to the South Bronx, we have the creation of the hustle, or some call the Latin hustle. We have of breakdancing and the hip hop movement, and also we have of the vogue movement as well. So we wanted to show how these are connected in a different way and through some of the objects. Thanks, I'll pass this on to them.
- [28:53]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
And in this section of the exhibition, as throughout, there are interactive Learn to Dance screens. So you actually get a mini lesson from practitioners of these dance forms. And for me, that's super fun because I never thought of myself as somebody who could go and try a little bit of these different dance forms. But it's very accessible. Everybody's welcome. By the time they get to the big dance floor at the end of the exhibition, hopefully your bodies are warmed up a little bit and they can project themselves into a hustle space or into a hip hop space, or into a vogue space, even if they've never done it before. And really be part of this story of New York and dance.
- [29:32]
Dr. Sarah Henry
The exhibit opens on Friday, but there's big happenings on Saturday. Tell us what it is.
- [29:37]
Alison Stewart
So the big happening is called Rhythm of the Salsa Saturday. So we're working with Jimmy Bosch and other communities. So the idea is this is gonna be a special set of salsa. Dur Hard salsa, Salsa calena, Colombian salsa and Salsa Cubana. So the idea is like we're showing all of the different styles of salsa dancing and music that is done in New York City. So that's just one of them. We have a whole listing of different programs. And the idea is that we're continuing these relationships with the dance community. And what people can do is go on our website under Urban Stomp and see the different listings of different events, but also educational opportunities because we couldn't fit everything on the wall. So that's where we continue those relationships with our culture bears so we can have these conversations with communities and with our audiences.
- [30:25]
Dr. Sarah Henry
My guest has been Sarah Henry, chief curator and deputy director of the Museum of the City of New York, and Derek Leon, Washington, cultural anthropologist, dancer and co curator of Urban Stomp. Have a great opening.
- [30:37]
Alison Stewart
Thank you.
- [30:38]
Dr. Derek Leon Washington
Thanks. Come dance with us.
- [30:39]
Listener
Oh, yes.