logo
New York City's Creative Churn: The View From the Dance Floor

New York City's Creative Churn: The View From the Dance Floor

New York Times28-04-2025

Ever wanted to do the Lindy Hop as it was swung at the Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s? To rock your hips through the mambo like dancers at the Palladium Ballroom in the '50s? To pose as if in a vogue battle of the '80s? All in a museum? Now's your chance. Need a lesson? The Museum of the City of New York has you covered there, too.
In 'Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor,' you can choose a record and put it on a turntable. So far, so ordinary. But wait. Here, spinning the record doesn't just cue music. People — in video form — appear all around you, dancing and inviting you to join them.
The exhibition, which guides visitors through some 200 years of social dance in New York City, includes all the artifacts, photographs, wall text and video footage that you might expect in a museum show. But scattered throughout are also video monitors featuring friendly experts who teach the basics of various dance styles. The video-interactive dance floor comes at the end of the show, and the idea is that by the time you arrive there, you know a little something.
This unusual approach derives from the show's subject. On the surface, 'Urban Stomp' is about New York City as an incubator — 'for either the creation of new dances or borrowing dances from other places and creating something new,' said Sarah Henry, the museum's chief curator. But at a deeper level, it's about what Henry called 'the constant churn and creativity of New York.'
'The remixing, mashing up, a conversation of mutual influence that goes back to the 19th century, the promise of the city — all that is embodied on the dance floor,' Henry said.
The first tutorial video introduces early 20th-century ballroom dances popularized by Vernon and Irene Castle, white influencers of their day who borrowed from Black dances and collaborated with the Black ragtime musician James Reese Europe. A nearby vitrine has a few of the Castles' instruction manuals and a lock of Irene's hair, cut when she made the bob fashionable. You can look at those relics and then learn how to dance the fox trot and the Castle Walk.
Participation is built into the exhibition because the museum is trying to be more experiential, but also because the subject is dance. 'One of the things we're trying to solve,' Henry said, 'is how to do justice to dancing in an exhibition. It doesn't stay still. You can't just put it in a box.'
The goal, she added, is a kind of 'alchemy between the inert stuff that is quite eloquent': an invitation to the 1860 Prince of Wales ball; a collage of fliers and tickets for salsa clubs; 'and things that have three dimensions and bring the body into space' — the trumpets of Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, Celia Cruz's platform heels, Big Daddy Kane's flashy track suit. 'That's the closest we can get to bringing those people here, and combined with historical footage and the instructional videos, you get the best chance of it coming to life.'
And if the dancing comes to life, so do the exhibition's themes. As the scholar Derek L. Washington, the show's other curator, put it, 'The dance floor is a space where people are forming and reforming ideas about identity, race and gender. It's about migration, immigration, a form of storytelling for people who might have been marginalized.'
In a sense, 'Urban Stomp' is an expansion of 'Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York,' which Washington curated at the museum in 2017. That show focused on the mixture of Afro-Caribbean and European music and dance that was clumped under the umbrella term salsa in the 1960s. It looked at the influx of Puerto Rican immigrants in the 1950s and at salsa's predecessor in the Afro-Cuban mambo craze of that time. (The show was bilingual, as is 'Urban Stomp.')
After the salsa show, Washington turned to a community-based project called 'Urban Stomp: From Swing to Mambo,' which extended the story back to swing jazz and swing dances, like the Charleston and the Lindy Hop, largely developed by Black residents of Harlem in the 1920s and '30s.
The 'Urban Stomp' exhibition, stretching back into the 19th century and forward into the present, makes more connections, including the bachata and merengue of the Dominicans whose numbers surged in the 1980s and are now the city's largest immigrant group. A section near the end clusters vogue, hip-hop and the hustle: three genres that originated around the same time (the 1960s to the '80s) in some of the same neighborhoods (Harlem and the Bronx)
'Vogue and hip-hop and the hustle are in conversation with earlier balls,' Washington said. 'Finding and creating spaces to dance, different ways of being inclusive or exclusive, different costumes and regalia.'
Giving a tour of the exhibition, Washington pointed out a dress worn at Studio 54 in the 1970s and how it resembled a tango dress in another gallery, worn by Irene Castle some 60 years before. 'The changing same,' he said. Similarly, a visitor following the tutorials might notice a step learned in the swing section recurring under a different name in the hip-hop part.
Washington stressed how carefully the show attends to many kinds of diversity. Gender, race and ethnicity, of course. But there's also diversity of age, borough and body type. The tutorials, as brief and basic as they are, also reveal diversity within each dance form: the many varieties of salsa or vogue and the distinctions among them (Salsa On2, Vogue Femme) or the hip-hop party dances of several generations (the Cabbage Patch, the Sturdy).
Most important, Washington said, was the input of leaders from each dance community. The lessons in vogue are taught by LeFierce LaBeija of the Royal House of LaBeija. Founded by Crystal LaBeija in 1972, this Royal House was the first of the ballroom houses — homes and chosen families for queer people of color.
'We are so proud to have 10 months to display who we are and what we are about,' said Jeffrey Bryant, the global overall overseer of the Royal House of LaBeija. Being in the museum, he added, 'is a radical statement to say, 'We are here and we are getting our just due.''
'A lot of our culture is now in pop society,' he said. 'We don't mind you guys admiring it, but we would like you to know that there is a valid history. We want to take advantage of the platform to give people a little more education.'
As an example, Bryant offered the swanning drops to the floor called dips: 'I would like it to be stated that Kiddie Liddah LaBeija' — Bryant's house name — 'said that it is not called the Death Drop and it is definitely not called a Shablam. It is called a dip.'
Karel Flores, one of the show's salsa instructors, said that Afro-Latin dances like salsa 'are often not even part of the conversation,' when dance history is presented. 'This is a real step forward, for us to be given the place that we deserve.'
Although the exhibition can't be exhaustive, it squeezes in many more dances in a final section called 'Traditions Remixed.' Gathered here are newer city combinations: the Columbia cumbia that branched off into a New York style, the Punjabi bhangra that mixed in hip-hop, Chinatown block parties. A sign from the Urban Contradance scene reads: 'Anyone Can Ask Anyone to Dance.'
'What connects from the beginning of the show to the end,' Henry said, 'is that there's no fixed thing that is dance in New York. There never was and there never will be.'
But what draws the most attention in the final room is the dance floor, inviting with its music and moving bodies, virtual or living.
'People love the dance floor,' Washington said. 'And people mingling with other people in other dance communities is the whole idea.'
During the opening reception, he said, a multiethnic group of visitors danced the dabke, a form shared by several Middle Eastern peoples. 'They recorded it and sent it all over, as if to say, 'This is how the world could be if we were just able to dance with each other for a moment.'
Connected events encourage even more sharing and mixing. On April 12, there was a salsa party with live music. A vogue ball will be held on May 16, with additional events and classes in the works.
And, until 'Urban Stomp' closes in February, there is that dance floor. Henry was standing next to it recently when a visitor who didn't know she worked at the museum approached her.
'You can get out there,' the visitor told her. 'Everybody can dance.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Pioneering ballerina Misty Copeland is retiring from American Ballet Theatre
Pioneering ballerina Misty Copeland is retiring from American Ballet Theatre

USA Today

time24 minutes ago

  • USA Today

Pioneering ballerina Misty Copeland is retiring from American Ballet Theatre

Pioneering ballerina Misty Copeland is retiring from American Ballet Theatre Misty Copeland is ready for her swan song. The dancer, 42, has announced she will retire from the American Ballet Theatre after more than 20 years and deliver her final performance during the company's fall gala in October. "I could never have imagined the life ballet would give me," Copeland said in a statement. "To dance on the world's greatest stages, with artists I admire so deeply, has been one of the greatest gifts of my life." She continued: "My time with ABT has shaped me not just as a dancer, but as a person, and given me the platform to reach back and make space for others. This moment isn't a farewell, it's a celebration of everything we've built together, and a step toward all the work that's still ahead." Copeland made history in 2015 as the first Black woman to become a principal dancer at the ABT. Misty Copeland shares essential advice from Prince, favorite dish to cook, self-care tips Speaking to The New York Times Magazine, she said she initially "wanted to fade away into the background," only to realize this was not "really possible," so she decided to announce her retirement officially. "The legacy of what I've created, the way that I'm carrying so many stories of Black dancers who have come before me — I can't just disappear," she said. "There has to be an official closing to my time at American Ballet Theater, this company that has meant everything to me." Copeland also told the Times she is "dealing with a lot" while preparing for her final performance. How I became a ballerina: Misty Copeland "I have a labral tear that happened during my training recently," she said. "Then I found out that I have all these old injuries that I never acknowledged and danced through. My doctor was like, 'I think you should stop dancing.' I'm like, 'I'm trying!' So it's very humbling, but it's also comforting." The American Ballet Theatre's fall gala, scheduled for Oct. 22, is set to include a "curated selection of works from Copeland's celebrated repertoire," as well as video tributes and performances from her "collaborators and admirers," according to a June 9 announcement. Susan Jaffe, the American Ballet Theatre's artistic director, said in a statement that Copeland's legacy "is profound — not only through the roles she's redefined but also through the lives she's inspired," adding that her "advocacy for inclusion, equity, and education ensures her impact will resonate far beyond this moment." In a May interview with USA TODAY, Copeland reflected, "Throughout my career, so many incredible women, and specifically Black women, have really been like the backbone of my success. That, naturally and organically, taught me the importance of being a mentor." Contributing: Clare Mulroy

Brian Tyree Henry on how ‘Dope Thief' let him ‘reclaim' his name: ‘I was just Paper Boi to people,' and now ‘I became Brian again'
Brian Tyree Henry on how ‘Dope Thief' let him ‘reclaim' his name: ‘I was just Paper Boi to people,' and now ‘I became Brian again'

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Brian Tyree Henry on how ‘Dope Thief' let him ‘reclaim' his name: ‘I was just Paper Boi to people,' and now ‘I became Brian again'

"Dope Thief allowed me to reclaim my name," says Brian Tyree Henry, the star and executive producer of the Apple TV+ limited series. The Oscar, Emmy, and Tony nominee tells Gold Derby, "I was just Paper Boi [from Atlanta] to people for quite a few years. And so with this one, I think that I became Brian again, and that is very special to me." Watch our full interview above. Henry plays Ray Driscoll on Dope Thief, a con artist who, along with his lifelong friend Manny Carvalho (Wagner Moura), robs from drug dealers by posing as DEA agents. Unfortunately, they steal from the wrong people, and mayhem ensues. The program is written by Peter Craig and based on the 2009 novel by Dennis Tafoya. "Everything that happens is absolutely terrible, but in the end, it's a fun ride," the actor recalls. More from GoldDerby Emmy experts debate Comedy Series race: 'Hacks' will compete against 'a bunch of new kids on the block' 2025 Tony Awards highlights: The best, the worst, and the 'Hamilton' mixtape Tonys 2025: Best prediction scores by Gold Derby experts, editors, and users "Wagner Moura is truly one of the best that's ever done it," Henry says of his costar. "Being able to do this show with him was the greatest gift I've ever been given, honestly." On their first day on set, he recalls Moura pulling him aside and revealing that he was "really scared," to which Henry responded, "'Regardless of what goes on, I promise you I won't leave your side. We've got each other.' And from then on, we were just connected and locked in." Henry calls Dope Thief a "love story between these two friends who are more than friends. I don't even think the word 'friend' is appropriate. They've been through so much together. It's very easy to see series where it's a Black and Brown man paired together — violence, drugs, all the yahooey — but you never really get to the core of who they are. But these two men are afraid and vulnerable, and there is grief, there is regret." Apple TV+ Henry sees a connection between his roles as the lead actor and executive producer, and takes both positions seriously. "What I realized by being the star of the show and also the EP, is that there's this phrase that floats around on sets that says, 'It starts from the top.' Whoever is considered the top of the show, their tone dictates the rest of how the show goes and is felt. And so, in this particular project, I felt like being No. 1 on the call sheet meant that I set the tone, and I didn't want anything but joy." The tone of Dope Thief shifts between incredibly dramatic and hilariously light-hearted. "Even if I'm on the ground covered in blood with a hole in my leg, in between takes, we're going to get up, I'm going to play music, we're going to talk," says Henry. "Peter would let us improv all the time, which is my juice. I love it. I just always want to be truthful in where the characters are." Regardless of what happens at upcoming awards shows, Henry is happy that Dope Thief gave him room "to show people my range and that I'm not just one thing." He's already been nominated at the Gotham TV Awards for this project, and the Emmy nominations will be unveiled on July 15. "I don't ever win sh-t," he laughs. "It's cool, but I'm always so wrong about what I think people will recognize. Let me tell you something: I'm honored." Henry opens up about how the sixth episode, in which Ray was in a "delirium" after being shot, came on the heels "of a major loss in my life, when my father died." He explains, "This episode also dealt with Ray and his father [played by Ving Rhames] and all these different things, and I was like, you have got to be kidding. There is no way that you can make this up. It was incredibly cathartic. It is an episode that I truly, truly, truly love. It was incredibly hard to make, but at the end of the day, it was so rewarding." The actor is proud of all of his collaborations and has nothing but thanks for Craig. "I tell Peter all the time, thank you for putting dialogue like this in my mouth," he says, "and for allowing space for me to actually show all these different emotions that they normally just don't let us as Black actors play." What does Henry think his character will be up to five or 10 years in the future? "I hope that Ray is on a farm in a garden that he has procured somewhere in New Hope, Pa.," he says with a smile. "I hope that he makes candles, is in love with his mother [played by Kate Mulgrew], that they're running a shop. I really want him to wear cardigans, but I want him to really feel like he's free," Henry continues. "I think that freedom is the thing that he needs." Dope Thief is now streaming on Apple TV+. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby 'Say Nothing' star Anthony Boyle on playing IRA activist Brendan Hughes: We 'get to the humanity as opposed to the mythology' The Making of 'The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day': PBS variety special 'comes from the heart' From 'Hot Rod' to 'Eastbound' to 'Gemstones,' Danny McBride breaks down his most righteous roles: 'It's been an absolute blast' Click here to read the full article.

Roseanne Barr claims ‘God told me' to send 2018 racist tweet that derailed her career
Roseanne Barr claims ‘God told me' to send 2018 racist tweet that derailed her career

New York Post

time2 hours ago

  • New York Post

Roseanne Barr claims ‘God told me' to send 2018 racist tweet that derailed her career

Roseanne Barr is getting candid on the tweet that got her canceled from Hollywood. The actress, 72, starred in the hit sitcom 'Roseanne' for 10 seasons from 1988 to 1997 before the show was rebooted in 2018. The revival, however, was short-lived due to a racist tweet Barr sent out that year. Now, the 'Get Bruce' alum is doubling down, admitting she has no regrets. 6 Roseanne Barr at the 'Roseanne' Press Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel on March 23, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. WireImage 'The way I feel about it is that God told me to do what I did, and it was a nuclear bomb,' Barr told Variety in an interview published on Friday, June 6. 'The day of my tweet, over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal. And that was my intent. So, whatever.' In 2018, Barr tweeted a picture of Jarrett next to Helena Bonham Carter and wrote, 'Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.' 6 Roseanne Barr on Instagram. Instagram/Roseanne Barr The comedian noted to the outlet that she feels she posted 'the perfect caption.' 'I was already having nightmares about never going back to that show ['Roseanne'], and God woke me up,' Barr recalled about sending off the tweet that night while also noting again that she was on a mixture of alcohol and Ambien. 'I had my laptop there in bed, as always,' Barr explained, 'and I opened it, and there was [an X post with] a picture of Valerie Jarrett next to Helena Bonham Carter in full makeup as Ari in 'Planet of the Apes,' and they looked like Xerox copies of each other, so I captioned it.' Jarrett, 68, was born in Iran and helped facilitate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under President Barack Obama's administration. 6 Roseanne Barr Getty Images Despite high first season ratings, the 'Roseanne' revival was canceled by ABC after Barr's tweet. Channing Dungey, ABC's Entertainment president at the time, said the Emmy winner's words were 'abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.' Disney CEO Bob Iger said, 'There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.' However, Barr feels otherwise, sharing that her tweet was not racist and for others to assume it says more about them. 6 The TV sitcom 'Roseanne.' Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images 'They were so racist that they thought my tweet said Black people look like monkeys when it was about 'Planet of the Apes,' which is a movie about fascism,' she told Variety. 'Rod Serling himself said it's about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about Black people, Bob.' ABC then moved forward with the reboot but killed off Barr's character with a drug overdose and changed the title of the series to 'The Conners.' The sitcom ran for seven seasons before wrapping up for good in April. 6 The sitcom 'Roseanne.' Getty Images 'I felt very pissed off that they stole my rights and killed me,' Barr expressed. 'It was so stupid and shortsighted, and I don't know how they answer to their shareholders for canceling me before even one sponsor pulled out.' The hit show also starred John Goodman (Dan Conner), Sara Gilbert (Darlene Conner), Laurie Metcalf (Jackie Harris), and Johnny Galecki (David Healy). In May, Barr expressed how she felt the cancel culture mob came after her. 6 Roseanne Barr attends the Mr. Birchum Series Premiere on May 07, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Getty Images for DailyWire+ 'They were waiting for me to slip up,' she alleged, confirming she was referring to the left-leaning executives at the network. Barr claimed ABC bosses were already on high alert about her support for Trump. 'They spied. They monitored everything I did,' alleged Barr. 'They wanted to censor me from the very beginning.' She also charged, 'They hijacked that tweet and made out it said something that it didn't.' 'I'm not stupid. I would never refer to a black person as the product of an ape,' Barr continued. Taking back her original apology, the comedian said, 'The worst mistake you can do is apologize to the left. Then they are on a crusade against you. Once you admit a mistake, they will keep on until you're dead.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store