00:00:15.882 --> 00:00:19.519
[Moncel Durden]
All right. So, I want y'all
to think about something.

00:00:19.552 --> 00:00:22.489
Think to yourself,
what is the first sound,

00:00:22.522 --> 00:00:26.159
song, rhythmic structure
that I can remember?

00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:30.263
[heartbeat pumping]

00:00:31.631 --> 00:00:33.733
You're hearing
the heartbeat.

00:00:33.767 --> 00:00:35.668
You are getting rhythm.

00:00:36.870 --> 00:00:39.739
You get accustomed
to sounds

00:00:39.773 --> 00:00:41.775
and the rhythm patterns
of those sounds.

00:00:41.808 --> 00:00:44.344
And so you are
passing down information.

00:00:44.377 --> 00:00:46.613
Before you're even here,
that memory

00:00:46.646 --> 00:00:49.215
is coming from
mother to child.

00:00:49.249 --> 00:00:50.884
So, we're getting
this information

00:00:50.917 --> 00:00:53.753
and we're growing up with it
and it just makes sense.

00:00:53.787 --> 00:00:55.822
We might not
be able to explain it,

00:00:55.855 --> 00:00:58.458
but that way of
moving a body,

00:00:58.491 --> 00:01:01.795
this is how the people
in my community move.

00:01:01.828 --> 00:01:04.431
So when I start dancing,
I'm right there with you.

00:01:04.464 --> 00:01:06.533
You don't have to teach me
how to do a dance.

00:01:06.566 --> 00:01:09.569
It's in my blood.
It's in my community.

00:01:09.602 --> 00:01:10.603
I just do it.

00:01:10.637 --> 00:01:13.573
[upbeat drum
theme playing]

00:01:18.545 --> 00:01:23.349
[Debbie Allen]
I view dance
as the original art form.

00:01:23.383 --> 00:01:26.319
Man was standing his feet
upon the planet,

00:01:26.352 --> 00:01:27.754
leaping, spinning.

00:01:27.787 --> 00:01:31.424
Before we could write,
before we could even talk,

00:01:31.458 --> 00:01:33.593
we were dancing.

00:01:33.626 --> 00:01:37.397
[Saleemah Knight]
Jazz dance,
it's the way that we live,

00:01:37.430 --> 00:01:39.732
breathe, and speak
on a daily basis.

00:01:39.766 --> 00:01:41.534
It's a conversation.

00:01:41.568 --> 00:01:43.303
It's about seeing
the people around you

00:01:43.336 --> 00:01:45.405
and really feeling,
with empathy,

00:01:45.438 --> 00:01:47.474
who those people are
and understanding

00:01:47.507 --> 00:01:49.709
how you relate to them
through movement.

00:01:52.879 --> 00:01:55.949
[Melanie George]
If jazz is
about humanity, and it is,

00:01:55.982 --> 00:01:58.451
there are
infinite ways of being,

00:01:58.485 --> 00:02:00.253
and we should be allowed
to move through

00:02:00.286 --> 00:02:02.355
all of those spaces
and claim jazz.

00:02:02.388 --> 00:02:04.724
The one thing that
I ask of every single person

00:02:04.757 --> 00:02:06.926
when they're working
with this material is,

00:02:06.960 --> 00:02:08.728
say where you got
this stuff from,

00:02:08.761 --> 00:02:09.929
and if you're not sure,

00:02:09.963 --> 00:02:11.865
investigate
and do the research.

00:02:11.898 --> 00:02:13.600
In the same way
that no one owns jazz,

00:02:13.633 --> 00:02:15.635
no one's
really making up anything

00:02:15.668 --> 00:02:17.637
that didn't come from someplace.

00:02:19.472 --> 00:02:21.808
A part of why our history
is not understood

00:02:21.841 --> 00:02:23.443
is because we
don't attribute

00:02:23.476 --> 00:02:25.545
and we don't call back
to what came before.

00:02:25.578 --> 00:02:28.381
We are always steeped in,
like, now and there.

00:02:28.414 --> 00:02:30.283
Like, what's beyond?

00:02:31.784 --> 00:02:35.221
The history allowed us
to get to now,

00:02:35.255 --> 00:02:37.657
so it's our responsibility
to the form

00:02:37.690 --> 00:02:39.692
to attribute
where stuff comes from.

00:02:54.340 --> 00:02:58.278
[Julie Andrews' "Le Jazz Hot"]

00:03:05.451 --> 00:03:06.953
♪ About 20 years ago

00:03:06.986 --> 00:03:10.723
♪ Way down in
New Orleans ♪

00:03:13.326 --> 00:03:15.295
♪ A group of fellas

00:03:15.328 --> 00:03:20.700
♪ Found a new
kind of music ♪

00:03:20.733 --> 00:03:25.004
♪ And they decided
To call it ♪

00:03:25.038 --> 00:03:27.407
♪ Jazz

00:03:36.349 --> 00:03:39.953
♪ Oh, baby, won't
you play me ♪

00:03:39.986 --> 00:03:42.355
♪ Le Jazz Hot maybe

00:03:42.388 --> 00:03:45.892
♪ And don't ever
let it end ♪

00:03:47.894 --> 00:03:49.529
♪ I tell you, friend

00:03:49.562 --> 00:03:51.664
♪ It's really something
To hear ♪

00:03:51.698 --> 00:03:53.733
People all over the world
love jazz dance.

00:03:53.766 --> 00:03:56.502
They just don't realize
that they love jazz dance.

00:03:56.536 --> 00:03:58.671
It is very hard
to define what jazz is.

00:03:58.705 --> 00:04:00.707
But then when you see it,
you see it.

00:04:00.740 --> 00:04:02.075
Liz Thompson used to say,

00:04:02.108 --> 00:04:05.511
"Jazz dance
is dance's bastard child."

00:04:05.545 --> 00:04:08.314
And if I can't say that
on camera,

00:04:08.348 --> 00:04:10.950
jazz dance is the illegitimate
child of dance.

00:04:10.984 --> 00:04:12.952
♪ Oh, so baby

00:04:12.986 --> 00:04:14.854
♪ Le Jazz Hot may be

00:04:14.887 --> 00:04:19.058
[George]
I don't know what's
more American than jazz.

00:04:19.092 --> 00:04:22.829
Enslaved culture,
migratory culture,

00:04:22.862 --> 00:04:25.665
indigenous culture
can be found in jazz.

00:04:25.698 --> 00:04:27.867
It's such a Hodge-podge,

00:04:27.900 --> 00:04:30.069
a ragout
of lots of different things

00:04:30.103 --> 00:04:31.571
that came into the pot.

00:04:31.604 --> 00:04:34.707
And so,
in that very American way,

00:04:34.741 --> 00:04:38.711
we sort of steal from
everybody and find something
new.

00:04:40.013 --> 00:04:43.483
When people speak,
they tend to lie about things

00:04:43.516 --> 00:04:45.351
and dance is honest.

00:04:45.385 --> 00:04:47.920
It's all
the backgrounds of everybody

00:04:47.954 --> 00:04:50.089
and it's really
what they feel

00:04:50.123 --> 00:04:51.557
in their heart
and their soul.

00:04:51.591 --> 00:04:54.594
Jazz has a heartbeat
and a rhythm

00:04:54.627 --> 00:04:55.895
that makes people move

00:04:55.928 --> 00:05:00.033
very differently
from any other dance form.

00:05:00.066 --> 00:05:03.803
Jazz is inspired
by the rituals, the rhythms,

00:05:03.836 --> 00:05:07.073
the sounds, the earth,
the community.

00:05:07.106 --> 00:05:10.643
What was happening with
dance, with jazz, dance, and
music

00:05:10.677 --> 00:05:13.780
here in this country
was actually mirroring
what was happening

00:05:13.813 --> 00:05:15.715
in the country
historically, politically.

00:05:15.748 --> 00:05:17.517
Jazz is always political

00:05:17.550 --> 00:05:20.820
because it's imagining
a future that we could share.

00:05:20.853 --> 00:05:22.588
And how great
could that be?

00:05:24.490 --> 00:05:28.861
♪ Oh, before

00:05:28.895 --> 00:05:32.665
[men vocalizing]

00:05:32.699 --> 00:05:36.969
♪ It's time

00:05:37.970 --> 00:05:40.840
♪ I got nothing

00:05:40.873 --> 00:05:45.111
[Durden]
The culture of dance
is deeply embedded

00:05:45.144 --> 00:05:49.115
in Afro-diasporic people,
deeply embedded.

00:05:51.551 --> 00:05:55.555
We dance even
if there's no performance.

00:05:57.490 --> 00:05:59.792
It's just in us to dance.

00:05:59.826 --> 00:06:01.461
It's emotionally freeing.

00:06:01.494 --> 00:06:03.463
It's how we deal
with day-to-day life.

00:06:03.496 --> 00:06:05.531
It's how we express
our self through joy,

00:06:05.565 --> 00:06:08.034
through sorrow,
through pain.

00:06:08.067 --> 00:06:10.536
♪ I went

00:06:12.205 --> 00:06:15.074
♪ Went in the valley

00:06:15.108 --> 00:06:19.612
[Lindsay Guarino]
You can't dismiss
the way that racism

00:06:19.645 --> 00:06:22.582
has impacted jazz dance.

00:06:22.615 --> 00:06:23.883
The greatest misfortune

00:06:23.916 --> 00:06:25.752
that I see today
in jazz dance

00:06:25.785 --> 00:06:28.154
is that a lot of the times
the roots aren't acknowledged,

00:06:28.187 --> 00:06:30.523
and a lot of people
don't even know that

00:06:30.556 --> 00:06:34.127
the movement they're doing
is stemming from that place.

00:06:37.597 --> 00:06:41.567
The atrocities that a lot
of our ancestors had to face,

00:06:41.601 --> 00:06:44.504
they put into their dance,
into their music.

00:06:44.537 --> 00:06:47.874
They expressed
themselves and released their
tension

00:06:47.907 --> 00:06:50.443
and their stress
through their art.

00:06:51.811 --> 00:06:54.580
If they didn't have
these outlets, man,

00:06:54.614 --> 00:06:57.950
I don't know
if they would've survived.

00:06:59.185 --> 00:07:02.955
♪ Yeah

00:07:02.989 --> 00:07:07.527
♪ My soul...

00:07:07.560 --> 00:07:10.663
[Knight]
We never start
African or Latin history at
slavery.

00:07:10.696 --> 00:07:13.032
We start before that. So we
look at what was going on

00:07:13.065 --> 00:07:15.268
in those countries
or on those continents

00:07:15.301 --> 00:07:17.637
before it was
interrupted.

00:07:17.670 --> 00:07:21.040
So, when we're looking at
the lineage of jazz dance,

00:07:21.073 --> 00:07:23.876
we take the Juba and the Shika
dances of the Nigerian peoples

00:07:23.910 --> 00:07:25.912
and we bring that
to the United States

00:07:25.945 --> 00:07:28.648
by way of
the transatlantic slave trade.

00:07:37.723 --> 00:07:39.659
[DeFrantz]
That's part of
what the Middle Passage did

00:07:39.692 --> 00:07:41.727
that's quite different
than how the dances

00:07:41.761 --> 00:07:43.729
might have developed
on the continent

00:07:43.763 --> 00:07:45.531
because there's
so tiny room

00:07:45.565 --> 00:07:48.968
for Black Americans
to maneuver socially

00:07:49.001 --> 00:07:52.271
that the embodied movement
that becomes jazz

00:07:52.305 --> 00:07:58.644
takes on that much more
potential, possibility,
urgency.

00:08:02.648 --> 00:08:03.916
[Knight]
So,
we arrive here

00:08:03.950 --> 00:08:05.952
and we've got
this automatic sense

00:08:05.985 --> 00:08:09.322
of percussiveness in the body
and how important that became

00:08:09.355 --> 00:08:11.591
when you're also
thinking about a group of people

00:08:11.624 --> 00:08:15.595
whose cultural practices
were taken away from them.

00:08:15.628 --> 00:08:17.663
Now you're just who you are
as a person,

00:08:17.697 --> 00:08:20.299
devoid of what
your once identity was

00:08:20.333 --> 00:08:22.568
in your original country.

00:08:27.340 --> 00:08:29.308
[Michael Blake]
For slaves,

00:08:29.342 --> 00:08:33.279
their dance and their music
was all they owned
for themselves.

00:08:38.751 --> 00:08:41.254
[Dr. George Faison]
It
could reach the hypnotic

00:08:41.287 --> 00:08:47.193
level of releasing them
to that other place

00:08:47.226 --> 00:08:49.128
where they weren't slaves,

00:08:49.161 --> 00:08:53.733
where they...
they were free.

00:08:57.236 --> 00:08:59.572
[African music playing]

00:09:06.212 --> 00:09:08.881
[Jason Samuels Smith]
The Slave Act of 1739

00:09:08.915 --> 00:09:11.851
wouldn't allow Africans
to use drums

00:09:11.884 --> 00:09:15.788
and the reason was the revolt
that was organized

00:09:15.821 --> 00:09:20.326
in this year was organized
by playing drums.

00:09:20.359 --> 00:09:22.261
They communicated
with each other

00:09:22.295 --> 00:09:23.663
with different rhythms.

00:09:23.696 --> 00:09:25.164
And so, after that,

00:09:25.197 --> 00:09:27.800
if any African was caught
playing drums,

00:09:27.833 --> 00:09:29.168
their hands were cut off.

00:09:29.201 --> 00:09:31.137
So, this rhythm and this music,

00:09:31.170 --> 00:09:35.141
this spirit
was then redistributed

00:09:35.174 --> 00:09:37.243
throughout the body.

00:09:41.447 --> 00:09:46.185
Juba is a social dance
that started on the plantation.

00:09:46.218 --> 00:09:49.755
What they did was use
their bodies to make the sounds

00:09:49.789 --> 00:09:52.024
and to still communicate with
each other

00:09:52.058 --> 00:09:54.860
and really continue
that community.

00:10:02.034 --> 00:10:04.070
[DeFrantz]
So, Patting Juba
almost immediately

00:10:04.103 --> 00:10:09.208
sets a standard for jazz as
this exploration of rhythm

00:10:09.241 --> 00:10:13.346
and playful fun but also
a political possibility.

00:10:13.379 --> 00:10:16.415
So, information can be shared
through how the rhythm

00:10:16.449 --> 00:10:18.384
is disrupted or arranged.

00:10:20.453 --> 00:10:22.989
[Smith]
And that grew
into more social dances

00:10:23.022 --> 00:10:26.926
where you entertain the idea
of being elevated,

00:10:26.959 --> 00:10:32.231
of being white, of mimicking
European court dances.

00:10:32.264 --> 00:10:36.969
So, that's where the cakewalk
evolved from.

00:10:38.437 --> 00:10:42.241
The cakewalk was a dance
done on plantations

00:10:42.274 --> 00:10:45.845
where the Africans
who were enslaved at the time

00:10:45.878 --> 00:10:49.415
would literally make fun
of their masters.

00:10:49.448 --> 00:10:52.284
They would present themselves
and their partner,

00:10:52.318 --> 00:10:54.453
and they would be dressed
in a certain way.

00:10:54.487 --> 00:10:56.922
And so, Africans would
create these dances

00:10:56.956 --> 00:11:00.326
to mimic and
imitate them.

00:11:00.359 --> 00:11:03.195
[Camille Brown]
It was
a way for the enslaved
Africans

00:11:03.229 --> 00:11:06.499
to resist and in the moment
of oppression,

00:11:06.532 --> 00:11:09.035
they found a
way to release

00:11:09.068 --> 00:11:12.405
and to find humor and joy.

00:11:13.939 --> 00:11:16.075
[DeFrantz]
The cakewalk
is the foundation

00:11:16.108 --> 00:11:17.443
for all of
Broadway dancing

00:11:17.476 --> 00:11:19.178
and thus, the foundation
for jazz.

00:11:19.211 --> 00:11:22.381
The cakewalk
is the originary moment

00:11:22.415 --> 00:11:24.283
where something
new is produced

00:11:24.316 --> 00:11:27.253
by this American experiment,
if you will.

00:11:27.286 --> 00:11:30.823
But also this way that
Black Americans are disavowed

00:11:30.856 --> 00:11:33.192
and pushed to this place
where creativity

00:11:33.225 --> 00:11:36.028
is aligned with
political possibility.

00:11:58.250 --> 00:12:01.554
Black Americans
had zero possibilities

00:12:01.587 --> 00:12:03.189
for professional life.

00:12:03.222 --> 00:12:06.525
We have our first forms
of occupations

00:12:06.559 --> 00:12:08.194
around minstrel shows.

00:12:08.227 --> 00:12:11.997
So, the foundational avenues
of employment

00:12:12.031 --> 00:12:14.366
that lead to jazz
dance are tied

00:12:14.400 --> 00:12:18.370
up in this history
of denigration

00:12:18.404 --> 00:12:21.507
and of flattening
the complex social

00:12:21.540 --> 00:12:25.544
and political lives of a
really diverse group of
people

00:12:25.578 --> 00:12:28.414
into two-dimensional
stereotypes.

00:12:45.397 --> 00:12:49.034
The traits of
jazz dance are

00:12:49.068 --> 00:12:51.370
variations and rhythmic
patterns,

00:12:51.403 --> 00:12:54.907
because when you think
of jazz, jazz moves.

00:12:54.940 --> 00:12:58.844
It speeds up, it slows down,
it has a variation.

00:12:58.878 --> 00:13:00.479
So, it's not just one thing.

00:13:00.513 --> 00:13:05.050
And what jazz is, is
it took this African

00:13:05.084 --> 00:13:08.154
predisposition to
syncopate, if you will,

00:13:08.187 --> 00:13:12.057
to overlay a rhythm
different from this ground
rhythm.

00:13:12.091 --> 00:13:17.229
And it made the rhythmic life
of jazz dancing

00:13:17.263 --> 00:13:19.298
filled with surprises.

00:13:22.034 --> 00:13:26.639
I think one of the key
tenets of jazz is improvisation.

00:13:26.672 --> 00:13:30.009
Without you bringing
your own interpretation of it,

00:13:30.042 --> 00:13:32.311
it's not jazz.

00:13:32.344 --> 00:13:34.880
[Graciela Danielle]
You are
not up here like in ballet.

00:13:34.914 --> 00:13:40.619
You are down there.
You are digging on the ground.

00:13:42.221 --> 00:13:44.957
That power, that passion,
that sex.

00:13:44.990 --> 00:13:47.226
What else is
there in life?

00:13:49.094 --> 00:13:52.932
[Siegenfeld]
The great
significant trait is
polyrhythm.

00:13:53.666 --> 00:13:55.134
Meaning there's a beat going on,

00:13:55.167 --> 00:13:57.970
the boom, boom, boom,
boom, boom,

00:13:58.003 --> 00:13:59.905
boom, boom, boom, boom.

00:13:59.939 --> 00:14:03.342
You know, if that just keeps
going on and keeps going on,

00:14:03.375 --> 00:14:05.044
we're gonna fall asleep.

00:14:05.077 --> 00:14:09.548
But what the jazz people
did was individuated against it.

00:14:09.582 --> 00:14:10.916
Come on.

00:14:10.950 --> 00:14:12.618
Come on. Come on.

00:14:22.628 --> 00:14:24.430
[Knight]
The Harlem
Renaissance, we look at it

00:14:24.463 --> 00:14:26.532
as the African-American
Enlightenment movement

00:14:26.565 --> 00:14:28.234
in the United States.

00:14:28.267 --> 00:14:31.103
Circa the 1920s,
you've got music,

00:14:31.136 --> 00:14:33.305
dance, philosophers,
writers.

00:14:33.339 --> 00:14:36.976
All doing great things
at the same time.

00:14:37.009 --> 00:14:40.613
And during this time
there was a very big racial
divide.

00:14:40.646 --> 00:14:42.681
But in New York,
there were white bodies

00:14:42.715 --> 00:14:46.151
that were really
interested in being a part of
the movement.

00:14:46.185 --> 00:14:48.721
[Allen]
Black America
was setting the trend,

00:14:48.754 --> 00:14:51.023
then like
we are now.

00:14:51.056 --> 00:14:53.192
The Savoy Ballroom
in New York

00:14:53.225 --> 00:14:57.997
was one of the first places
where they could not stop whites

00:14:58.030 --> 00:15:02.668
from coming and having
this wonderful socialization

00:15:02.701 --> 00:15:04.637
with Blacks over dance.

00:15:04.670 --> 00:15:07.673
It was unheard of,
but you couldn't stop it,

00:15:07.706 --> 00:15:10.309
it was just so hot up
in that ballroom.

00:15:10.342 --> 00:15:12.311
[jazz music playing]

00:15:16.548 --> 00:15:18.183
[Siegenfeld]
The
Savoy Ballroom,

00:15:18.217 --> 00:15:20.452
it was the very first
integrated public space

00:15:20.486 --> 00:15:22.021
in the United States.

00:15:22.054 --> 00:15:23.656
The dancing
was so extreme

00:15:23.689 --> 00:15:27.393
that they had to replace
the floor every three years.

00:15:27.426 --> 00:15:29.395
[Knight]
And it would just be
people dancing

00:15:29.428 --> 00:15:31.230
to classical jazz music,

00:15:31.263 --> 00:15:33.632
doing swing dances,
jitterbug, Lindy Hop,

00:15:33.666 --> 00:15:36.135
all the dances that you imagine
when you think about

00:15:36.168 --> 00:15:38.103
the origins of jazz dance.

00:15:45.110 --> 00:15:47.046
[Brown]
There is a dance,
there is a social dance

00:15:47.079 --> 00:15:50.416
that comes from the
community, that lives in the
heart.

00:15:50.449 --> 00:15:52.351
It's in your blood,
it's in your spirit.

00:15:52.384 --> 00:15:54.553
It's that vernacular dance
that was homegrown

00:15:54.586 --> 00:15:56.422
that comes right
out of the streets

00:15:56.455 --> 00:15:59.224
and it's infectious,
it's joyful,

00:15:59.258 --> 00:16:03.195
and it relates and connects
to what's happening
socially,

00:16:03.228 --> 00:16:06.365
politically,
culturally, at any given time
period.

00:16:08.400 --> 00:16:10.369
[Karen Hubbard]
These
social dances evolved

00:16:10.402 --> 00:16:12.271
from the
plantation dances

00:16:12.304 --> 00:16:15.708
of the enslaved
Africans and then were
embellished

00:16:15.741 --> 00:16:17.142
and performed on stage,

00:16:17.176 --> 00:16:19.745
and national dance
crazes evolved,

00:16:19.778 --> 00:16:22.381
like the Charleston
and the Lindy Hop.

00:16:24.616 --> 00:16:26.418
The Lindy Hop is
social dancing.

00:16:26.452 --> 00:16:30.389
The dance movements
come from the community.

00:16:31.657 --> 00:16:34.293
Lindy was, everybody come
to the club,

00:16:34.326 --> 00:16:36.695
learn what it is,
and you can add

00:16:36.729 --> 00:16:38.697
your own signature
thing to it

00:16:38.731 --> 00:16:41.233
that influences everybody
else to be as creative

00:16:41.266 --> 00:16:44.169
as you are being,
and you're all dancing.

00:16:46.305 --> 00:16:49.208
[George]
We're disenfranchised
in most parts of this city

00:16:49.241 --> 00:16:51.510
but we get to go
to this ballroom

00:16:51.543 --> 00:16:53.545
and we get to compete
against each other,

00:16:53.579 --> 00:16:55.147
and it's about pride,

00:16:55.180 --> 00:16:56.682
and it's about reputation.
It's about self-esteem

00:16:56.715 --> 00:16:58.650
and we're expressing it
through movement.

00:16:58.684 --> 00:17:01.387
This was really the time
when Black and white bodies

00:17:01.420 --> 00:17:03.188
were in conversation
with each other,

00:17:03.222 --> 00:17:06.258
kind of became okay for a girl
from Upstate New York

00:17:06.291 --> 00:17:07.626
to start moving her hips
in that way.

00:17:07.659 --> 00:17:09.395
And the Harlem
Renaissance

00:17:09.428 --> 00:17:12.431
was really the beginnings of
those conversations.

00:17:16.668 --> 00:17:20.506
[DeFrantz]
We get to the
1930s and there are progressive
whites

00:17:20.539 --> 00:17:23.175
who were curious
about Black culture,

00:17:23.208 --> 00:17:26.612
not only the parts
that they're allowed to see

00:17:26.645 --> 00:17:29.348
but something closer
to how Black Americans

00:17:29.381 --> 00:17:32.518
imagine themselves
among themselves.

00:17:32.551 --> 00:17:35.721
And these ballrooms
make this possible.

00:17:35.754 --> 00:17:38.824
And then we start
to get towards jazz dance.

00:17:38.857 --> 00:17:40.559
Broadway changes.

00:17:40.592 --> 00:17:43.729
The dances on Broadway start
to look more like the dances

00:17:43.762 --> 00:17:46.465
that African Americans
do at home.

00:17:46.498 --> 00:17:50.669
They get more
rhythmically sophisticated,

00:17:50.702 --> 00:17:54.473
they get less knowable
and more open.

00:17:54.506 --> 00:17:58.377
And then we really see
a shift and this happens

00:17:58.410 --> 00:18:00.279
up until the second World War.

00:18:04.416 --> 00:18:07.219
[upbeat jazz music]

00:18:11.657 --> 00:18:13.592
[Smith]
You can't talk
about American success

00:18:13.625 --> 00:18:16.428
without tap dance
being a part of that story.

00:18:20.265 --> 00:18:21.867
It's important for people
to know that

00:18:21.900 --> 00:18:25.404
it came out of a place of
struggle and oppression.

00:18:25.437 --> 00:18:27.873
It wasn't just
this happy dance

00:18:27.906 --> 00:18:30.843
that was made for
other people's enjoyment.

00:18:30.876 --> 00:18:34.179
It was made to express
and to communicate

00:18:34.213 --> 00:18:35.747
a certain feeling.

00:18:37.549 --> 00:18:39.218
There's always been
a big argument

00:18:39.251 --> 00:18:41.587
whether it was tap
dance that created jazz

00:18:41.620 --> 00:18:43.889
or jazz that
created tap dance.

00:18:46.625 --> 00:18:48.827
[Smith]
Tap dance
is older than jazz

00:18:48.861 --> 00:18:51.697
and it led to certain social
dance forms

00:18:51.730 --> 00:18:56.935
like Lindy Hop and swing
dance which then led to jazz
dance.

00:18:58.537 --> 00:19:00.305
[Knight]
There's
also a relationship

00:19:00.339 --> 00:19:01.974
between African
and Irish culture

00:19:02.007 --> 00:19:04.309
where we see this
percussiveness coming into
play,

00:19:04.343 --> 00:19:06.612
with Irish traditional
jig dances

00:19:06.645 --> 00:19:10.482
and also African Juba
interplaying with each other.

00:19:10.516 --> 00:19:12.784
[Smith]
The roots of tap
are African dance,

00:19:12.818 --> 00:19:15.654
West African
dance 2.0.

00:19:15.687 --> 00:19:18.757
It's what happens when
you take a culture and a
style

00:19:18.790 --> 00:19:22.427
and you put it in a different
part of the world

00:19:22.461 --> 00:19:26.465
and you put the people
that experience that art

00:19:26.498 --> 00:19:28.300
under extreme
pressure

00:19:28.333 --> 00:19:32.971
and under the worst
conditions humanly possible.

00:19:33.005 --> 00:19:36.275
Most Black people
in America can tap.

00:19:37.309 --> 00:19:39.378
I don't know.
It's just a thing.

00:19:39.411 --> 00:19:42.281
You're born, you're Black,
you can tap.

00:19:48.687 --> 00:19:50.455
Don't get me wrong.

00:19:50.489 --> 00:19:51.857
I love to dance.

00:19:51.890 --> 00:19:53.926
I love to dance and I got work.

00:19:53.959 --> 00:19:55.527
I was cute.

00:19:56.762 --> 00:19:58.430
Cute little colored kid.

00:19:58.463 --> 00:20:01.433
They called us colored
in those days.

00:20:01.466 --> 00:20:05.003
Cute little colored kid
tapping away.

00:20:08.674 --> 00:20:10.909
Oh, I was a real novelty.

00:20:10.943 --> 00:20:14.546
Of course, by the time
I grew up,

00:20:14.580 --> 00:20:16.448
it's a different story here.

00:20:16.481 --> 00:20:19.785
He's an adult Black man now,
he's not so cute.

00:20:19.818 --> 00:20:22.487
-Give him a broom.
-Raymond.

00:20:23.488 --> 00:20:25.791
The rich don't patronize tap.

00:20:32.331 --> 00:20:34.433
[Smith]
There's a little bit
of a fear still

00:20:34.466 --> 00:20:38.737
to embrace tap dance
culture entirely

00:20:38.770 --> 00:20:42.374
because of the ugly history
that it's attached to,

00:20:42.407 --> 00:20:44.810
which is
American history.

00:20:44.843 --> 00:20:47.379
And unfortunately,
I don't think a lot of people

00:20:47.412 --> 00:20:49.014
are willing to face the truth

00:20:49.047 --> 00:20:55.320
of what happened or is
happening right now in this
country.

00:20:55.354 --> 00:20:58.490
And we're always going
to reflect those truths,

00:20:58.523 --> 00:21:00.959
whether or not
they can handle them.

00:21:12.037 --> 00:21:17.442
[Allen]
It's kind of
impossible to talk about jazz
dancing

00:21:17.476 --> 00:21:20.045
independent of the music,

00:21:20.078 --> 00:21:22.481
because the music truly

00:21:22.514 --> 00:21:25.550
through the ages,
defined how the dance would go.

00:21:25.584 --> 00:21:27.119
This to me could also
come through

00:21:27.152 --> 00:21:29.888
as how important is oxygen
and nourishment?

00:21:29.921 --> 00:21:32.991
Every person in my family
was a classical musician

00:21:33.025 --> 00:21:38.063
and to hear that jazz
music, something shifted really
deep in my soul.

00:21:38.096 --> 00:21:42.034
There is an emotionality
and a depth

00:21:42.067 --> 00:21:44.036
that is in that
music for me

00:21:44.069 --> 00:21:46.805
that I'm always trying
to get to and to be able to
describe

00:21:46.838 --> 00:21:49.808
with movement because
there's such honesty,

00:21:49.841 --> 00:21:51.910
such heart honesty.

00:21:54.513 --> 00:21:56.915
[Kimberley Cooper]
When I
hear that sound as a
choreographer,

00:21:56.948 --> 00:22:01.453
that springs images and
movement in my head
and makes my body...

00:22:01.486 --> 00:22:05.657
It gives me that
invitation, that I feel jazz
music does.

00:22:10.095 --> 00:22:12.164
Jazz music has
all the accents

00:22:12.197 --> 00:22:14.466
and the moments that
happen in between

00:22:14.499 --> 00:22:15.667
that you don't expect,

00:22:15.701 --> 00:22:18.003
and being off the beat
and being pushed

00:22:18.036 --> 00:22:22.441
and just all the
variation of styles and
percussive nature

00:22:22.474 --> 00:22:24.743
and elongated notes,
it's all in there,

00:22:24.776 --> 00:22:27.412
which, physically,
as a dancer,

00:22:27.446 --> 00:22:29.948
you can relate to
and connect to.

00:22:32.050 --> 00:22:33.452
At one time, the music,

00:22:33.485 --> 00:22:36.421
jazz dance and jazz music,
went together.

00:22:36.455 --> 00:22:38.890
And the dancers
were performing to live music

00:22:38.924 --> 00:22:45.197
and it was an exchange
between the musicians and the
dancers.

00:22:45.230 --> 00:22:49.101
[Parker Esse]
It is
so overwhelmingly fulfilling

00:22:49.134 --> 00:22:51.903
to dance with
a jazz orchestra live.

00:22:51.937 --> 00:22:54.906
I don't think there's anything
like it, because you--

00:22:54.940 --> 00:22:58.944
you're an extension of that--
of that music, it's powerful.

00:22:58.977 --> 00:23:01.146
Years and years ago,
jazz music was to move to,

00:23:01.179 --> 00:23:02.581
it was to dance to.

00:23:02.614 --> 00:23:04.816
And then as people
doing improvisations

00:23:04.850 --> 00:23:06.852
got more and more adept,
then it became about

00:23:06.885 --> 00:23:08.653
"Look at my skill
in improvising."

00:23:08.687 --> 00:23:10.155
And maybe not quite
so danceable.

00:23:10.188 --> 00:23:12.724
-And then bebop--
-And then bebop messed it up.

00:23:12.758 --> 00:23:14.593
For jazz dance.

00:23:14.626 --> 00:23:16.895
The musicians of
bebop messed it up.

00:23:21.133 --> 00:23:25.904
And as the music
changes over time,
as the styles change,

00:23:25.937 --> 00:23:28.540
then the dancing that's
done to the popular music,

00:23:28.573 --> 00:23:32.177
popular styles,
also changes.

00:23:32.210 --> 00:23:35.180
The music got too crazy
to dance to, really.

00:23:35.213 --> 00:23:39.117
So, music and dance
went their separate ways.

00:23:45.690 --> 00:23:48.660
♪ Forget your troubles
Come on, get happy ♪

00:23:48.693 --> 00:23:52.931
[Francis Roach]
The jazz
dance that we all iconically
know

00:23:52.964 --> 00:23:54.666
from the Hollywood days,

00:23:54.699 --> 00:23:56.868
that's different than
the jazz dance
of the Roaring '20s.

00:23:56.902 --> 00:23:59.838
♪ The sun is shining,
come on, get happy ♪

00:23:59.871 --> 00:24:03.175
During that time, when
Hollywood was doing its Golden
Age,

00:24:03.208 --> 00:24:04.976
that was after
World War II.

00:24:05.010 --> 00:24:06.812
The whole world
was in turmoil

00:24:06.845 --> 00:24:10.515
and needed some uplifting
and some joy.

00:24:10.549 --> 00:24:13.251
♪ Across the river,
wash your sins away
in the tide ♪

00:24:13.285 --> 00:24:17.189
The idea of male role
models for dancers is few and
far between.

00:24:17.222 --> 00:24:19.057
I didn't know
any professional dancers,

00:24:19.090 --> 00:24:20.926
I didn't know
any male dancers,

00:24:20.959 --> 00:24:23.862
I was the only boy in my
school but I knew who Gene Kelly
was,

00:24:23.895 --> 00:24:25.063
I knew who Fred Astaire was.

00:24:25.096 --> 00:24:27.833
It's just those
character men and women

00:24:27.866 --> 00:24:30.702
that I really--
that's what I wanted to do.

00:24:30.735 --> 00:24:34.105
My mother would watch old
movies and I fell in love with a
movie

00:24:34.139 --> 00:24:36.074
uh, I didn't know the name
of at the time,

00:24:36.107 --> 00:24:38.777
but of course everybody
knows it, which is
Singing in
the Rain.

00:24:38.810 --> 00:24:40.946
And I liked Gene
Kelly a lot.

00:24:40.979 --> 00:24:43.615
The way he was--
I guess his articulation,

00:24:43.648 --> 00:24:46.084
the way he was accentuating
the music

00:24:46.117 --> 00:24:47.953
but then also
his character

00:24:47.986 --> 00:24:50.922
and the way
he was telling the story always

00:24:50.956 --> 00:24:54.226
and how the dance was kind
of infused into the storyline

00:24:54.259 --> 00:24:57.195
and I got kind of drawn to that.

00:24:57.229 --> 00:24:59.331
[Warren Carlyle]
Gene
is athletic and masculine

00:24:59.364 --> 00:25:02.100
and it always felt like
watching the Olympics,
watching him dance.

00:25:02.133 --> 00:25:07.005
And Fred is just-- is
beautiful and elegant and
nonthreatening.

00:25:07.038 --> 00:25:09.074
You know, he's romantic
and, yeah.

00:25:09.107 --> 00:25:10.742
They were
the two different qualities

00:25:10.775 --> 00:25:12.310
and the two different
male dancers

00:25:12.344 --> 00:25:13.812
that I grew up watching.

00:25:13.845 --> 00:25:16.648
And then I also grew up
watching movie musicals.

00:25:16.681 --> 00:25:18.783
So, you know,
I'm seeing Fred Astaire,

00:25:18.817 --> 00:25:20.318
I'm seeing
the Nicholas Brothers,

00:25:20.352 --> 00:25:21.753
I'm seeing Bill Robinson,

00:25:21.786 --> 00:25:23.722
I'm seeing
all these famous dancers,

00:25:23.755 --> 00:25:27.792
and I'm seeing very vivid colors
and sets, and costume,

00:25:27.826 --> 00:25:30.295
and as a kid, it's just,
it's like watching cartoons,

00:25:30.328 --> 00:25:32.063
it just grabbed you.

00:25:42.207 --> 00:25:45.644
I would kill
to be Cyd Charisse's partner.

00:25:47.112 --> 00:25:48.880
I would kill for that.

00:25:49.981 --> 00:25:52.284
[laughter]

00:25:56.988 --> 00:26:00.292
[DeFrantz]
What
happened in the 1940s and
'50s

00:26:00.325 --> 00:26:03.028
that is a turning
point for jazz

00:26:03.061 --> 00:26:05.363
is it started
to be codified.

00:26:05.397 --> 00:26:07.332
And what's interesting
about this

00:26:07.365 --> 00:26:09.734
is it could almost
never be codified

00:26:09.768 --> 00:26:11.069
by Black Americans

00:26:11.102 --> 00:26:13.171
because we still
didn't have access

00:26:13.204 --> 00:26:17.142
to courts of law
or legal systems of support.

00:26:17.175 --> 00:26:20.879
So, almost all
the jazz dance techniques

00:26:20.912 --> 00:26:23.615
are initiated
by white men.

00:26:25.183 --> 00:26:27.352
[Hubbard]
There are
like two different worlds.

00:26:27.385 --> 00:26:30.922
The worlds where ballet
and extensions

00:26:30.956 --> 00:26:34.893
and turns,
battements are valued.

00:26:34.926 --> 00:26:36.661
Training is valued.

00:26:36.695 --> 00:26:39.898
And then, there is the
social swing dance world.

00:26:39.931 --> 00:26:42.133
And it's, like,
two different worlds

00:26:42.167 --> 00:26:44.135
but the swing dancers understand

00:26:44.169 --> 00:26:49.007
the vernacular vocabulary
and the evolution of jazz.

00:26:49.040 --> 00:26:51.209
What happened was
that the modern dancers

00:26:51.242 --> 00:26:52.844
and the ballet dancers

00:26:52.877 --> 00:26:54.412
got a hold of jazz,
pulled it into the studios

00:26:54.446 --> 00:26:56.915
and made it be
what they wanted to do

00:26:56.948 --> 00:26:58.950
and they called it jazz.

00:26:58.984 --> 00:27:01.186
[Natasha Powell]
And we
had ballet choreographers

00:27:01.219 --> 00:27:04.222
or modern dance
choreographers who are doing
their interpretation

00:27:04.255 --> 00:27:06.891
of what they
consider jazz to be.

00:27:06.925 --> 00:27:08.226
And then, you have critics

00:27:08.259 --> 00:27:10.128
who are writing about
what they think jazz is,

00:27:10.161 --> 00:27:12.297
not having
any historical reference

00:27:12.330 --> 00:27:14.833
to the form
or any connection to the work.

00:27:14.866 --> 00:27:17.268
Now, how does that change
how society thinks

00:27:17.302 --> 00:27:19.204
or believes
what jazz to be?

00:27:19.237 --> 00:27:21.272
And how does that change
the form and evolvement

00:27:21.306 --> 00:27:25.043
of what it was
and who was instrumental
in that?

00:27:26.945 --> 00:27:29.214
[Wendy Oliver]
There
were two big streams.

00:27:29.247 --> 00:27:31.182
People who felt
that jazz dance

00:27:31.216 --> 00:27:33.952
was this original
vernacular form

00:27:33.985 --> 00:27:37.922
that only happened
in the '20s to the '40s.

00:27:37.956 --> 00:27:42.093
And there were people who
felt that jazz evolved.

00:27:42.127 --> 00:27:44.929
And jazz became
something different

00:27:44.963 --> 00:27:47.365
over time but
it's still jazz.

00:27:51.102 --> 00:27:54.339
[DeFrantz]
Something else
about how Black American

00:27:54.372 --> 00:27:55.940
social structure works

00:27:55.974 --> 00:27:58.777
is that we believe
in each other and sharing.

00:27:58.810 --> 00:28:00.045
It's communal.

00:28:00.078 --> 00:28:03.181
We don't really
have long traditions

00:28:03.214 --> 00:28:05.016
of individual ownership.

00:28:05.050 --> 00:28:07.986
We're not so big up on
claiming it as our technique

00:28:08.019 --> 00:28:11.122
or our style
or "this is my dance

00:28:11.156 --> 00:28:12.457
and no one else's."

00:28:12.490 --> 00:28:15.427
That's quite
a European-American formation

00:28:15.460 --> 00:28:17.062
or a capitalist formation.

00:28:17.095 --> 00:28:19.431
So, there's a real,
like, problem

00:28:19.464 --> 00:28:21.499
when people start naming names
and saying,

00:28:21.533 --> 00:28:25.470
"This is who invented a step
or a style or made a technique."

00:28:25.503 --> 00:28:27.205
And Black
American culture,

00:28:27.238 --> 00:28:28.973
it just doesn't operate
that way.

00:28:29.007 --> 00:28:30.475
So, it's hard in jazz dance,

00:28:30.508 --> 00:28:32.811
because we know it comes from
a lot of that lineage,

00:28:32.844 --> 00:28:35.947
to really put a thumb on
who the mother or father is.

00:28:35.980 --> 00:28:39.484
Although, in America,
we tend to give the credit
to Jack Cole.

00:28:39.517 --> 00:28:41.920
But I think, when we
look at the true origins of
jazz,

00:28:41.953 --> 00:28:44.556
that may not be the
right lens through which to
look

00:28:44.589 --> 00:28:46.491
at how jazz came about.

00:28:49.561 --> 00:28:51.296
So, around the 1940s,

00:28:51.329 --> 00:28:54.365
Jack Cole is looking
at classical Indian forms

00:28:54.399 --> 00:28:57.102
and starting to incorporate that
into his jazz dance movement.

00:28:57.135 --> 00:28:59.537
So, you see
this idea of isolation

00:28:59.571 --> 00:29:01.372
that is indigenous
to jazz dancing,

00:29:01.406 --> 00:29:03.074
a lot of that
really starts there,

00:29:03.108 --> 00:29:05.210
where the head may
move from side to side,

00:29:05.243 --> 00:29:07.278
the arms may have
some very particular,

00:29:07.312 --> 00:29:09.080
angular motions
to them.

00:29:09.114 --> 00:29:11.116
And Jack Cole was taking
a lot of these ideas

00:29:11.149 --> 00:29:13.284
and incorporating it
into his choreography

00:29:13.318 --> 00:29:15.787
and the dances that
he was creating.

00:29:16.888 --> 00:29:20.425
I saw Mr. Cole
in a convention.

00:29:20.458 --> 00:29:25.163
This kind of tall-ish,

00:29:25.196 --> 00:29:29.033
evil-tempered person,

00:29:29.067 --> 00:29:30.235
which is intriguing,

00:29:30.268 --> 00:29:32.103
and everyone seemed to be
in love

00:29:32.137 --> 00:29:37.976
with that kind of
antagonistic attitude,
maybe.

00:29:38.009 --> 00:29:39.377
We didn't know
who he was.

00:29:39.410 --> 00:29:41.913
He came in with
boots, khakis,

00:29:41.946 --> 00:29:45.550
a tied shirt, and a drum,
and he was crazy.

00:29:45.583 --> 00:29:47.085
[instructor]
Seven, eight.

00:29:47.118 --> 00:29:51.389
Walk, two, two, two,
three, two. Work.

00:29:51.422 --> 00:29:54.526
Jack Cole
created a technique.

00:29:54.559 --> 00:29:58.129
Was it taken from Ted Shawn,
Ruth St. Denis,

00:29:58.163 --> 00:29:59.497
the Denis-Shawn years?

00:29:59.531 --> 00:30:01.032
Yes. Absolutely.

00:30:01.065 --> 00:30:03.434
Everyone was involved
in his life that

00:30:03.468 --> 00:30:05.103
he put into his pot.

00:30:05.136 --> 00:30:09.007
They didn't call
their stuff jazz.

00:30:09.040 --> 00:30:10.542
Sell those bananas.

00:30:10.575 --> 00:30:12.410
Let's do it again, ladies.

00:30:12.443 --> 00:30:14.512
[applause]

00:30:14.546 --> 00:30:17.215
[Chet Walker]
When you look
at Marilyn Monroe today,

00:30:17.248 --> 00:30:20.418
it was Jack Cole who gave her
that persona,

00:30:20.451 --> 00:30:23.488
Rita Hayworth,
same thing.

00:30:23.521 --> 00:30:26.191
Marilyn wouldn't do it
without him.

00:30:26.224 --> 00:30:29.360
If you'll go and you'll look
at
{end-italic} Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

00:30:29.394 --> 00:30:32.063
and you'll look at
Diamonds Are
a Girl's Best Friend,

00:30:32.096 --> 00:30:35.500
she is never looking into the--
into the camera ever

00:30:35.533 --> 00:30:37.235
because he's over here

00:30:37.268 --> 00:30:40.038
and he is doing it with her.

00:30:40.071 --> 00:30:41.406
But when you think about that,

00:30:41.439 --> 00:30:43.608
"Oh, what?"
Then you look at it,

00:30:43.641 --> 00:30:45.210
and you go,
"It's amazing."

00:30:45.243 --> 00:30:48.079
Because she's not playing
to a camera.

00:30:48.112 --> 00:30:50.114
She's taking
from the master.

00:30:50.148 --> 00:30:53.318
And they had a connection
that was like no other.

00:30:53.351 --> 00:30:55.520
He wanted audiences
to understand

00:30:55.553 --> 00:30:57.222
what dance was all about.

00:30:57.255 --> 00:30:59.224
Dance didn't have
a prominence.

00:30:59.257 --> 00:31:02.427
It was background
material.

00:31:02.460 --> 00:31:05.363
The stars were the most
important thing

00:31:05.396 --> 00:31:07.232
and not the dance.

00:31:11.002 --> 00:31:13.004
You can't talk about jazz dance
in America

00:31:13.037 --> 00:31:14.973
without talking about
Katherine Dunham.

00:31:15.006 --> 00:31:16.574
I know you can talk
about Jack Cole

00:31:16.608 --> 00:31:19.344
but you got to talk
about Katherine Dunham.

00:31:21.479 --> 00:31:24.215
For us, she is the mother
of all dance in America

00:31:24.249 --> 00:31:28.586
because it is that
African heartbeat

00:31:28.620 --> 00:31:33.591
that has defined
the style of America
to the world.

00:31:33.625 --> 00:31:38.263
She was influenced
by Afro-Caribbean movements

00:31:38.296 --> 00:31:42.500
combined with Graham
and classical ballet.

00:31:42.533 --> 00:31:45.036
And she, not
unlike Jack Cole,

00:31:45.069 --> 00:31:48.273
had studied
Eastern dance.

00:31:49.507 --> 00:31:52.744
[Smith]
She actually started
as an anthropologist.

00:31:52.777 --> 00:31:55.647
And through her studies
in anthropology,

00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:57.615
that led her to dance.

00:31:57.649 --> 00:32:00.451
Because she realized dance
was one of the oldest things

00:32:00.485 --> 00:32:03.488
that humans have been
doing on this planet.

00:32:03.521 --> 00:32:06.291
[Danny Buraczeski]
Americans have these
puritanical ideas

00:32:06.324 --> 00:32:08.092
about the body
and about sex.

00:32:08.126 --> 00:32:11.296
And because it was so--
uh, it wasn't sexy,

00:32:11.329 --> 00:32:13.498
but it was so sensual,
they had completely devalued

00:32:13.531 --> 00:32:16.501
what she was doing even
though it was just
extraordinary.

00:32:16.534 --> 00:32:19.170
And she was a scholar,
researcher,

00:32:19.203 --> 00:32:21.205
made a phenomenal
movement.

00:32:21.239 --> 00:32:23.741
I mean, the Dunham technique
is just breathtaking

00:32:23.775 --> 00:32:25.576
but they just
devalued it.

00:32:29.547 --> 00:32:33.351
As a child growing up
in Houston, Texas, in the '50s,

00:32:33.384 --> 00:32:35.320
everything was segregated.

00:32:35.353 --> 00:32:38.189
Water fountains, white only.

00:32:38.222 --> 00:32:40.325
Movie theaters,
white only.

00:32:40.358 --> 00:32:43.161
Restaurants, white only.

00:32:43.194 --> 00:32:45.797
And the dance schools
were no different.

00:32:45.830 --> 00:32:49.233
They were not really allowing
Black children

00:32:49.267 --> 00:32:52.103
to train and dance
with white children.

00:32:52.136 --> 00:32:54.272
I went to the local school,
Mr. DeBato,

00:32:54.305 --> 00:32:57.342
and I learned tap dancing
and a little ballet.

00:32:57.375 --> 00:33:02.313
But I had a bigger image
of what I wanted to learn.

00:33:02.347 --> 00:33:07.051
And it was actually
Patrick Swayze's mom,

00:33:07.085 --> 00:33:10.388
Patsy Swayze,
who taught jazz dance,

00:33:10.421 --> 00:33:14.125
who saw me outside
of her school.

00:33:14.158 --> 00:33:16.527
I was peeping through the window

00:33:16.561 --> 00:33:20.264
and she and that wonderful
Southern drawl,

00:33:20.298 --> 00:33:23.201
"Little girl,
what you doing out here?

00:33:23.234 --> 00:33:24.335
Can you dance?"

00:33:24.369 --> 00:33:25.670
I said, "Yes, ma'am."

00:33:25.703 --> 00:33:28.639
She said, "Well, bring
your shoes tomorrow."

00:33:28.673 --> 00:33:33.678
And so, she allowed me
to come and take the class.

00:33:33.711 --> 00:33:36.781
[Rick Odums]
I just happened
to see a dance performance

00:33:36.814 --> 00:33:39.517
and I was fortunate enough
to meet

00:33:39.550 --> 00:33:42.420
the principal dancer,
who was Debbie Allen.

00:33:42.453 --> 00:33:44.255
And she was from
Houston like me.

00:33:44.288 --> 00:33:45.556
So, I asked her,

00:33:45.590 --> 00:33:47.859
"Where can I learn to do
this?" And she told me,

00:33:47.892 --> 00:33:50.728
"You need to go see a woman
by the name of Patsy Swayze."

00:33:50.762 --> 00:33:52.663
Because unfortunately,
at that time,

00:33:52.697 --> 00:33:54.432
or fortunately for us,

00:33:54.465 --> 00:33:58.269
she was the only dance teacher
in the entire state of Texas

00:33:58.302 --> 00:34:01.672
that would accept Black people
at her school.

00:34:01.706 --> 00:34:06.177
Patsy was considered to be
one of the prominent
jazz dance teachers.

00:34:06.210 --> 00:34:07.678
And from my
understanding,

00:34:07.712 --> 00:34:09.614
Patsy had basically
based her work

00:34:09.647 --> 00:34:11.649
on the teacher that
she had studied with,

00:34:11.682 --> 00:34:13.851
who was Matt Mattox
at that time.

00:34:15.653 --> 00:34:19.290
[Bob Boross]
Matt never
called his work jazz dance.

00:34:19.323 --> 00:34:21.292
He was of the thinking
real jazz dance

00:34:21.325 --> 00:34:23.828
is the social and
vernacular forms of jazz.

00:34:23.861 --> 00:34:27.632
Back in the late 1940s,
Eugene Loring
was creating a class

00:34:27.665 --> 00:34:29.500
called freestyle,
where he's saying,

00:34:29.534 --> 00:34:31.636
"I want to take the best
of the ballet,
the best of modern,

00:34:31.669 --> 00:34:34.472
the best of jazz,
the best of this,
and put them in together

00:34:34.505 --> 00:34:37.308
to one American form of dance."

00:34:37.341 --> 00:34:40.211
So, Matt was there
during that process

00:34:40.244 --> 00:34:41.779
and would teach there.

00:34:41.813 --> 00:34:44.515
So eventually, when Matt
left, he had that from
Loring

00:34:44.549 --> 00:34:46.250
and then he had worked
with Jack Cole,

00:34:46.284 --> 00:34:48.219
so he had the style
of Jack Cole.

00:34:48.252 --> 00:34:50.455
And those two things
came together

00:34:50.488 --> 00:34:51.856
in his later teaching.

00:34:51.889 --> 00:34:54.459
[counting in
foreign language]

00:34:56.894 --> 00:34:58.763
[Nat Horne]
I heard
someone beating a drum,

00:34:58.796 --> 00:35:00.932
one of those tom-tom drums,
down on the hall and I said,

00:35:00.965 --> 00:35:03.401
"Who was beating this drum
every day I come to class?"

00:35:03.434 --> 00:35:07.538
And they said that's the
class by Matt Mattox.

00:35:07.572 --> 00:35:10.308
Our jazz teacher.
So, I opened the door

00:35:10.341 --> 00:35:12.443
and I went in and I looked,
I listened.

00:35:12.477 --> 00:35:15.746
And I saw all these
isolations, and the
training.

00:35:15.780 --> 00:35:19.884
They stood in one spot
for almost half an hour

00:35:19.917 --> 00:35:22.220
or 45 minutes just doing
body isolation,

00:35:22.253 --> 00:35:24.622
head, shoulders,
rib cage, hips, legs,

00:35:24.655 --> 00:35:26.891
parallel legs,
turn their arms.

00:35:26.924 --> 00:35:30.261
All of these different
position. I say, "That's close
to ballet."

00:35:30.294 --> 00:35:31.729
To me, that was
the closest thing

00:35:31.762 --> 00:35:33.331
to ballet technique
I can get.

00:35:33.364 --> 00:35:36.834
And so, that's
why I started it.

00:35:36.868 --> 00:35:39.504
[Boross]
So, Matt was taking
these ideas from Jack Cole.

00:35:39.537 --> 00:35:41.639
He said, "When I first
started teaching in New
York,

00:35:41.672 --> 00:35:44.509
I was teaching for two years,
anything I learned
from Jack Cole

00:35:44.542 --> 00:35:46.244
and the students
could not do it because

00:35:46.277 --> 00:35:48.446
of the isolated nature
of the movement."

00:35:48.479 --> 00:35:51.315
And that's when he
said, "How do I make up
exercises so they figure out

00:35:51.349 --> 00:35:53.851
how to move individual
parts of their body?"

00:35:53.885 --> 00:35:56.521
So, between head,
shoulders, rib cage, pelvis,

00:35:56.554 --> 00:35:58.689
those were, you know,
the things that led him

00:35:58.723 --> 00:36:01.893
to create the exercises
that he did.

00:36:07.365 --> 00:36:10.468
Accent, reflex,

00:36:10.501 --> 00:36:14.472
rhythm, dynamics, relax.

00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:26.517
[Horne]
Matt and Jack did not
want any expressions in their
face.

00:36:26.551 --> 00:36:29.654
No expression.
Keep that all inside.

00:36:29.687 --> 00:36:32.790
And I wanted to express
what I was feeling.

00:36:32.823 --> 00:36:35.426
Matt would say,
"Why are you smiling, Nat?"

00:36:35.459 --> 00:36:38.496
I said, because I can feel this,
I'm enjoying the music.

00:36:38.529 --> 00:36:40.631
"No smiles." Cut.

00:36:45.436 --> 00:36:48.539
[Martine]
Matt was a very integral

00:36:48.573 --> 00:36:51.275
and simple
and truth man.

00:36:51.309 --> 00:36:55.012
He never try to be false
or to use--

00:36:55.046 --> 00:36:57.615
he was always doubting
about himself.

00:36:57.648 --> 00:36:59.817
And trying always to get--
to get better

00:36:59.850 --> 00:37:02.820
because it was never enough,
you know,

00:37:02.853 --> 00:37:06.324
and I have learned that
about him.

00:37:06.357 --> 00:37:08.759
I have a great respect and love.

00:37:10.761 --> 00:37:13.030
Each people would teach
his technique.

00:37:13.064 --> 00:37:15.600
Teach the way
they understand it.

00:37:15.633 --> 00:37:19.604
And then they put back with
it their own sensibility.

00:37:25.676 --> 00:37:28.312
[Vicki Willis]
One of
my teachers in Calgary

00:37:28.346 --> 00:37:29.914
came back from New York

00:37:29.947 --> 00:37:31.682
with this crazy technique.

00:37:31.716 --> 00:37:34.619
And she had been studying
with Matt Mattox.

00:37:34.652 --> 00:37:38.356
And so, she was a very
thorough teacher

00:37:38.389 --> 00:37:41.726
and we were really immersed
in Matt's technique.

00:37:41.759 --> 00:37:43.461
Then, at one point,
she came back

00:37:43.494 --> 00:37:46.564
from her New York travels
and all of a sudden,

00:37:46.597 --> 00:37:49.667
we had our arms above our head
and we were stretching this way.

00:37:49.700 --> 00:37:51.836
And we started doing Luigi work.

00:37:51.869 --> 00:37:54.705
The Luigi Technique,
much of the most,

00:37:54.739 --> 00:37:57.875
important draw about it
was the man himself.

00:37:57.908 --> 00:38:00.478
[man]
First port de bras.

00:38:01.078 --> 00:38:02.713
Five, six...

00:38:02.747 --> 00:38:04.382
[Bill Waldinger]
Luigi
had been in a car accident

00:38:04.415 --> 00:38:07.018
and he was paralyzed
on one side of his body

00:38:07.051 --> 00:38:10.554
and the doctors told
him he would never walk
again,

00:38:10.588 --> 00:38:13.858
And determined to dance
again because he was a dancer.

00:38:13.891 --> 00:38:18.396
He developed a way
of rehabilitating his body.

00:38:18.429 --> 00:38:20.064
Stretch the right arm
over to the left.

00:38:20.097 --> 00:38:23.067
[Roach]
His exercises were
much more of a serious
nature

00:38:23.100 --> 00:38:26.037
because of what
they had to do.

00:38:26.070 --> 00:38:30.875
His technique had to rebuild

00:38:30.908 --> 00:38:34.879
a really broken spirit
and a really broken body.

00:38:34.912 --> 00:38:38.382
He used the image
of pressing down on the bar.

00:38:38.416 --> 00:38:41.152
Right? There would be
this imaginary bar
and he would press down on it

00:38:41.185 --> 00:38:45.489
and use it to lift his
weight out of the paralyzed
leg.

00:38:45.523 --> 00:38:46.857
Both arms in front of you.

00:38:46.891 --> 00:38:48.592
He would start
out at the bar,

00:38:48.626 --> 00:38:51.162
use the bar for support,
do these exercises

00:38:51.195 --> 00:38:52.930
and then step away
from the bar

00:38:52.963 --> 00:38:55.833
and press down on
this imaginary bar.

00:38:55.866 --> 00:38:58.669
And that is the foundation
of the technique,

00:38:58.703 --> 00:39:03.474
this idea of using the space
in the room for the support.

00:39:03.507 --> 00:39:05.676
Passé and down.

00:39:05.710 --> 00:39:10.781
And so,
he would do these exercises
extremely slowly

00:39:10.815 --> 00:39:12.783
and talk about what everything
felt like.

00:39:12.817 --> 00:39:15.186
It really was not
about what it looked like.

00:39:15.219 --> 00:39:17.154
It was about what it felt like.

00:39:17.188 --> 00:39:19.190
-Now, 15 seconds...
-The energy in that room

00:39:19.223 --> 00:39:21.525
was not like
anybody else's class.

00:39:21.559 --> 00:39:24.528
He was really, really
remarkable in that way.

00:39:24.562 --> 00:39:25.830
Left arm in your chest.

00:39:25.863 --> 00:39:27.665
[Blake]
He was so intensely
involved in it

00:39:27.698 --> 00:39:29.967
that it just didn't--
it was infectious.

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:32.803
Like, when he starts
moving his chest and shoulders,

00:39:32.837 --> 00:39:36.040
it was like you could see
he was in a trance practically.

00:39:36.073 --> 00:39:39.043
And we just loved it.
I mean, I had to follow that.

00:39:39.076 --> 00:39:41.045
And I did for quite a while.

00:39:41.078 --> 00:39:43.881
In five, six,
seven, brush.

00:39:43.914 --> 00:39:48.552
A one, two, toe, heel,
toe, heel.

00:39:48.586 --> 00:39:50.554
Passé back. Brush.

00:39:50.588 --> 00:39:52.957
Repeat. Toe, heel.

00:39:58.562 --> 00:40:00.197
[DeFrantz]
It's complicated
to try to understand

00:40:00.231 --> 00:40:02.767
how Latin rhythms
or Latin expression

00:40:02.800 --> 00:40:07.772
becomes embedded inside
something we think of as
jazz.

00:40:07.805 --> 00:40:11.175
So many of the enslaved
African people

00:40:11.208 --> 00:40:14.678
were brought through
the Middle Passage
to the Caribbean.

00:40:14.712 --> 00:40:19.884
And most Africans were then
stolen to South America.

00:40:19.917 --> 00:40:24.889
So, these affiliations
and sort of windings

00:40:24.922 --> 00:40:27.792
through and
sharings are as old

00:40:27.825 --> 00:40:29.493
as the slave trade.

00:40:32.229 --> 00:40:34.799
[Sekou McMiller]
These are rhythms
that came into Brazil

00:40:34.832 --> 00:40:37.168
and into the Caribbean
and into New Orleans

00:40:37.201 --> 00:40:39.637
and they're starting
to fuse them.

00:40:39.670 --> 00:40:41.071
And people say,
"Oh, it's new music.

00:40:41.105 --> 00:40:42.540
Oh, it's new music."

00:40:42.573 --> 00:40:46.911
But really, it's more like
a great reunion

00:40:46.944 --> 00:40:49.947
of a culture of music
that was once one.

00:40:53.317 --> 00:40:56.887
[Brenda Bufalino]
Cuban music
had a great influence on
jazz.

00:40:56.921 --> 00:41:00.558
Then when the bars
went up on Cuba,

00:41:00.591 --> 00:41:03.627
American jazz switched
to Brazilian music

00:41:03.661 --> 00:41:04.895
for its influences.

00:41:04.929 --> 00:41:07.798
And so then,
we started having cool jazz.

00:41:11.235 --> 00:41:14.271
[Joshua Bergasse]
There's something
about musicality

00:41:14.305 --> 00:41:18.142
and syncopation
that excites me.

00:41:18.175 --> 00:41:20.311
I was doing a show
and the songwriter,

00:41:20.344 --> 00:41:24.915
he was on my case about
everything being so
syncopated.

00:41:24.949 --> 00:41:27.618
I was talking about my father
who's from Brazil.

00:41:27.651 --> 00:41:31.021
And he said,
"Oh, that's what it is."

00:41:31.055 --> 00:41:33.123
"You're Brazilian.

00:41:33.157 --> 00:41:35.893
That's where all of
your syncopation comes from.

00:41:35.926 --> 00:41:37.328
That's why
you're driving me crazy

00:41:37.361 --> 00:41:40.731
with this syncopation."

00:41:40.764 --> 00:41:43.667
Some of these innovators
start to claim Latin

00:41:43.701 --> 00:41:47.338
as kind of their difference
in jazz.

00:41:47.371 --> 00:41:49.640
But if we really
wanna understand,

00:41:49.673 --> 00:41:52.142
I mean, that starts
from the beginning.

00:41:53.644 --> 00:41:57.014
I grew up in Cincinnati,
Ohio, in the '70s.

00:41:57.047 --> 00:41:58.682
I went to a little
dance school

00:41:58.716 --> 00:42:00.584
and so like
many other kids in America,

00:42:00.618 --> 00:42:03.053
I started with tap ballet.
I started when I was three.

00:42:03.087 --> 00:42:07.091
And in my teenage
years, I went to Giordano's in
Chicago.

00:42:07.124 --> 00:42:09.793
That was the first time
I had gone away from home.

00:42:09.827 --> 00:42:12.963
But it was the first time
also I felt like an adult in
class

00:42:12.997 --> 00:42:16.133
and really had a mentality
and a fighting thing

00:42:16.166 --> 00:42:18.302
that was underneath
to say, "You can do this."

00:42:22.973 --> 00:42:25.276
[Phil Laduca]
From Gus,
I learned discipline.

00:42:25.309 --> 00:42:27.044
I learned that the body

00:42:27.077 --> 00:42:30.147
has to balance in a certain way.

00:42:30.180 --> 00:42:33.217
It has to move
and counter move.

00:42:33.250 --> 00:42:37.321
And those disciplines
were not what I was used to

00:42:37.354 --> 00:42:41.058
in the freestyle improvising
of street dancing.

00:42:45.129 --> 00:42:47.631
[Nan Giordano]
The
markers of the Giordano
Technique,

00:42:47.665 --> 00:42:49.733
the movement comes
from the pelvis.

00:42:49.767 --> 00:42:51.902
And that's where everything
comes from.

00:42:51.936 --> 00:42:55.306
So, it's got
a very organic quality.

00:42:55.339 --> 00:42:57.841
It's combining
the groundedness,

00:42:57.875 --> 00:43:01.812
influence from Africa
with the ballet world.

00:43:01.845 --> 00:43:05.382
Very technical and you
have to have amazing technique.

00:43:05.416 --> 00:43:08.986
And then the modern world,
it's really a combination

00:43:09.019 --> 00:43:12.323
of the major
dance disciplines.

00:43:16.026 --> 00:43:17.728
It's got to be real.

00:43:17.761 --> 00:43:22.700
That was a slogan that my
father continually said.

00:43:22.733 --> 00:43:26.437
The way that he lived
his life was with energy,

00:43:26.470 --> 00:43:28.339
power, radiant,

00:43:28.372 --> 00:43:33.410
and touching people's lives
through jazz dance.

00:43:36.447 --> 00:43:38.983
There's a misconception
about the relationship to--

00:43:39.016 --> 00:43:40.317
between ballet and jazz.

00:43:40.351 --> 00:43:42.453
And it's really important
that people understand

00:43:42.486 --> 00:43:45.923
that there has been this kind of
very deep relationship

00:43:45.956 --> 00:43:49.159
that George Balanchine had
with the jazz dancing body.

00:43:49.193 --> 00:43:52.463
Balanchine had direct contact
with some of these Black
bodies

00:43:52.496 --> 00:43:55.366
during the time
of the Harlem Renaissance.

00:43:55.399 --> 00:43:59.136
Josephine Baker,
she was a very prominent artist
in the United States.

00:43:59.169 --> 00:44:01.939
Well, what Balanchine
appreciated about Josephine

00:44:01.972 --> 00:44:05.075
was her ability to get down,
that polycentric body,

00:44:05.109 --> 00:44:07.711
multiple centers in the body
that could articulate and
speak

00:44:07.745 --> 00:44:10.481
to each other
all at the same time.

00:44:10.514 --> 00:44:13.250
And so, he was looking
at ballet and deciding that

00:44:13.283 --> 00:44:15.052
he wanted to make
something new,

00:44:15.085 --> 00:44:17.354
thought, "Well, what if I take
these Africanist aesthetics

00:44:17.388 --> 00:44:20.391
from this particular body
and the jazz dancing body

00:44:20.424 --> 00:44:22.159
and I incorporate that
into ballet?

00:44:22.192 --> 00:44:25.262
What does that do to take
ballet off of its axis?"

00:44:25.295 --> 00:44:28.098
Somebody like Jerome
Robbins, his jazz

00:44:28.132 --> 00:44:30.367
is absolutely
based in ballet.

00:44:30.401 --> 00:44:32.436
But he's taken
on that jazz

00:44:32.469 --> 00:44:37.207
to exemplify the character
that is being portrayed.

00:44:37.241 --> 00:44:41.145
[Linda Murray]
Robbins is
made by virtue of the fact that
he was rejected

00:44:41.178 --> 00:44:42.446
from school of
American ballet,

00:44:42.479 --> 00:44:44.181
which is the New York City
Ballet School,

00:44:44.214 --> 00:44:45.783
the Balanchine School.

00:44:45.816 --> 00:44:48.452
He was rejected from there
and he gets his start

00:44:48.485 --> 00:44:51.789
with Gluck Sandor,
who's teaching modern dance.

00:44:51.822 --> 00:44:55.759
A friend of mine said,
"Oh, you've got to see this."

00:44:55.793 --> 00:44:57.461
She called it a
musical comedy.

00:44:57.494 --> 00:44:59.296
I said,
"I hate musical comedies."

00:44:59.329 --> 00:45:01.865
Oh, I was such a snob too.

00:45:01.899 --> 00:45:03.267
-Oh, my God.
-What a snob.

00:45:03.300 --> 00:45:05.235
My chignon, my first position.
Are you kidding?

00:45:05.269 --> 00:45:07.037
-It's disgusting.
-I had never seen it.

00:45:07.071 --> 00:45:09.973
-Disgusting.
-I had never seen a musical
in my life.

00:45:10.007 --> 00:45:13.477
I had never been.
The only musicals I've seen
is movies, you know.

00:45:13.510 --> 00:45:15.979
And they were one of that,
"Oh, that's not for me."

00:45:16.013 --> 00:45:18.382
She said, "Well,
I think you should see this.

00:45:18.415 --> 00:45:20.250
It's done by Jerome Robbins."

00:45:20.284 --> 00:45:23.420
So, when she said,
"It's choreographed
and directed by Jerome,"

00:45:23.454 --> 00:45:25.055
-I said, "I'll go."
-Yeah.

00:45:25.089 --> 00:45:27.558
And I saw
West
Side Story.

00:45:27.591 --> 00:45:29.326
And that changed my life.

00:45:29.359 --> 00:45:33.263
I went out of
the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre,

00:45:33.297 --> 00:45:36.266
sat by the Seine,
by the river, and said,

00:45:36.300 --> 00:45:41.371
"I have to go to New York
to study that."

00:45:41.405 --> 00:45:43.474
And that's what I did.

00:45:45.609 --> 00:45:48.579
[Bergasse]
The first
movie, the first time I
realized

00:45:48.612 --> 00:45:51.181
I wanted to do musical theater
was when I saw
West Side
Story.

00:45:51.215 --> 00:45:53.217
-West Side Story.
-West Side Story.

00:45:53.250 --> 00:45:54.985
-West Side Story.
-West Side Story.

00:45:55.018 --> 00:45:58.088
-West Side Story.
-I mean,
West Side Story.

00:45:58.122 --> 00:46:03.260
Suddenly, a new world
had opened its doors to me.

00:46:03.293 --> 00:46:04.895
That was jazz.

00:46:04.928 --> 00:46:06.463
That's what I
wanted to do.

00:46:06.497 --> 00:46:08.532
Jerome Robbins' work
kind of exploded

00:46:08.565 --> 00:46:10.567
and that straightaway
captured me.

00:46:11.935 --> 00:46:13.437
His choreography
is very muscular.

00:46:13.470 --> 00:46:15.172
It's very--
it's very grand.

00:46:15.205 --> 00:46:18.208
It has great scale.
There's a lot of danger.

00:46:18.242 --> 00:46:23.380
I fell in love with not only
Robbins' movement,

00:46:23.413 --> 00:46:27.618
you know, it was this mix
of ballet and jazz

00:46:27.651 --> 00:46:31.889
but also with his ability
to tell a story

00:46:31.922 --> 00:46:32.856
and to convey character.

00:46:32.890 --> 00:46:35.592
What
West Side
Story
{end-italic} showed me

00:46:35.626 --> 00:46:38.996
was that you could be
a tough guy

00:46:39.029 --> 00:46:41.031
and yet you could still dance.

00:46:41.064 --> 00:46:42.533
I mean, how cool was that?

00:46:42.566 --> 00:46:47.571
When they would do these
long, extended dance sequences,

00:46:47.604 --> 00:46:50.407
I understood
why they were dancing.

00:46:50.440 --> 00:46:53.210
I understood what
they were trying to say.

00:46:53.243 --> 00:46:56.613
And that helped me
understand the story

00:46:56.647 --> 00:46:59.249
and understand
what these characters wanted

00:46:59.283 --> 00:47:01.985
and needed and/or
were deprived of.

00:47:02.019 --> 00:47:04.021
♪ Boy, boy, crazy boy

00:47:04.054 --> 00:47:07.491
I think, personally,
what the secret
of good theater is

00:47:07.524 --> 00:47:10.027
is conflict that
leads to resolution.

00:47:10.060 --> 00:47:12.629
Tension because
there is no answer.

00:47:12.663 --> 00:47:15.165
And then eventually,
our hero finds the answer

00:47:15.199 --> 00:47:16.433
and finds his way.

00:47:16.466 --> 00:47:19.169
Bob Fosse
was the quintessential sculptor

00:47:19.203 --> 00:47:20.904
of tension and conflict.

00:47:20.938 --> 00:47:22.973
Sexual tension, conflict,

00:47:23.006 --> 00:47:27.311
dysfunction that's so deeply
seated from childhood,

00:47:27.344 --> 00:47:31.348
from past marriages,
from whatever it is,
from social injustice,

00:47:31.381 --> 00:47:36.386
it's--it goes into the body
and it crunches the body
down.

00:47:36.420 --> 00:47:40.424
He grew up dancing in a
lot of vaudeville houses.

00:47:40.457 --> 00:47:43.360
I mean, he was around
strippers and a lot of that
stuff.

00:47:43.393 --> 00:47:48.432
And you see a lot of that
influence in his work.

00:47:48.465 --> 00:47:52.135
He would always say,
"I couldn't turn out,
so I turned in.

00:47:52.169 --> 00:47:54.004
And I had bad posture,
or whatever, you know,

00:47:54.037 --> 00:47:55.372
so I let it come down
like this."

00:47:55.405 --> 00:47:59.409
He was, you know,
pigeon-toed.

00:47:59.443 --> 00:48:01.211
You know, he was
a little guy.

00:48:01.245 --> 00:48:03.146
There always seemed
to be something in Bob

00:48:03.180 --> 00:48:05.048
that was just so cool.

00:48:05.082 --> 00:48:08.585
It was just, ah, right in there.

00:48:08.619 --> 00:48:11.188
It was addicting.
It was heady.

00:48:11.221 --> 00:48:17.561
It was... it
was, ah, jazz.

00:48:17.594 --> 00:48:20.731
I think that the turning
point for him was
{end-italic} Pajama
Game.

00:48:20.764 --> 00:48:23.700
And Gwen then
entered the picture.

00:48:25.435 --> 00:48:28.038
She was his muse,
absolutely his muse,

00:48:28.071 --> 00:48:33.210
and I really think that the
work with Gwen sealed it.

00:48:33.243 --> 00:48:38.315
[Kim Greene]
If you look at
his dancers, there were no
cookie cutters.

00:48:38.348 --> 00:48:41.218
It's not, "Oh, this is
made up of bunch of this and a
bunch of that."

00:48:41.251 --> 00:48:43.053
It's like, there was you.
There was me.

00:48:43.086 --> 00:48:45.022
There was this person,
that person.

00:48:45.055 --> 00:48:46.323
We were all different.

00:48:46.356 --> 00:48:51.061
We all brought our own
thing to the table,

00:48:51.094 --> 00:48:53.530
that he would then take
and just mold

00:48:53.563 --> 00:48:56.667
and make a masterpiece out of.

00:48:56.700 --> 00:48:59.036
So, we were doing
the "Cell Block Tango."

00:48:59.069 --> 00:49:01.471
And, of course,
I was speaking in Hungarian.

00:49:01.505 --> 00:49:03.473
My whole monologue was
Hungarian.

00:49:03.507 --> 00:49:06.009
And the only English
was "not guilty."

00:49:06.043 --> 00:49:08.612
He corrected and gave directions
to everybody.

00:49:08.645 --> 00:49:10.247
Oh, I know this.

00:49:10.280 --> 00:49:15.285
And he never said a word
to me, bad or good or-- nothing.

00:49:15.319 --> 00:49:19.556
So, one day I said,
"Bobby, is it okay
what I'm doing?

00:49:19.589 --> 00:49:22.459
I mean, 'cause you haven't
said anything to me."

00:49:22.492 --> 00:49:24.594
And he turned around,
looked at me.

00:49:24.628 --> 00:49:28.365
He said, "Well, frankly,
I don't understand
a word you're saying,

00:49:28.398 --> 00:49:31.802
and I made up my mind
that you are guilty."

00:49:31.835 --> 00:49:35.772
Well, it was like a knife
because I had decided that
she wasn't.

00:49:35.806 --> 00:49:37.641
-My work on the character
was that...
-This is so good.

00:49:37.674 --> 00:49:39.576
-...she was not guilty.
-This is so good.

00:49:39.609 --> 00:49:42.179
-I had a whole story going on.
-I have goosebumps.

00:49:42.212 --> 00:49:45.215
-I'm having all those--
-It was like somebody had--

00:49:45.248 --> 00:49:49.119
And just before leaving,
he turned around

00:49:49.152 --> 00:49:51.722
and he went, "Right?"

00:49:53.290 --> 00:49:56.259
I thought
that's the greatest cruel,

00:49:56.293 --> 00:50:00.263
cruel, greatest direction
I've ever gotten

00:50:00.297 --> 00:50:03.700
because he made me feel
like Hunyak felt.

00:50:03.734 --> 00:50:07.571
-Yeah.
-During the entire
freaking show.

00:50:07.604 --> 00:50:08.839
-He was cruel.
-It was cruel--

00:50:08.872 --> 00:50:10.574
-He was cruel in that way.
-He was cruel.

00:50:10.607 --> 00:50:13.210
-But it was fantastic.
-But the whole thing was cruel

00:50:13.243 --> 00:50:14.811
-towards the Hunyak.
-Fantastic.

00:50:14.845 --> 00:50:18.181
-I have goose pimples too.
-It was just-- I know.

00:50:18.215 --> 00:50:20.550
One of Fosse's main
descriptions for dancers

00:50:20.584 --> 00:50:23.787
was that they were actors
who communicated with their
bodies.

00:50:23.820 --> 00:50:25.789
So, he didn't
call them dancers.

00:50:25.822 --> 00:50:31.461
They were the company
and they expressed themselves

00:50:31.495 --> 00:50:34.831
and they told that story through
the movements in their body.

00:50:34.865 --> 00:50:38.435
You could look at a dance
as if it were a script.

00:50:38.468 --> 00:50:41.204
So, the steps are like the words
in a script.

00:50:41.238 --> 00:50:43.573
So, you dance the meaning
of the steps.

00:50:43.607 --> 00:50:46.309
Not just steps
for the sake of steps,

00:50:46.343 --> 00:50:49.846
any more than you would act
a script just with the words.

00:50:49.880 --> 00:50:51.448
You don't have to know
what it is.

00:50:51.481 --> 00:50:53.650
I'm the only one
that has to know the story.

00:50:53.683 --> 00:50:55.886
But there has to be
something internally

00:50:55.919 --> 00:50:58.655
going on with everything.

00:51:06.329 --> 00:51:09.466
When we're doing
the number "Big Spender,"

00:51:09.499 --> 00:51:11.401
Gwen would say
things like,

00:51:11.435 --> 00:51:13.437
"Think that you're
pushing through Jell-O

00:51:13.470 --> 00:51:15.405
as you're moving
through the number.

00:51:15.439 --> 00:51:18.675
Roll your shoulder like
you're wearing a dirty bra."

00:51:18.708 --> 00:51:22.412
You know, I mean, it's just--
all these amazing images

00:51:22.446 --> 00:51:24.347
would be used.

00:51:28.318 --> 00:51:30.787
[Bonnie Lanford]
These
dancers lining up against the
bar

00:51:30.821 --> 00:51:34.324
in the dance hall
waiting for these men to come
and choose them.

00:51:34.357 --> 00:51:36.827
And they are broken,
they are broken dolls.

00:51:36.860 --> 00:51:40.230
The minute you say that, it's
not girls posing on a bar.

00:51:40.263 --> 00:51:41.665
It says so much more.

00:51:41.698 --> 00:51:45.302
And, to me,
that just adds these layers

00:51:45.335 --> 00:51:47.871
that make it so expressive

00:51:47.904 --> 00:51:51.675
and deep
and at the same time, funny.

00:51:51.708 --> 00:51:56.847
His big theory was contain
and explode,

00:51:56.880 --> 00:51:59.916
so that you would
keep something very quiet

00:51:59.950 --> 00:52:03.787
almost like a little secret,
and then go, "Ah!"

00:52:09.359 --> 00:52:12.295
♪ Do you wanna
have fun? ♪

00:52:12.329 --> 00:52:15.365
[Culbreath]
A lot of times in
dances, there's lots of stuff
going on

00:52:15.398 --> 00:52:17.501
and you just sort of choose
what you wanna look at.

00:52:17.534 --> 00:52:21.338
With Bob, everything
was specifically designed

00:52:21.371 --> 00:52:24.975
to focus in on a hip
or one person's hand

00:52:25.008 --> 00:52:26.910
or the nod of the head

00:52:26.943 --> 00:52:29.312
or suddenly there's a shimmy
of a shoulder.

00:52:29.346 --> 00:52:30.847
[Blake]
It's the restraint of it,

00:52:30.881 --> 00:52:32.549
you know, having
to hold in,

00:52:32.582 --> 00:52:35.519
it's like having sex
without having an orgasm,

00:52:35.552 --> 00:52:37.554
so it's just--
you know, it just--

00:52:37.587 --> 00:52:39.222
it's bubbling up underneath you.

00:52:39.256 --> 00:52:40.824
How's about it, palsy?

00:52:40.857 --> 00:52:42.859
Yeah.

00:52:42.893 --> 00:52:44.895
I think there's a lot of
ways to look at the history

00:52:44.928 --> 00:52:46.296
and who's important,

00:52:46.329 --> 00:52:48.865
and part of why
someone like a Mattox

00:52:48.899 --> 00:52:51.768
and a Giordano and a Luigi
get talked about so much

00:52:51.801 --> 00:52:54.538
was because they codified
their vocabulary.

00:52:54.571 --> 00:52:59.009
And also, let's just be
frank, Mattox, Luigi,

00:52:59.042 --> 00:53:02.445
Giordano have
a ballet influence.

00:53:04.347 --> 00:53:07.984
And, for better or worse,

00:53:08.018 --> 00:53:11.321
that told people
that it was legitimate.

00:53:12.322 --> 00:53:13.790
But here's the thing.

00:53:13.823 --> 00:53:16.493
What if the fundamental
construct of the reasons

00:53:16.526 --> 00:53:19.663
why your movement exists
is based on

00:53:19.696 --> 00:53:21.698
not having that organization
that never changes,

00:53:21.731 --> 00:53:23.800
because that is
a very Eurocentric model?

00:53:23.833 --> 00:53:27.938
So it isn't that the
people who didn't codify

00:53:27.971 --> 00:53:29.439
hadn't thought it out,

00:53:29.472 --> 00:53:31.908
it's that they're saying
the philosophy

00:53:31.942 --> 00:53:33.643
on which the thing
we're building

00:53:33.677 --> 00:53:35.712
doesn't require
codification.

00:53:40.317 --> 00:53:42.519
[interviewer speaking]

00:53:48.658 --> 00:53:50.627
So who are you
identifying?

00:53:56.900 --> 00:53:58.401
Whew!

00:53:59.469 --> 00:54:01.871
It's an incomplete list.

00:54:01.905 --> 00:54:07.043
It is a list that
has a colonist mindset.

00:54:09.713 --> 00:54:11.881
It's always
gonna be an incomplete list

00:54:11.915 --> 00:54:14.451
because the people
that we've elevated,

00:54:14.484 --> 00:54:15.919
the way that
history works

00:54:15.952 --> 00:54:18.388
is that then becomes,
like, the gospel.

00:54:18.421 --> 00:54:21.858
So, it's flawed.

00:54:21.891 --> 00:54:23.526
It's flawed.

00:54:25.362 --> 00:54:27.497
Honestly, Black and
brown people and women

00:54:27.530 --> 00:54:30.333
don't get talked about enough
in the history.

00:54:36.439 --> 00:54:38.875
[Murray]
The way people
value your art form

00:54:38.908 --> 00:54:42.379
is based on the sort of historic
importance it carries,

00:54:42.412 --> 00:54:46.016
so people place a lot of
value on music and on literature

00:54:46.049 --> 00:54:49.919
because you can see a body
of work amassing over time.

00:54:49.953 --> 00:54:53.456
But with dance,
you don't have that,
it is an ephemeral form.

00:54:53.490 --> 00:54:55.892
And in fact, as a
discipline, we often embrace
that fact

00:54:55.925 --> 00:54:58.495
and glory that fact
that you only have

00:54:58.528 --> 00:55:00.363
that one moment
where it exists

00:55:00.397 --> 00:55:02.899
and then it's gone forever,
and that's part of the magic

00:55:02.932 --> 00:55:04.668
and the tragedy of dance,

00:55:04.701 --> 00:55:07.771
we sometimes don't want
to give that up.

00:55:07.804 --> 00:55:11.508
But the problem is,
when you don't keep
your history,

00:55:11.541 --> 00:55:13.777
then you don't know
where you've come from,

00:55:13.810 --> 00:55:15.845
and you can't really know
where you're going

00:55:15.879 --> 00:55:18.415
if you don't know
where you've been.

00:55:20.684 --> 00:55:25.388
I want us all to be more curious
about the names we don't know.

00:55:25.422 --> 00:55:27.724
Because Pepsi Bethel
should be on that list.

00:55:30.760 --> 00:55:32.696
[Hubbard]
Pepsi was an
authentic jazz dancer.

00:55:32.729 --> 00:55:36.533
In fact, his company was
the Authentic
Jazz Dance Theater.

00:55:36.566 --> 00:55:40.003
He never talked about
his professional experience.

00:55:40.036 --> 00:55:42.539
It wasn't until years later
I found out

00:55:42.572 --> 00:55:46.776
that Pepsi was
a Savoy Lindy Hopper.

00:55:46.810 --> 00:55:50.647
In rehearsals,
Pepsi always indicated
what he would do.

00:55:50.680 --> 00:55:53.116
He'd say, "Well,
I'm gonna go over here
and I'll do this,

00:55:53.149 --> 00:55:55.819
and I'll go over there,
and I'll do that,"
blah, blah, blah.

00:55:55.852 --> 00:55:59.422
Didn't know until I got
on stage with the man,

00:55:59.456 --> 00:56:00.824
he was amazing.

00:56:00.857 --> 00:56:02.792
It was like sparks were
flying from his body,

00:56:02.826 --> 00:56:04.494
and he was
scatting,

00:56:04.527 --> 00:56:07.630
and I was stunned for
a moment, you know?

00:56:14.838 --> 00:56:17.140
I'm always researching.
I love research, you know,

00:56:17.173 --> 00:56:20.610
and I just decided
to look up jazz dance,

00:56:20.643 --> 00:56:24.781
and I said, "Where's
Fred Benjamin's name?"

00:56:24.814 --> 00:56:28.518
You know, you see Bob
Fosse, see other people.

00:56:28.551 --> 00:56:32.489
And that's part
of the problem,

00:56:32.522 --> 00:56:38.128
is that there's only very
specific stories being told.

00:56:38.161 --> 00:56:42.098
To be on this planet
during the '60s,

00:56:42.132 --> 00:56:44.534
in the midst
of segregation,

00:56:44.567 --> 00:56:47.704
to still be able to
create your voice

00:56:47.737 --> 00:56:49.639
in the midst of that,

00:56:49.672 --> 00:56:54.778
that's real, because Bob
Fosse and Fred Benjamin

00:56:54.811 --> 00:56:58.715
had two very different paths.

00:56:58.748 --> 00:57:01.618
And I think this is
why it's important

00:57:01.651 --> 00:57:03.820
for so many voices

00:57:03.853 --> 00:57:06.189
to get lifted up
because it's easy

00:57:06.222 --> 00:57:08.691
for things to just
kind of fall away

00:57:08.725 --> 00:57:10.160
and not get acknowledged.

00:57:10.193 --> 00:57:12.262
These are people who were
so dedicated to the form

00:57:12.295 --> 00:57:16.599
that that was their whole life,
and then they pass away,

00:57:16.633 --> 00:57:19.135
and if not for their families,

00:57:19.169 --> 00:57:21.738
you know, out of sight,
out of mind.

00:57:24.874 --> 00:57:28.611
Without JoJo Smith, there's no
Broadway Dance Center,
literally.

00:57:28.645 --> 00:57:30.647
He started a school,

00:57:30.680 --> 00:57:33.249
and then that school
became another school,

00:57:33.283 --> 00:57:35.518
which then became
the Broadway Dance Center.

00:57:35.552 --> 00:57:39.522
But without
JoJo's Dance Factory,

00:57:39.556 --> 00:57:41.124
you can't even get there.

00:57:41.157 --> 00:57:43.660
One of my biggest
influences

00:57:43.693 --> 00:57:47.664
in my style of dance
and jazz was JoJo Smith.

00:57:47.697 --> 00:57:50.633
JoJo Smith.

00:57:50.667 --> 00:57:56.005
I saw a special on
television, and I saw
dancers,

00:57:56.039 --> 00:57:59.075
they were dancing
with an undulation

00:57:59.108 --> 00:58:01.177
and a smoothness
and a fierceness.

00:58:01.211 --> 00:58:04.080
I said,
"Who the hell is that?"

00:58:05.882 --> 00:58:07.684
[Sue Samuels]
The
different jazz masters,

00:58:07.717 --> 00:58:11.187
the early jazz masters came
through ballet training,

00:58:11.221 --> 00:58:14.557
so their styles were rounded
in some way.

00:58:14.591 --> 00:58:18.862
Not JoJo. JoJo came
through the martial arts.

00:58:18.895 --> 00:58:21.231
And his mother
was in Katherine Dunham.

00:58:21.264 --> 00:58:25.068
So, the dance
and then martial arts

00:58:25.101 --> 00:58:29.873
had, like, a square-ish
kind of style.

00:58:32.075 --> 00:58:34.611
[Smith]
Before
JoJo's Dance Factory,

00:58:34.644 --> 00:58:37.847
which also my mother,
Sue Samuels, helped build,

00:58:37.881 --> 00:58:40.850
every dance teacher had
their own studio,

00:58:40.884 --> 00:58:43.820
and so you had to go
to this one studio
to get ballet,

00:58:43.853 --> 00:58:45.855
you had to go to this
studio to get tap.

00:58:45.889 --> 00:58:47.824
You had to go
here to get jazz.

00:58:47.857 --> 00:58:50.326
They actually brought all
the styles and techniques

00:58:50.360 --> 00:58:52.929
under the same roof
for the first time,

00:58:52.962 --> 00:58:54.931
and they don't get
credit for it,

00:58:54.964 --> 00:58:56.900
but now, I look around the world

00:58:56.933 --> 00:58:58.935
and all dance studios
are modeled

00:58:58.968 --> 00:59:01.671
after what they started
in the '70s.

00:59:03.740 --> 00:59:06.776
These are these names
that get lost,

00:59:06.809 --> 00:59:09.846
because they were doing
the work on the daily.

00:59:10.780 --> 00:59:12.382
They were teachers,

00:59:12.415 --> 00:59:16.052
and they were doing the work
day in, day out.

00:59:18.121 --> 00:59:20.256
[Al Blackstone]
For me, it
was all about Frank
Hatchett.

00:59:20.290 --> 00:59:24.761
He was this
incredible presence.

00:59:24.794 --> 00:59:27.230
He was really
as much a motivator

00:59:27.263 --> 00:59:29.933
and a guru, I'd say,

00:59:29.966 --> 00:59:31.868
as much as he was
a choreographer and a teacher,

00:59:31.901 --> 00:59:33.836
and he was one of
the first people I think

00:59:33.870 --> 00:59:36.873
that, really, I understood
about what style was.

00:59:36.906 --> 00:59:39.976
He had a style that he taught,
he called it VOP,
he created it himself,

00:59:40.009 --> 00:59:42.078
it sort of became the name
of what he was teaching.

00:59:42.111 --> 00:59:46.683
I believe as a jazz dancer,
it's our obligation
to interpret the music,

00:59:46.716 --> 00:59:48.117
to communicate
with the audience,

00:59:48.151 --> 00:59:49.352
it's an energy.

00:59:49.385 --> 00:59:51.254
Sometimes we have
to sacrifice technique,

00:59:51.287 --> 00:59:54.857
but that's what VOP is,
it's about flavoring
the choreography.

00:59:54.891 --> 00:59:57.894
VOP, the initials mean nothing,
it's a style.

01:00:00.797 --> 01:00:03.333
[Blackstone]
He would
combine, like, classic pas de
bourrées

01:00:03.366 --> 01:00:05.068
and then he would
get this sort of, like,

01:00:05.101 --> 01:00:06.836
very grounded sort of, like--

01:00:06.869 --> 01:00:09.839
almost the beginning, really,
of what we call hip-hop now.

01:00:09.872 --> 01:00:14.043
And he was-- combined styles
in a way that was very fearless,

01:00:14.077 --> 01:00:15.812
and I think
really excited people.

01:00:15.845 --> 01:00:18.181
Pas de bourrée, say hey.

01:00:18.214 --> 01:00:19.215
Hey.

01:00:19.248 --> 01:00:21.017
-Say ho.
-Ho.

01:00:21.050 --> 01:00:23.720
He was really motivating,
but he was also really fun,

01:00:23.753 --> 01:00:25.755
but he also had
very, very high standards.

01:00:25.788 --> 01:00:28.024
I remember people would,
you know, come into class,

01:00:28.057 --> 01:00:29.325
and they would stand in
the front of the room,

01:00:29.359 --> 01:00:30.827
and if they didn't know what
they were doing,

01:00:30.860 --> 01:00:32.328
Frank would ask you
to move to the back,

01:00:32.362 --> 01:00:33.396
and he would ask you to move
to the back of the room

01:00:33.429 --> 01:00:35.064
in front of the entire class.

01:00:35.098 --> 01:00:38.968
I mean, there was a really
high standard of behavior.

01:00:39.002 --> 01:00:42.372
It's this environment that
was simultaneously really
fun

01:00:42.405 --> 01:00:45.008
and really energetic,
but also really serious.

01:00:45.041 --> 01:00:46.976
People took
this style seriously.

01:00:47.010 --> 01:00:49.112
You were in New York,
you had technique,

01:00:49.145 --> 01:00:52.115
but you also had flavor,
and you had style.

01:00:52.148 --> 01:00:56.152
And I think that he found a way
to combine discipline
of the technique

01:00:56.185 --> 01:00:58.721
with what was happening
commercially in America

01:00:58.755 --> 01:01:00.023
and what was happening
in the clubs

01:01:00.056 --> 01:01:01.691
and what was happening
with music.

01:01:04.127 --> 01:01:06.295
I don't think
the artists of today

01:01:06.329 --> 01:01:10.433
are doing enough
to acknowledge our ancestors,

01:01:10.466 --> 01:01:13.102
the lineage of this art form,

01:01:13.136 --> 01:01:16.372
and the history of this dance.

01:01:16.406 --> 01:01:18.741
I think we need
to talk about our ancestors,

01:01:18.775 --> 01:01:22.178
we need to talk about
our inspirations, every
class.

01:01:22.211 --> 01:01:25.948
Not just the one time
we get to sit down on film.

01:01:25.982 --> 01:01:28.251
We need to speak
their names every day.

01:01:29.552 --> 01:01:31.788
If we continue to
keep their memory,

01:01:31.821 --> 01:01:33.189
their spirit alive,

01:01:33.222 --> 01:01:35.191
through their dances,
through their music,

01:01:35.224 --> 01:01:37.160
through
their names,

01:01:37.193 --> 01:01:39.295
that evokes their
spirit on a higher level

01:01:39.328 --> 01:01:42.031
and that's one of
the most powerful things

01:01:42.065 --> 01:01:43.900
you can do
as a human.

01:01:47.303 --> 01:01:50.073
[Durden]
It's paying
respects and honor to the
elders.

01:01:50.106 --> 01:01:54.177
It's acknowledging that
a group of people were here

01:01:54.210 --> 01:01:56.379
and they contributed
to society,

01:01:56.412 --> 01:01:59.882
they contributed to
what influenced you.

01:01:59.916 --> 01:02:04.487
And to be dismissive
of that is to say
that they weren't here.

01:02:04.520 --> 01:02:08.257
Because we go to these studios,
we go to these universities,

01:02:08.291 --> 01:02:10.960
and you get one side
of the picture,

01:02:10.993 --> 01:02:14.363
and there's a whole other
side that y'all don't even know.

01:02:14.397 --> 01:02:16.065
They don't know
about these people,

01:02:16.099 --> 01:02:17.433
you don't even know their names.

01:02:17.467 --> 01:02:19.869
I think part of what
happens in the U.S. is this

01:02:19.902 --> 01:02:22.805
kind of consolidation
of everything.

01:02:22.839 --> 01:02:25.308
It's like America
as the melting pot,

01:02:25.341 --> 01:02:27.176
things kind of
get absorbed

01:02:27.210 --> 01:02:30.246
so we stop identifying the thing
that made it,

01:02:30.279 --> 01:02:33.049
and so it becomes
this whole universal

01:02:33.082 --> 01:02:35.885
experience of dance.

01:02:35.918 --> 01:02:38.321
It's also because as
Americans, you don't
acknowledge

01:02:38.354 --> 01:02:41.023
the historical roots
of lots of things,

01:02:41.057 --> 01:02:43.126
particularly those things
in which African Americans

01:02:43.159 --> 01:02:46.229
have had
a vital participatory role.

01:02:48.231 --> 01:02:49.999
[Durden]
To see someone
doing a dance

01:02:50.032 --> 01:02:51.934
but they have no relationship
to the community

01:02:51.968 --> 01:02:55.905
and why it's being done, then
it loses its authenticity,

01:02:55.938 --> 01:02:57.573
it becomes a movement

01:02:57.607 --> 01:03:00.176
that in the movement,

01:03:00.209 --> 01:03:02.612
there's authentic form
and expression.

01:03:02.645 --> 01:03:07.850
But the meaning behind
what you're doing
is not the same.

01:03:07.884 --> 01:03:11.621
[DeFrantz]
African-American creativity
does get appropriated,

01:03:11.654 --> 01:03:14.190
it gets taken,
and moved to somewhere

01:03:14.223 --> 01:03:16.125
where it never was before

01:03:16.159 --> 01:03:19.462
and dropped down to do a
different kind of work,

01:03:19.495 --> 01:03:23.166
and then the people who
created the form can't
benefit

01:03:23.199 --> 01:03:25.101
from all of
the things that

01:03:25.134 --> 01:03:27.236
might be available
in this other space.

01:03:27.270 --> 01:03:31.174
On Broadway or Hollywood
where there might be money
or more work,

01:03:31.207 --> 01:03:33.276
or the possibility to live
in a neighborhood

01:03:33.309 --> 01:03:35.178
where schools are good
for children,

01:03:35.211 --> 01:03:37.547
like that's not available
for the Black people

01:03:37.580 --> 01:03:39.649
who are developing
these dance forms

01:03:39.682 --> 01:03:41.317
and these creative addresses.

01:03:41.350 --> 01:03:44.287
So, it's important to understand
that this is a part of

01:03:44.320 --> 01:03:46.022
how jazz is formed.

01:03:46.055 --> 01:03:47.423
It's not gonna go away.

01:03:47.456 --> 01:03:50.226
It doesn't not exist
just because we wish it didn't.

01:03:50.259 --> 01:03:53.062
This is what jazz is, too,
it's part of it.

01:03:53.095 --> 01:03:56.265
I think people
do have a genuine--

01:03:56.299 --> 01:03:58.901
Uh, I don't even know
if I can say that word,

01:03:58.935 --> 01:04:01.637
but they have a respect for it.

01:04:01.671 --> 01:04:05.341
But I just think there's a lot
of conversations to have

01:04:05.374 --> 01:04:08.477
as to how authentic
you're doing--

01:04:08.511 --> 01:04:10.279
you're trying to hold
on to something.

01:04:10.313 --> 01:04:12.682
It might not be something
for you to hold on to.

01:04:12.715 --> 01:04:16.252
I think it also wears a support
for the community

01:04:16.285 --> 01:04:19.622
that this art form comes from,
it's the people.

01:04:19.655 --> 01:04:22.525
And when people divide
and take the dance away

01:04:22.558 --> 01:04:26.195
from the people, and say,
"This dance is cool,

01:04:26.229 --> 01:04:29.165
but I don't wanna mess
with you as a person,"

01:04:29.198 --> 01:04:30.600
there's danger in that

01:04:30.633 --> 01:04:32.602
because now
we're just appropriating

01:04:32.635 --> 01:04:34.937
these art forms for sale

01:04:34.971 --> 01:04:37.673
as opposed to appreciating
the people

01:04:37.707 --> 01:04:39.475
that have brought
these art forms out

01:04:39.508 --> 01:04:41.644
and getting the true meaning
of what they're doing

01:04:41.677 --> 01:04:43.412
and what they're trying to say.

01:04:45.514 --> 01:04:49.051
The Civil Rights Movement is
another challenging moment

01:04:49.085 --> 01:04:50.987
[DeFrantz]
in American
political history

01:04:51.020 --> 01:04:53.289
where dances start
to shift yet again

01:04:53.322 --> 01:04:56.325
and they become
even more weighty,

01:04:56.359 --> 01:04:58.261
so we're seeing
a lot of fists,

01:04:58.294 --> 01:05:00.096
and things are getting
just harder

01:05:00.129 --> 01:05:02.098
because the struggle
for civil rights

01:05:02.131 --> 01:05:05.268
is also reflected
in the social dances
that we create.

01:05:06.636 --> 01:05:12.541
We are gonna walk
non-violently and peacefully,

01:05:12.575 --> 01:05:15.745
to let the nation
and the world know

01:05:15.778 --> 01:05:19.081
that we are tired now.

01:05:19.115 --> 01:05:24.220
We've lived with slavery
and segregation 345 years.

01:05:24.253 --> 01:05:28.324
We waited a long time
for freedom.

01:05:28.357 --> 01:05:31.427
We are trying
to remind the nation

01:05:31.460 --> 01:05:33.529
of the urgency of the moment.

01:05:33.562 --> 01:05:38.534
Now is the time to make
real the promises of democracy.

01:05:38.567 --> 01:05:42.405
Now is the time to make
justice a reality

01:05:42.438 --> 01:05:44.507
for all of God's children.

01:05:44.540 --> 01:05:48.411
♪ Run from these demons

01:05:48.444 --> 01:05:52.081
♪ Please don't give 'em
a reason ♪

01:05:53.382 --> 01:05:58.087
♪ To spill blood
on my sneakers ♪

01:05:58.120 --> 01:06:01.023
♪ So I just put
my hand up ♪

01:06:01.057 --> 01:06:04.593
Martin Luther King was
shot and was killed tonight...

01:06:04.627 --> 01:06:07.596
♪ ...put me
in handcuffs ♪

01:06:07.630 --> 01:06:12.468
♪ They just scared 'cause
they don't understand us ♪

01:06:12.501 --> 01:06:16.605
♪ Try to beat us down
when we try to stand up ♪

01:06:16.639 --> 01:06:19.508
♪ I didn't even
do nothin' ♪

01:06:19.542 --> 01:06:21.544
[Muhammad Ali]
You my opposer
when I want freedom.

01:06:21.577 --> 01:06:23.412
You my opposer
when I want justice.

01:06:23.446 --> 01:06:25.081
You my opposer
when I want equality.

01:06:25.114 --> 01:06:27.083
You won't even stand
up for me in America,

01:06:27.116 --> 01:06:28.451
for my religious beliefs

01:06:28.484 --> 01:06:30.152
and you want me
to go somewhere and fight

01:06:30.186 --> 01:06:32.355
but you won't even stand up
for me here at home.

01:06:33.322 --> 01:06:35.825
♪ Oh, baby

01:06:35.858 --> 01:06:37.460
♪ Yeah

01:06:37.493 --> 01:06:41.263
♪ Just give me
my freedom ♪

01:06:44.867 --> 01:06:46.669
♪ The beautiful

01:06:47.470 --> 01:06:49.705
♪ America

01:06:49.739 --> 01:06:52.274
♪ The murderer

01:06:52.308 --> 01:06:54.577
♪ America

01:06:54.610 --> 01:06:56.846
♪ The beautiful

01:06:56.879 --> 01:06:58.447
♪ America

01:06:58.481 --> 01:07:01.450
♪ God bless America

01:07:14.764 --> 01:07:18.100
[Durden]
The '60s is kind of known
as the Decade of Fire.

01:07:18.134 --> 01:07:21.771
We had a lot of
assassinations, Women's Rights
movement,

01:07:21.804 --> 01:07:23.406
Black Power movement.

01:07:23.439 --> 01:07:25.708
And so the music kind of
reflected those times.

01:07:25.741 --> 01:07:30.279
The dances reflected the
movement that was going on.

01:07:31.680 --> 01:07:35.451
So now the twist
changes the social decorum.

01:07:35.484 --> 01:07:38.387
People are just dancing. They
can do it by themselves,

01:07:38.421 --> 01:07:42.758
a woman doesn't have to wait
for a man to ask her to
dance.

01:07:42.792 --> 01:07:46.228
[Dr. Faison]
We were seeing
all sorts of
different attitudes.

01:07:46.262 --> 01:07:48.297
And people were
coming out of,

01:07:48.330 --> 01:07:50.666
or falling out of,
all kind of closets.

01:07:50.699 --> 01:07:53.903
You know what I mean?
So the world was different.

01:07:53.936 --> 01:07:55.571
People were different.

01:07:55.604 --> 01:07:59.341
We were living and it
was everything out there.

01:07:59.375 --> 01:08:04.413
Drugs and sex and rock 'n'
roll, and that other beat.

01:08:04.447 --> 01:08:07.450
There it was,
it was jazz back there

01:08:07.483 --> 01:08:09.351
on the dance floor again.

01:08:09.385 --> 01:08:12.488
You know, taking us
into another era.

01:08:12.521 --> 01:08:15.558
In the '70s,
the streets were buzzing,

01:08:15.591 --> 01:08:18.527
the clubs were buzzing,
dance was everywhere,

01:08:18.561 --> 01:08:21.630
and dance wasn't just
something you had to train for,

01:08:21.664 --> 01:08:24.567
dance was something
you could create

01:08:24.600 --> 01:08:26.869
whether it was
from the streets of hip-hop

01:08:26.902 --> 01:08:30.239
or breaking or
in the discos.

01:08:30.272 --> 01:08:32.675
And it was wild.

01:08:36.645 --> 01:08:40.850
Hip-hop is the culture that has
come right out of our community.

01:08:40.883 --> 01:08:43.452
It's a culture,
it's not just a music style

01:08:43.486 --> 01:08:44.720
or dance style, it's a culture.

01:08:44.753 --> 01:08:47.690
Hip-hop is a
derivative of jazz.

01:08:47.723 --> 01:08:50.259
And so the root of it
is coming from jazz

01:08:50.292 --> 01:08:51.694
but it's the street,

01:08:51.727 --> 01:08:53.429
it's the common dance.

01:08:53.462 --> 01:08:55.498
I call it the common dance
of jazz today.

01:08:55.531 --> 01:08:58.400
Most of the
characteristics defined with
hip-hop culture

01:08:58.434 --> 01:09:00.302
are closely connected
to the roots,

01:09:00.336 --> 01:09:04.607
the identifiable
characteristics of African
traditional dance.

01:09:04.640 --> 01:09:06.709
[upbeat music playing]

01:09:10.713 --> 01:09:13.816
[Brown]
Each
generation has a time

01:09:13.849 --> 01:09:17.820
when you're looking
at the politics around you

01:09:17.853 --> 01:09:20.422
and you're
responding to it.

01:09:20.456 --> 01:09:22.791
That was part of
the creation of hip-hop,

01:09:22.825 --> 01:09:25.327
people finding their voices.

01:09:27.329 --> 01:09:29.732
[Durden]
Pretty much
every hip-hop dance you see,

01:09:29.765 --> 01:09:32.568
I can show you footage
of that same step

01:09:32.601 --> 01:09:35.538
from the jazz era.

01:09:35.571 --> 01:09:37.907
Some of the movement
that you see breakers do was

01:09:37.940 --> 01:09:41.977
part of what was considered
eccentric dancing
in the jazz era.

01:09:42.011 --> 01:09:46.315
A lot of that was seen
as comedic dancing.

01:09:46.348 --> 01:09:49.518
In 1921, Lupino Lane
came out with a book,

01:09:49.552 --> 01:09:51.921
and in that book,
they illustrate

01:09:51.954 --> 01:09:56.392
how to do moves
that breakers do right now.

01:09:56.425 --> 01:10:00.496
So, we can see that none
of this stuff is new

01:10:00.529 --> 01:10:02.631
and they say nothing is new
under the sun,

01:10:02.665 --> 01:10:06.268
the only thing that might
be new is how you put your
twist on it.

01:10:06.302 --> 01:10:08.938
But there's a lineage
to this movement

01:10:08.971 --> 01:10:11.840
that we need to excavate
to really understand

01:10:11.874 --> 01:10:14.410
its socio-cultural
significance.

01:10:14.443 --> 01:10:16.645
And these are
steps that go back

01:10:16.679 --> 01:10:18.714
to the 1800s,
some of them.

01:10:18.747 --> 01:10:22.418
And so there's a progression
that happens in the
community

01:10:22.451 --> 01:10:25.688
that we don't
see on the stage.

01:10:25.721 --> 01:10:28.891
So, Lindy Hop
didn't die,

01:10:28.924 --> 01:10:31.660
it transitioned
into some other movements

01:10:31.694 --> 01:10:33.395
for the next generation.

01:10:33.429 --> 01:10:35.631
So you have Lindy Hoppers
today saying,

01:10:35.664 --> 01:10:37.833
"Well, the African Americans,
they dropped it."

01:10:37.866 --> 01:10:39.635
You can't drop culture.

01:10:39.668 --> 01:10:40.970
You don't drop culture.

01:10:41.003 --> 01:10:42.771
But if you're not
in that culture,

01:10:42.805 --> 01:10:46.875
you don't see how it
morphs into the next thing.

01:10:48.911 --> 01:10:50.913
And so now, when I get
around young students

01:10:50.946 --> 01:10:52.982
and they're turning
their nose up at hip-hop.

01:10:53.015 --> 01:10:55.618
"Oh, no. I'm not taking
hip-hop, that's not real
dancing."

01:10:55.651 --> 01:10:57.419
And it's very
interesting to me

01:10:57.453 --> 01:10:59.388
because we'll talk about
African-American people

01:10:59.421 --> 01:11:02.791
who, "I have to have
my natural hairstyle.

01:11:02.825 --> 01:11:04.326
I have to have the garb.

01:11:04.360 --> 01:11:06.428
I have to have the Black art
on the wall.

01:11:06.462 --> 01:11:08.364
I need to read Langston Hughes."

01:11:08.397 --> 01:11:10.799
But when it comes to the dance

01:11:10.833 --> 01:11:12.368
and hip-hop

01:11:12.401 --> 01:11:14.837
is most tied
to your cultural identity

01:11:14.870 --> 01:11:17.406
and heritage
because of the structure

01:11:17.439 --> 01:11:20.376
how rooted it is in African
dance.

01:11:20.409 --> 01:11:22.811
But that's not real dancing.

01:11:22.845 --> 01:11:25.748
And these elders have taught you

01:11:25.781 --> 01:11:28.350
to value this Eurocentric dance

01:11:28.384 --> 01:11:31.754
over what's most connected
to your heritage.

01:11:31.787 --> 01:11:33.055
They don't get it.

01:11:33.088 --> 01:11:34.823
They're not
doing it intentionally.

01:11:34.857 --> 01:11:36.492
They don't see it.

01:11:37.960 --> 01:11:39.628
[Guarino]
Hip-hop, all of a sudden,

01:11:39.662 --> 01:11:41.730
you see it not danced
to hip-hop music

01:11:41.764 --> 01:11:43.432
so we're removing it
further and further

01:11:43.465 --> 01:11:45.801
from that culture
of which it was born.

01:11:45.834 --> 01:11:47.903
And it might not have
that connection

01:11:47.936 --> 01:11:50.673
to the place
where in the '80s

01:11:50.706 --> 01:11:52.574
when people were
using hip-hop

01:11:52.608 --> 01:11:54.510
as a way to work out
their aggression

01:11:54.543 --> 01:11:56.111
and from a place
of community.

01:11:56.145 --> 01:11:58.814
So now I see
a lot of hip-hop dances

01:11:58.847 --> 01:12:00.482
where everyone
is standing in straight lines

01:12:00.516 --> 01:12:02.418
and directed outward
towards the audience

01:12:02.451 --> 01:12:05.487
and there's this
disconnect and lack of community

01:12:05.521 --> 01:12:07.423
and they're not dancing
to hip-hop music,

01:12:07.456 --> 01:12:08.624
yet they're calling it hip-hop.

01:12:08.657 --> 01:12:11.427
So we're having
a lot of the same issues

01:12:11.460 --> 01:12:13.429
with these branches off
of the jazz tree

01:12:13.462 --> 01:12:16.031
and who knows
where they'll go.

01:12:29.011 --> 01:12:32.614
[Blackstone]
A great
jazz dancer is musical,

01:12:32.648 --> 01:12:34.116
has line,

01:12:34.149 --> 01:12:36.852
has a strong
sense of self.

01:12:38.487 --> 01:12:41.790
A great jazz dancer
isn't afraid to get dirty.

01:12:41.824 --> 01:12:45.694
A great jazz dancer isn't
afraid to enjoy themselves.

01:12:51.467 --> 01:12:55.003
[Esse]
It's those extra
inches of feeling in
movement

01:12:55.037 --> 01:12:58.006
that I think makes the most
dynamic jazz dancer,

01:12:58.040 --> 01:13:01.844
somebody that doesn't just
stop at the end of the line

01:13:01.877 --> 01:13:03.579
but continues to go on.

01:13:11.687 --> 01:13:14.156
[Mandy Moore]
A great jazz dancer
knows how to focus.

01:13:14.189 --> 01:13:16.158
They know
how to get the audience

01:13:16.191 --> 01:13:18.727
to look at them and say,
this is what I want.

01:13:18.761 --> 01:13:20.996
This is what I want you
to look at.

01:13:28.637 --> 01:13:30.639
[Allen]
It's like
the great jazz musicians.

01:13:30.672 --> 01:13:32.608
There're a lot of people
that can hit the notes

01:13:32.641 --> 01:13:34.109
but can they
put it together,

01:13:34.143 --> 01:13:36.845
can they make gumbo with it,
can they zhuzh it,

01:13:36.879 --> 01:13:37.946
can they make it hot?

01:13:37.980 --> 01:13:40.716
You know,
that's jazz dancing.

01:13:45.254 --> 01:13:47.156
[Jerry Mitchell]
I can
teach you the steps,

01:13:47.189 --> 01:13:50.492
I can teach you the
words, I can teach you the
notes.

01:13:50.526 --> 01:13:54.163
But what I can't teach
you how to do is have
passion.

01:13:54.196 --> 01:13:57.166
If you can't bring passion
to the room,

01:13:57.199 --> 01:13:59.668
why would anyone
wanna watch you?

01:14:11.547 --> 01:14:15.250
In the '80s, dance was visible
in a way

01:14:15.284 --> 01:14:17.986
that it isn't even visible now.

01:14:18.020 --> 01:14:19.788
It was, like, okay,
now sex is back

01:14:19.822 --> 01:14:22.591
and we're gonna-- we got MTV
and music videos and it's hot.

01:14:22.624 --> 01:14:25.527
And, like, girls are killing it,
with the guys strong,

01:14:25.561 --> 01:14:26.829
shirtless, you know.

01:14:32.801 --> 01:14:35.671
[George]
There was so much
dance happening in the '80s and
'90s.

01:14:35.704 --> 01:14:37.940
And you would see
the same dancers

01:14:37.973 --> 01:14:39.575
from video to video

01:14:39.608 --> 01:14:41.543
and then you just didn't see
them anymore.

01:14:41.577 --> 01:14:43.078
And conventional wisdom
would say,

01:14:43.111 --> 01:14:44.980
oh, it's because
dancing in music videos

01:14:45.013 --> 01:14:47.115
fell out of vogue
in the late '90s.

01:14:47.149 --> 01:14:48.984
But the reality also was,

01:14:49.017 --> 01:14:50.686
we were in the midst
of an AIDS crisis.

01:14:50.719 --> 01:14:53.989
And so there's dancers
who I saw in multiple videos

01:14:54.022 --> 01:14:56.225
who then just disappeared.

01:15:01.763 --> 01:15:03.932
[Mitchell]
I
was a dancer.

01:15:03.966 --> 01:15:07.636
Choreographers were dying
left and right.

01:15:07.669 --> 01:15:09.938
There was no dance.

01:15:09.972 --> 01:15:11.740
Dance disappeared
from Broadway

01:15:11.773 --> 01:15:13.809
not because the
choreographers were dying,

01:15:13.842 --> 01:15:19.248
because dance
is a sexual expression.

01:15:19.281 --> 01:15:21.617
Even when you don't want it
to be sexual,

01:15:21.650 --> 01:15:26.288
it's sexual because we're using
our bodies to tell a story.

01:15:26.321 --> 01:15:28.290
So people were afraid.

01:15:29.391 --> 01:15:33.061
And that form
of expression

01:15:33.095 --> 01:15:36.064
was left alone
for a while.

01:15:40.135 --> 01:15:42.938
[George]
AIDS took
out all of these men

01:15:42.971 --> 01:15:48.243
and it took them out primarily
between the ages of 23 and 45.

01:15:48.277 --> 01:15:50.846
And when you think
about who we are as artists

01:15:50.879 --> 01:15:52.948
and when we hit,
like, our prime,

01:15:52.981 --> 01:15:56.151
when we really like
figure out what it is what we
wanna do.

01:15:56.184 --> 01:15:58.253
Thirty-five
and forty-five,

01:15:58.287 --> 01:16:01.223
that's when people
really, really lock in

01:16:01.256 --> 01:16:06.061
and we just
don't have those voices,

01:16:06.094 --> 01:16:08.030
so it changed the trajectory

01:16:08.063 --> 01:16:09.898
in ways that I don't know
that we can really name

01:16:09.932 --> 01:16:13.035
because, certainly,
work was still getting made,
you know.

01:16:13.068 --> 01:16:16.905
Uh, but, you know,
a chunk of the creative team

01:16:16.939 --> 01:16:19.107
that created
A
Chorus Line
{end-italic} is gone.

01:16:23.879 --> 01:16:27.749
I got to where I am
on the backs of a lot of people

01:16:27.783 --> 01:16:29.151
who are no longer with us.

01:16:29.184 --> 01:16:32.087
So, when I really started
to teach in New York,

01:16:32.120 --> 01:16:33.922
that was during the AIDS crisis.

01:16:33.956 --> 01:16:37.192
So the young gentlemen
who were teaching jazz

01:16:37.225 --> 01:16:40.362
all over New York disappeared.

01:16:40.395 --> 01:16:43.999
Those people that we lost,
we lost a whole connection

01:16:44.032 --> 01:16:46.268
the things that would have
informed theater.

01:16:46.301 --> 01:16:48.704
God, who knows what we would
have been doing now

01:16:48.737 --> 01:16:50.772
had those people not died.

01:16:55.043 --> 01:16:57.212
Sometimes I look at the work
of the '80s

01:16:57.245 --> 01:17:00.716
and as much as it feels
sexual and propulsive and
dynamic,

01:17:00.749 --> 01:17:03.251
there's times it also feels
really desperate,

01:17:03.285 --> 01:17:05.887
because people were dancing
for their lives.

01:17:05.921 --> 01:17:09.257
And many of them
couldn't talk about it.

01:17:14.062 --> 01:17:16.798
It's heartbreaking.
It's heartbreaking because...

01:17:16.832 --> 01:17:19.001
we'll never know
what they could have done,

01:17:19.034 --> 01:17:21.737
we'll never know how that
work could have changed
our lives,

01:17:21.770 --> 01:17:24.373
how that work would
have changed the world.

01:17:38.887 --> 01:17:42.791
[instructor] Spread the toes,
plié, rolling up.

01:17:42.824 --> 01:17:44.960
Pressing the whole foot
into the floor,

01:17:44.993 --> 01:17:46.228
feeling very rooted.

01:17:46.261 --> 01:17:47.896
Stand tall.

01:17:58.206 --> 01:18:00.042
To first position.

01:18:03.545 --> 01:18:05.881
[George]
I started
noticing it in the '90s,

01:18:05.914 --> 01:18:09.751
the repertoire of jazz
companies was changing
dramatically.

01:18:09.785 --> 01:18:11.853
Two, regular.

01:18:12.954 --> 01:18:14.823
It's slow. I know. I changed it.

01:18:14.856 --> 01:18:17.959
What happened
was a huge shift

01:18:17.993 --> 01:18:20.729
to modern and
contemporary.

01:18:23.231 --> 01:18:25.033
Body roll.

01:18:25.067 --> 01:18:27.069
There was
nothing going on,

01:18:27.102 --> 01:18:28.937
I mean, you could
barely get a job

01:18:28.970 --> 01:18:30.806
as a jazz dancer.

01:18:36.111 --> 01:18:37.813
Plié, roll it out.

01:18:37.846 --> 01:18:41.216
[George]
But then a few years
go by, five, six years,

01:18:41.249 --> 01:18:43.819
Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys,

01:18:43.852 --> 01:18:47.155
NSYNC, Darrin's Dance Grooves.

01:18:47.189 --> 01:18:48.990
Because it's always cyclical,

01:18:49.024 --> 01:18:51.126
there's always an ebb and
a flow to what's happening.

01:18:51.159 --> 01:18:53.428
And so, even if you
don't see jazz prominent right
now,

01:18:53.462 --> 01:18:56.198
just wait because it's always
gonna be there.

01:18:57.866 --> 01:18:59.367
There's something
about jazz

01:18:59.401 --> 01:19:04.906
that feels almost like
everyman meets magnified dancer.

01:19:04.940 --> 01:19:06.942
You know, there's some things
about jazz dancing

01:19:06.975 --> 01:19:08.810
that I think
can feel

01:19:08.844 --> 01:19:11.079
common to someone who
doesn't know how to dance.

01:19:11.113 --> 01:19:13.081
It feels right
when you watch it,

01:19:13.115 --> 01:19:15.417
where sometimes
things like ballet

01:19:15.450 --> 01:19:18.220
can feel a
little elitist.

01:19:18.253 --> 01:19:20.122
[Simonson]
And because
it was not elitist,

01:19:20.155 --> 01:19:23.425
it was not "classical
ballet," opera, the symphony,

01:19:23.458 --> 01:19:26.394
it was looked down upon.

01:19:26.428 --> 01:19:28.330
[Knight]
There are
certain areas of dance

01:19:28.363 --> 01:19:31.133
that are much more
well-funded and understood
because

01:19:31.166 --> 01:19:33.268
their values fall in alignment

01:19:33.301 --> 01:19:35.504
with the values of the people
who have the dollars.

01:19:35.537 --> 01:19:38.974
And so, unfortunately, jazz,
hip-hop, tap,

01:19:39.007 --> 01:19:41.977
they're looked at
as the other forms.

01:19:44.913 --> 01:19:48.150
[Boross] Jazz has been told
not to be jazz.

01:19:48.183 --> 01:19:52.087
Jazz is now lately
considered to be a
liability.

01:19:52.120 --> 01:19:56.091
[Walker]
I was told,
"If you would put
contemporary in front of it,

01:19:56.124 --> 01:19:58.026
I could help you out."

01:19:58.059 --> 01:19:59.427
But I couldn't do that.

01:19:59.461 --> 01:20:02.063
If you're gonna go
and talk about jazz dance,

01:20:02.097 --> 01:20:04.900
you don't wanna put
contemporary in front of it.

01:20:04.933 --> 01:20:08.170
Jazz should stand by
itself, but there's no funding.

01:20:10.572 --> 01:20:12.407
[Drew McOnie]
To say there's more room
in the industry

01:20:12.440 --> 01:20:14.309
for jazz companies
is like--

01:20:14.342 --> 01:20:16.278
I mean, of course there is,
there's so few of them.

01:20:16.311 --> 01:20:18.313
You know, if you think
about how saturated

01:20:18.346 --> 01:20:20.882
the world is with ballet
companies and contemporary
companies that--

01:20:20.916 --> 01:20:23.385
And there is-- I promise
you, there is the wealth of
talent out there

01:20:23.418 --> 01:20:26.188
to fill hundreds
of jazz companies.

01:20:35.363 --> 01:20:39.134
To make a career in dance,
to make a career here
in New York City,

01:20:39.167 --> 01:20:40.902
versatility is everything.

01:20:40.936 --> 01:20:42.537
You have to
do everything.

01:20:42.571 --> 01:20:44.105
You must be a
great jazz dancer.

01:20:44.139 --> 01:20:46.208
You must have great ballet
technique.

01:20:46.241 --> 01:20:47.676
You need to be
a tap dancer.

01:20:47.709 --> 01:20:51.313
You should be great
at flamenco and hip-hop.

01:20:51.346 --> 01:20:53.248
And you should sing.

01:20:53.281 --> 01:20:56.117
You know, it's a lot.
There's a lot.

01:20:56.151 --> 01:20:58.086
I think that what's happening
in New York now

01:20:58.119 --> 01:20:59.955
is that people are taking
theater classes

01:20:59.988 --> 01:21:01.389
because they
wanna do theater

01:21:01.423 --> 01:21:04.226
because that's how
they can make money.

01:21:04.259 --> 01:21:06.661
[George]
A friend of
mine calls it "get a job
jazz."

01:21:06.695 --> 01:21:08.964
Training people how to actually
work in the field,

01:21:08.997 --> 01:21:12.133
which means commercial work
or theatrical work.

01:21:14.302 --> 01:21:15.503
Jazz as a technique

01:21:15.537 --> 01:21:17.005
is really how
you become great

01:21:17.038 --> 01:21:18.607
at doing
the kind of choreography

01:21:18.640 --> 01:21:20.675
that you see in
theater today.

01:21:22.677 --> 01:21:25.447
The practice,
or the way it is taught,

01:21:25.480 --> 01:21:27.582
is only from a
commercial point of view.

01:21:27.616 --> 01:21:31.720
We very rarely go back
and we look at the history,
the lineage,

01:21:31.753 --> 01:21:34.589
what makes jazz what it is,
what is the aesthetic.

01:21:34.623 --> 01:21:36.358
And so, the aesthetic
has changed so much

01:21:36.391 --> 01:21:38.560
that we don't
recognize it today.

01:21:42.497 --> 01:21:44.532
[Murray]
Sometimes we
think of jazz dance

01:21:44.566 --> 01:21:46.501
as permanently
being in peril,

01:21:46.534 --> 01:21:49.537
but if you look at those
popular dance shows
on television,

01:21:49.571 --> 01:21:51.539
there are serious choreographers

01:21:51.573 --> 01:21:55.043
on those shows
that are introducing jazz

01:21:55.076 --> 01:21:56.711
to a really
broad audience.

01:21:56.745 --> 01:22:00.048
Dance is becoming more
accessible to the masses.

01:22:00.081 --> 01:22:01.383
It's giving them inspiration

01:22:01.416 --> 01:22:04.352
and it's getting new people
started dancing.

01:22:04.386 --> 01:22:07.022
I worry that it's all
become a little bit tricksy,

01:22:07.055 --> 01:22:10.725
that if you can do a
backflip, you're therefore a
jazz dancer.

01:22:10.759 --> 01:22:13.094
No, you're not.

01:22:13.128 --> 01:22:14.696
Look at this
competition crap.

01:22:14.729 --> 01:22:16.464
It's how many pirouettes
can I do?

01:22:16.498 --> 01:22:19.100
How can I expose my crotch
in a different way?

01:22:19.134 --> 01:22:22.470
It's not about
moving anybody.

01:22:22.504 --> 01:22:24.205
[Simonson]
It becomes trick-oriented

01:22:24.239 --> 01:22:26.508
and that's what
the everyday person

01:22:26.541 --> 01:22:29.577
is seeing on television
and they're going, "Wow."

01:22:29.611 --> 01:22:31.780
And we're going,
"No, that's just tricks.

01:22:31.813 --> 01:22:33.281
There's no heart."

01:22:33.315 --> 01:22:36.384
But there are people
looking at dance now,

01:22:36.418 --> 01:22:38.219
so flip it to the other side,

01:22:38.253 --> 01:22:40.722
who've never considered
looking at dance.

01:22:40.755 --> 01:22:43.024
So, there's a gift in that also.

01:22:43.058 --> 01:22:46.795
But I think that, you
know, we're relying on those
young dancers

01:22:46.828 --> 01:22:49.030
to know the amount of work
that goes in

01:22:49.064 --> 01:22:50.799
to be able to perform
to that level.

01:22:50.832 --> 01:22:53.401
And if it can be used
as an inspiration,
it's brilliant.

01:22:53.435 --> 01:22:56.604
If it's used to make you
lazy, then we're in trouble.

01:22:56.638 --> 01:22:58.640
[Culbreath]
They do
step right off the bus,

01:22:58.673 --> 01:23:01.409
they have an agent
and Twitter followers,

01:23:01.443 --> 01:23:03.511
and a YouTube blog, and a thing,
and a thing

01:23:03.545 --> 01:23:08.249
and a thing, and all that
stuff is just a bunch of
horseshit

01:23:08.283 --> 01:23:09.617
in the way to the work.

01:23:09.651 --> 01:23:11.753
Just do the work,
but they need somebody

01:23:11.786 --> 01:23:13.588
to guide them in the proper way
to do the work

01:23:13.621 --> 01:23:16.324
and ask more of them
than they think they can do.

01:23:16.358 --> 01:23:19.227
Then you go.
This flight, this flight, stop.

01:23:19.260 --> 01:23:22.330
Going to take it again.
Five, six, seven...

01:23:22.364 --> 01:23:26.701
[Bergman]
Class, as a dancer,
is a place to fall on your
face.

01:23:26.735 --> 01:23:29.738
What happened
started to change

01:23:29.771 --> 01:23:33.308
when all this convention
dancing started

01:23:33.341 --> 01:23:36.745
and it all became
about competition.

01:23:36.778 --> 01:23:40.582
And I think as a young person,
as a young dancer,

01:23:40.615 --> 01:23:42.283
it's a place to fail.

01:23:42.317 --> 01:23:45.787
It's a place to fall down
and get back up again,

01:23:45.820 --> 01:23:48.089
and learn how
to do something better.

01:23:48.123 --> 01:23:51.159
Don't be the--
don't focus so much.

01:23:51.192 --> 01:23:53.094
-[Chita Rivera]
It's not easy.
-Dance!

01:23:53.128 --> 01:23:55.397
But anything
that's good

01:23:55.430 --> 01:23:56.631
is not easy.

01:23:56.664 --> 01:23:59.234
If you wanna keep
it. You know.

01:23:59.267 --> 01:24:01.236
If you want it to be
a part of you,

01:24:01.269 --> 01:24:04.205
then it's got to be
drilled into you.

01:24:04.239 --> 01:24:06.408
You have to keep up
with your training.

01:24:06.441 --> 01:24:08.810
I think no matter what,
you can never stop learning.

01:24:08.843 --> 01:24:12.213
Um, your body is your tool,
and you have to maintain
that tool

01:24:12.247 --> 01:24:15.316
and you have to
continue to keep learning and
training.

01:24:18.853 --> 01:24:21.589
Most of us, you know,
we spent hours,

01:24:21.623 --> 01:24:23.892
blood, sweat and tears,
in a dance class.

01:24:23.925 --> 01:24:25.460
Back, back, back, forward...

01:24:25.493 --> 01:24:28.296
Doing eight shows a week, folks,
ain't fun.

01:24:28.329 --> 01:24:29.597
It's really tough.

01:24:29.631 --> 01:24:31.399
To make that kind
of commitment,

01:24:31.433 --> 01:24:33.334
get one day off a week,
and in the theater,

01:24:33.368 --> 01:24:36.805
you get two weeks off a
year and you work every
holiday.

01:24:36.838 --> 01:24:38.740
Yes. Isabelle, yes!

01:24:38.773 --> 01:24:42.277
The theater, the dance world,
it is difficult.

01:24:42.310 --> 01:24:44.913
-Ready? Six.
-And so, I think for you

01:24:44.946 --> 01:24:46.481
to survive,
you have got to love it

01:24:46.514 --> 01:24:48.917
more than anything
else in the world.

01:24:48.950 --> 01:24:50.852
Keep them still,
keep them still.

01:24:50.885 --> 01:24:52.787
Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

01:24:52.821 --> 01:24:54.722
[Andrew Wright]
I went
to a college to teach

01:24:54.756 --> 01:24:57.392
and brought up some elements
of dance history,

01:24:57.425 --> 01:25:00.562
and I was met
with absolute blank faces.

01:25:00.595 --> 01:25:01.896
I don't understand that.

01:25:01.930 --> 01:25:04.766
If it's gonna be your job,
and your livelihood,

01:25:04.799 --> 01:25:07.569
and your passion,
why don't you know
the history of it?

01:25:07.602 --> 01:25:09.771
And especially today,
with the Internet,

01:25:09.804 --> 01:25:13.374
you can find anything out
within seconds.

01:25:14.976 --> 01:25:18.213
[Tom Ralabate]
I think it's important
for studio teachers

01:25:18.246 --> 01:25:20.715
to constantly
sprinkle

01:25:20.748 --> 01:25:22.550
information to
their students.

01:25:22.584 --> 01:25:26.688
You can teach
a Shorty George, okay,
a vernacular movement.

01:25:26.721 --> 01:25:29.491
But you best,
while you're teaching
that movement, Shorty George,

01:25:29.524 --> 01:25:33.862
mention that George
Snowden was the originator of
this movement

01:25:33.895 --> 01:25:35.897
and that it
happened at a place

01:25:35.930 --> 01:25:37.699
Lindy Hoppers
would gather together.

01:25:37.732 --> 01:25:39.901
All you're doing is
just sprinkling information

01:25:39.934 --> 01:25:41.736
while they're
learning it.

01:25:42.871 --> 01:25:45.573
Okay?
All right. Good enough?

01:25:45.607 --> 01:25:47.709
Four times, right side,
left side, right side,
left side.

01:25:47.742 --> 01:25:49.911
We as dancers
have been mentored.

01:25:49.944 --> 01:25:52.447
We have a responsibility
to do the same.

01:25:52.480 --> 01:25:54.749
We've all kind of vessels,
aren't we,

01:25:54.782 --> 01:25:56.618
and taking into
the dance studio

01:25:56.651 --> 01:25:58.586
our knowledge
and what we know,

01:25:58.620 --> 01:26:02.223
and then you don't realize
you're impacting
the next generation.

01:26:04.425 --> 01:26:07.328
[Boross]
There's a lack
of curiosity about jazz,

01:26:07.362 --> 01:26:10.732
about what it is,
about what its relation
to our history is.

01:26:10.765 --> 01:26:13.434
I mean, jazz is the history
of America,

01:26:13.468 --> 01:26:15.003
pure and simple.

01:26:15.036 --> 01:26:16.504
[Smith]
It's the American voice

01:26:16.538 --> 01:26:19.574
that has allowed
so many people

01:26:19.607 --> 01:26:21.976
in oppressed situations
to speak.

01:26:22.010 --> 01:26:25.013
And that's a beautiful thing.
If dance can do that too,
man,

01:26:25.046 --> 01:26:29.517
that's an empowering tool
that we should never take away
from our children,

01:26:29.551 --> 01:26:32.287
never take out of schools,
as we have been doing.

01:26:32.320 --> 01:26:35.924
We should implement it more
into our educational system.

01:26:39.661 --> 01:26:43.765
[George]
We're not having a dialog
in the jazz dance field.

01:26:43.798 --> 01:26:46.467
Part of it is, is that
the concert people

01:26:46.501 --> 01:26:50.939
are sort of conflicted
about the relationship
to the contemporary people.

01:26:50.972 --> 01:26:53.975
And the contemporary people
and the swing people
have no relationship.

01:26:54.008 --> 01:26:58.479
But what I do know is
the urban dance community

01:26:58.513 --> 01:27:00.348
and the tap community have
figured out

01:27:00.381 --> 01:27:02.350
how to always stay in dialog
with each other

01:27:02.383 --> 01:27:03.885
regardless of
the different schools.

01:27:03.918 --> 01:27:05.687
And the jazz community
does not know how to do that

01:27:05.720 --> 01:27:07.922
and it's tragic, and it's why
we're in this place

01:27:07.956 --> 01:27:10.024
that we're at right now,
where we're trying to

01:27:10.058 --> 01:27:13.027
still, like,
claw and claim

01:27:13.061 --> 01:27:15.396
because we don't communicate.

01:27:30.645 --> 01:27:33.681
♪ Everything
must change ♪

01:27:33.715 --> 01:27:38.920
[Knight]
I think jazz
is in a place
of flux at the moment.

01:27:38.953 --> 01:27:40.455
There's a little bit
of confusion

01:27:40.488 --> 01:27:42.557
about whether or not
it's necessary

01:27:42.590 --> 01:27:44.659
or whether
it's relevant.

01:27:44.692 --> 01:27:46.828
♪ ...remains the same

01:27:51.733 --> 01:27:53.534
We are in transition.

01:27:53.568 --> 01:27:55.003
I don't know where
this is gonna go,

01:27:55.036 --> 01:27:57.538
but we have
arrived nowhere.

01:27:57.572 --> 01:28:00.908
This is all shifting.

01:28:00.942 --> 01:28:07.448
♪ No one and nothing
remains the same ♪

01:28:14.055 --> 01:28:16.658
I would never profess
to tell you

01:28:16.691 --> 01:28:19.460
how to dance
if that's what you wanna do

01:28:19.494 --> 01:28:21.362
and I would celebrate
what you do.

01:28:21.396 --> 01:28:23.398
It may not be
what I wanna do.

01:28:23.431 --> 01:28:27.535
And I think that's where we
get into a bit of
controversy,

01:28:27.568 --> 01:28:29.937
when people become
such purists

01:28:29.971 --> 01:28:33.941
that they think they own
a certain style
or a certain technique

01:28:33.975 --> 01:28:35.977
and that it
can't evolve.

01:28:36.010 --> 01:28:39.981
Well, the world is built,
the universe is built,
on change.

01:28:40.014 --> 01:28:43.751
And if nothing changes, it is
stagnant, it is not alive.

01:28:43.785 --> 01:28:50.391
♪ Nothing, no one
remains unchanged ♪

01:28:54.028 --> 01:28:57.732
[DeFrantz]
I think the future
of jazz dance is very
promising.

01:28:57.765 --> 01:29:02.003
I think we should continue to
work on reclaiming its
roots,

01:29:02.036 --> 01:29:05.006
but still embracing
the hybrids

01:29:05.039 --> 01:29:08.743
that are happening
right in front of us.

01:29:08.776 --> 01:29:11.446
I think it's gonna create
a lot of debate,

01:29:11.479 --> 01:29:13.781
but that's what
jazz dance is.

01:29:13.815 --> 01:29:17.085
♪ Ooh

01:29:17.118 --> 01:29:18.686
♪ Except

01:29:18.720 --> 01:29:23.658
♪ Rain comes
from the clouds ♪

01:29:23.691 --> 01:29:26.761
[Allen]
I think to go
forward, you have to look
back

01:29:26.794 --> 01:29:28.096
and you have to know

01:29:28.129 --> 01:29:30.732
the history
and references.

01:29:30.765 --> 01:29:34.102
♪ And hummingbirds...

01:29:34.135 --> 01:29:37.105
I think there's
a beautiful weight
and responsibility

01:29:37.138 --> 01:29:40.475
to being a jazz dancer
because there are so few of us

01:29:40.508 --> 01:29:43.778
and because the history
is complicated

01:29:43.811 --> 01:29:49.217
and born of finding joy
in suffering.

01:29:49.250 --> 01:29:52.487
And so, if you're going
to represent that history,

01:29:52.520 --> 01:29:54.689
you have to know
where it came from.

01:30:21.249 --> 01:30:23.718
[jazz music playing]

01:31:28.983 --> 01:31:33.187
I met-- Okay.
I met John Travolta
at a party once.

01:31:33.221 --> 01:31:34.722
This is--
I'm gonna tell you this.

01:31:34.755 --> 01:31:37.058
And I brought
up the nerve,

01:31:37.091 --> 01:31:39.093
you know, got up the nerve
to go over to him,

01:31:39.126 --> 01:31:41.229
I'm just like, "Don't be a nerd.
Don't be a nerd.
No, don't be a nerd."

01:31:41.262 --> 01:31:43.564
And I said to him, "Hey, John,
my name is Mandy Moore.

01:31:43.598 --> 01:31:45.566
I'm a choreographer.
I just wanna let you know

01:31:45.600 --> 01:31:48.603
that
Staying Alive
{end-italic} was
honestly one of my favorite
films ever."

01:31:48.636 --> 01:31:53.107
And he goes, "Wait, the one
where I was a jazz dancer?"

01:31:53.140 --> 01:31:55.843
And I was like, "Yeah.

01:31:55.877 --> 01:31:57.245
It was my favorite film."

01:31:57.278 --> 01:31:59.113
And he's like-- I think
he was weirded out by it

01:31:59.146 --> 01:32:01.916
because of course
the man's done, like,
so many other films

01:32:01.949 --> 01:32:03.251
that are, like,
so much more, you know,

01:32:03.284 --> 01:32:04.819
probably more
successful or whatever,

01:32:04.852 --> 01:32:06.220
but I just thought
it's so funny the way he,

01:32:06.254 --> 01:32:08.222
like, he had this disdain
for, like,

01:32:08.256 --> 01:32:10.057
"Wait, the one where
I was the jazz dancer?"

01:32:10.091 --> 01:32:12.360
I was thinking, "Yes, the one
where you're the jazz dancer.

01:32:12.393 --> 01:32:14.629
That's why I'm a jazz dancer."

01:32:14.662 --> 01:32:17.598
I have no idea how old I am.

01:32:17.632 --> 01:32:19.734
It's the truth.

01:32:20.735 --> 01:32:22.169
What?!

01:32:27.942 --> 01:32:30.611
I mean, should we go
to the next question?

01:32:30.645 --> 01:32:33.047
Is that it?
I mean, can you edit that?

01:32:33.080 --> 01:32:35.917
Like, one of the best things
ever and he's, like,

01:32:35.950 --> 01:32:38.786
"Jump!"
And she's, like, "I can't!"

01:32:38.819 --> 01:32:40.855
And then she, like,
leaps in her red tights

01:32:40.888 --> 01:32:43.291
with the red leotard.
I mean, it was over for me.

01:32:43.324 --> 01:32:45.760
Like that-- from that
point forward, jazz.

01:32:45.793 --> 01:32:47.862
That's it.
That's all I'm doing.

01:32:47.895 --> 01:32:50.097
[laughter]

01:32:51.666 --> 01:32:53.200
-That's okay.
-Ahem.

01:32:53.234 --> 01:32:56.070
-Try it now?
-Oh, yeah, I'm just stretching.

01:32:57.972 --> 01:33:00.675
You might not wanna put that
in the movie.

01:33:00.708 --> 01:33:02.310
[laughter]