The Evolution of Dance from 1950 to 2019: A 7‑Decade Joy Ride in 6 Minutes

in Dance, Music | April 12th, 2021

I see Michael Jack­son as a dance style, okay? — Ricar­do Walk­er 

Ricar­do Walk­er and his Crew’s The Evo­lu­tion of Dance, 1950 to 2019 will make you regret every minute spent hug­ging the wall in mid­dle school.

The break­neck, 6‑minute romp led by dancer, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, and Michael Jack­son imper­son­ator Ricar­do Walk­er, not only show­cas­es the all-male Brazil­ian crew’s tal­ent, it makes a strong case for throw­ing your­self into some seri­ous dance floor silli­ness.

The Crew, formed by a mutu­al pas­sion for the King of Pop’s moves, is plen­ty cool, but their will­ing­ness to ham their way through “Flashdance…What a Feel­ing,” the “Macare­na,” and Dirty Danc­ing’s “Time of My Life” sug­gest that the joys of dance are avail­able to ordi­nary mor­tals such as our­selves.

They cavort in sag­ging ear­ly 90s-style Ham­mer Pants for “U Can’t Touch This” and don West­ern wear for Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” the most recent num­ber on this musi­cal tour.

Troupe mem­bers Gabriel Zaidan and Alexan­dre “Lelê” Mayrink seem unham­pered by van­i­ty, toss­ing their envi­able locks into the 35 cos­tume changes’ goofi­est styles.

The Crew took 16 hours to get the video in the can on a day when one of their num­ber felt under the weath­er, and they had to be out of the stu­dio by 7pm. (Our com­pli­ments to the edi­tor!)

While such hits as Chub­by Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again,” Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean,” Madonna’s “Vogue,” Beyoncé’s “Sin­gle Ladies,” and — who could for­get? — “Gang­nam Style” instant­ly sum­mon a peri­od, the 90s place­ment of Tom Jones’ sig­na­ture tune, “It’s Not Unusu­al,” is throw­ing view­ers for a loop.

How did that old chest­nut wind up between Madon­na and Back­street Boys?

By virtue of its first stu­dio ver­sion, released in 1995 as part of the com­pi­la­tion album The Leg­endary Tom Jones — 30th Anniver­sary Album, that’s how.

Pri­or to their vir­tu­oso turn in the Evo­lu­tion of Dance, 1950 to 2019, the group guid­ed view­ers through the Evo­lu­tion of Michael Jack­son’s Dance. (Jackson’s influ­ence is also evi­dent through­out the for­mer, earn­ing him 4 nods.)

For those whose feet have begun to itch, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Walk­er teach­es a Mas­ter Class in Michael Jackson’s dance moves for $100.

Songs used in The Evo­lu­tion of Dance — 1950 to 2019 — by Ricar­do Walk­er’s Crew

00:03​ — 00:13​ — Singin’in the Rain — Gene Kel­ly

00:13​ — 00:23​ — Hound Dog — Elvis Pres­ley

00:23​ — 00:30​ — Tut­ti Frut­ti — Lit­tle Richard

00:30​ — 00:35​ — Let’s Twist Again — Chub­by Check­er switch to col­or

00:35​ — 00:45​ — I feel good — James Brown

00:45​ — 00:57​ — I Want You Back — The Jack­son Five

00:57​ — 01:09​ — Stayin’ Alive — Bee Gees

01:09​ — 01:16​ — Danc­ing Machine — The Jack­sons

01:16​ — 01:20​ — Shake your Body — The Jack­sons

01:20​ — 01:24​ — You’re the one that I want — John Tra­vol­ta, Olivia New­ton-John

01:24​ — 01:31​ — Time of My Life — Bill Med­ley, Jen­nifer Warnes

01:31​ — 01:46​ — Bil­lie Jean — Michael Jack­son

01:46​ — 01:55​ — Rhythm Nation — Janet Jack­son

01:55​ — 02:03​ — Foot­Loose —  Ken­ny Log­gins

02:03​ — 02:13​ — Thriller — Michael Jack­son

02:13​ — 02:18​ — What a feel­ing — Irene Cara

02:18​ — 02:22​ — U can’t touch this — MC Ham­mer

02:22​ — 02:31​ — Black or White — Michael Jack­son

02:31​ — 02:42​ — Vogue — Madon­na

02:42​ — 02:51​ — It’s not unusu­al — Tom Jones

02:51​ — 03:02​ — Every­body — Back­street Boys

03:02​ — 03:13​ — Macare­na — Los Del Río

03:13​ — 03:26​ — Crank That — Soul­ja Boy

03:26​ — 03:33​ — Sin­gle Ladies — Bey­once

03:33​ — 03:46​ — Bye Bye Bye — NSYNC

03:46​ — 03:54​ — Ragatan­ga — Rouge

03:54​ — 04:04​ — Gang­nam Style — PSY

04:04​ — 04:15​ — Despaci­to — Luis Fon­si

04:15​ — 04:25​ — Uptown Funk — Mark Ron­son , Bruno Mars

04:25​ — 04:34​ — Par­ty Rock Anthem — LMFAO

04:34​ — 04:43​ — Can’t Stop The Feel­ing — Justin Tim­ber­lake

04:43​ — 04:51​ — Watch Me — Silen­tó

04:51​ — 05:03​ — Swish Swish — Katy Per­ry

05:03​ — 05:17​ — In My Feel­ing — Drake

05:17​ — 05:35​ — Old Town Road — Lil Nas X

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” Video Changed Pop Cul­ture For­ev­er: Revis­it the 13-Minute Short Film Direct­ed by John Lan­dis

The Dance The­atre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

Twerk­ing, Moon­walk­ing AI Robots–They’re Now Here

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Iconic Dance Scene from Hellzapoppin’ Presented in Living Color with Artificial Intelligence (1941)

in Dance, Film, Technology | March 10th, 2021

After Charles Lind­bergh “hopped” the Atlantic in 1927, his his­to­ry-mak­ing solo flight set off a craze for all things “Lindy.” Of the count­less songs, foods, prod­ucts, and trends cre­at­ed or named in hon­or of the famous one­time U.S. Air Mail pilot, only one remains rec­og­niz­able these more than 90 years lat­er: the Lindy Hop. Devel­oped on the streets and in the clubs of Harlem, the dance proved explo­sive­ly pop­u­lar, though it took Hol­ly­wood a few years to cap­i­tal­ize on it. In the late 1930s, the musi­cal Hel­lza­pop­pin’ brought the Lindy Hop to Broad­way, and in 1941, Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures turned that stage show into a major motion pic­ture direct­ed by H.C. Pot­ter (now best known for Mr. Bland­ings Builds His Dream House).

An often sur­re­al, fourth-wall-break­ing affair, Hel­lza­pop­pin’ is remem­bered main­ly for the five-minute Lindy Hop musi­cal num­ber that comes about halfway through the film. It fea­tures a dance troupe called the Harlem Con­ga­roos, played by the real-life Whitey’s Lindy Hop­pers, a group of pro­fes­sion­al swing dancers found­ed at Harlem’s Savoy Ball­room, the ori­gin point of the Lindy Hop as we know it today.

Its appear­ing mem­bers include Frankie Man­ning, whose name had become syn­ony­mous with the Lindy Hop in the 1930s, and Nor­ma Miller, who as a twelve-year-old girl famous­ly did the dance out­side the Savoy for tips. Hel­lza­pop­pin’ pre­serves their ath­leti­cism and vital­i­ty for all time — with a hot jazz sound­track to boot.

Like most Hol­ly­wood musi­cals of the ear­ly 1940s, Hel­lza­pop­pin’ was shot in black-and-white, and cinephiles will main­tain that it’s best seen that way. But just as the tech­nol­o­gy pow­er­ing long-haul flights has devel­oped great­ly since the days of Charles Lind­bergh, so has the tech­nol­o­gy of film col­oriza­tion. Take DeOld­ify, the “open-source, Deep Learn­ing based project to col­orize and restore old images and film footage” that “uses AI neur­al net­works trained with thou­sands of ref­er­ence pic­tures” – and that was used to pro­duce the ver­sion of Hel­lza­pop­pin’s Lindy Hop num­ber seen at the top of the post. It all looks much more con­vinc­ing than when Ted Turn­er attempt­ed to col­orize Cit­i­zen Kane, but in lovers of dance, what­ev­er sense of real­ism DeOld­ify con­tributes will main­ly inspire a deep­er long­ing to expe­ri­ence the cul­ture of Harlem as it real­ly was in the 1920s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1944 Instruc­tion­al Video Teach­es You the Lindy Hop, the Dance That Orig­i­nat­ed in 1920’s Harlem Ball­rooms

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

Rita Hay­worth, 1940s Hol­ly­wood Icon, Dances Dis­co to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Radiohead Ballets: Watch Ballets Choreographed Creatively to the Music of Radiohead

in Dance, Music | February 26th, 2021

Since Radiohead’s last release, A Moon-Shaped Pool, mem­bers of the band have been absorbed in oth­er projects. They’ve turned their band’s web­site into an archive for their discog­ra­phy and a library for rar­i­ties and ephemera — send­ing not-so-sub­tle sig­nals their time togeth­er has reached a nat­ur­al end, even if drum­mer Phil Sel­way said in 2020 “there are always con­ver­sa­tions going on…. We’ll see. We’re talk­ing.”

Two of the band’s most promi­nent mem­bers, gui­tarist Jon­ny Green­wood and front­man Thom Yorke, devot­ed their tal­ents to film scores, a medi­um Green­wood has explored for many years: in the the­atri­cal vio­lence of There Will Be Blood, for exam­ple, the hor­rif­ic after­math of We Need to Talk about Kevin, and the almost bal­let­ic blood­i­ness of You Were Nev­er Here. Yorke, mean­while, scored Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s Sus­piria, a film in which bal­let dancers’ bod­ies are bro­ken and blood­ied by black mag­ic.

Green­wood, Yorke and com­pa­ny excel at con­jur­ing atmos­pheres of dread, despair, and dis­ori­en­ta­tion, traits that suit them well for art­house film. They might not have seemed a nat­ur­al fit, how­ev­er, for bal­let. And yet, Jason Kot­tke reports, the two are “togeth­er at last” — or at least as of 2016, when chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Robert Bon­dara toured Take Me With You, a piece scored to sev­er­al Radio­head songs, includ­ing In Rain­bows’ “Reck­on­er,” which you can see inter­pret­ed above by two dancers from the Pol­ish Nation­al Bal­let.

The per­for­mance is an ath­let­ic response to a kinet­ic track, in chore­og­ra­phy not unlike pairs fig­ure skat­ing at times. It is not, how­ev­er, the first time the band has inspired a bal­let. In 2005, Roman­ian dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Edward Clug cre­at­ed a mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of Shake­speare set to songs from OK Com­put­er and Kid A. Radio and Juli­et debuted in Slove­nia, toured the world, cel­e­brat­ed its hun­dredth per­for­mance in 2012, and was sched­uled to open in Moscow in 2020.

Clug drew on a pri­or con­nec­tion: OK Com­put­er’s “Exit Music (For a Film)” was writ­ten for, but not used in, the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film adap­ta­tion of Shakespeare’s play. After Radio and Juli­et, Clug once again drew inspi­ra­tion from his favorite band (“They are the sound­track to my oth­er side; lis­ten­ing to them feels like I’m find­ing a self that I haven’t met yet.”) Clug’s piece “Proof” (pre­view above), set to “Fer­al” from The King of Limbs, debuted in 2017, his first for the Ned­er­lands Dans The­ater. If we are to have no more Radio­head, here’s hop­ing at least we’ll see more Radio­head bal­lets.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Per­forms Songs from His New Sound­track for the Hor­ror Film, Sus­piria

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Power of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Choreographers and Even John Travolta Himself

in Dance, Film | December 29th, 2020

All the great movies have a few mem­o­rable scenes; Pulp Fic­tion is made of noth­ing but. More than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, that film’s release turned a young video-store clerk-turned-auteur called Quentin Taran­ti­no into a house­hold name. Cinephiles today still argue about which is the most mem­o­rable among its scenes, and only the most con­trar­i­an could fail to con­sid­er the dance. It comes ear­ly in the film, when the hit­man Vin­cent Vega takes his boss’ wife out to din­ner, the absent king­pin hav­ing ordered him to do so. The two eat at an elab­o­rate­ly 1950s-themed din­er and on a whim enter its twist con­test. They walk off the dance floor with a tro­phy — as well as a cou­ple decades’ influ­ence on pop­u­lar cul­ture.

“The twist was made famous in the 60s,” explains chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Lau­ren Yalan­go-Grant in the Van­i­ty Fair video just above. “There were a lot of vari­a­tions that came out of the twist that we do see in this scene,” such as “the mon­key,” “the swim,” and “the Bat­man,” bet­ter known as “the Batusi.”

As bust­ed by John Tavol­ta and Uma Thur­man, all these moves come out in an impro­vi­sa­tion­al fash­ion, each in response to the last: “If John starts to do the Bat­man, then Uma’s going to ‘yes-and’ it with not only a Bat­man but an open palm, her own ver­sion of this move,” adds chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Christo­pher Grant. Their move­ments give the scene a great deal of its impact, but so does those move­ments’ incon­gruity with their expres­sions, which Yalan­go-Grant calls “the jux­ta­po­si­tion of their seri­ous­ness and the lack of play on their faces ver­sus the play in their bod­ies.”

Though now cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly icon­ic in its own right, Pulp Fic­tion’s dance scene pays homage to a host of old­er films. The most obvi­ous is Jean-Luc Godard­’s Bande à part, with what Yalan­go-Grant calls its “amaz­ing dance sequence in a cafe. It’s total­ly out of con­text, of nowhere.” Nev­er shy to admit his acts of artis­tic “theft,” Taran­ti­no once com­plained that too few picked up this one: “Every­body thinks that I wrote this scene just to have John Tra­vol­ta danc­ing. But the scene exist­ed before John Tra­vol­ta was cast.” The direc­tor’s inten­tion, rather, was to pay trib­ute to his favorite musi­cal sequences, which “have always been in Godard, because they just come out of nowhere. It’s so infec­tious, so friend­ly. And the fact that it’s not a musi­cal, but he’s stop­ping the movie to have a musi­cal sequence, makes it all the more sweet.”

The cast­ing of Tra­vol­ta (Taran­ti­no’s “strong, strong, strong sec­ond choice” for Vin­cent Vega) proved for­tu­itous. The very image of the man danc­ing made for yet anoth­er chap­ter of pop cul­ture from which the film could draw, but with­out his real-life danc­ing skills and instincts, the scene would­n’t have been as mem­o­rable as it is. “Quentin was dead-set on both of us doing the twist, which is a very fun dance, but it’s lim­it­ed in how long one wants to watch some­one do the twist,” Tra­vol­ta remem­bers on a recent appear­ance on The Late Late Show with James Cor­den. So he told the direc­tor, “When I was grow­ing up, there were nov­el­ty dances. There were dances like the swim and the Bat­man and the hitch­hik­er and the tight­en up. Maybe we should widen the spec­trum on this.” Taran­ti­no’s unwill­ing­ness to com­pro­mise his ambi­tions and obses­sions has made him per­haps the most acclaimed film­mak­er of his gen­er­a­tion, but so has know­ing when to defer to the star of Sat­ur­day Night Fever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art in 1994

Quentin Tarantino’s Orig­i­nal Wish List for the Cast of Pulp Fic­tion

The Music in Quentin Tarantino’s Films: Hear a 5‑Hour, 100-Song Playlist

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

How Anna Kari­na (RIP) Became the Mes­mer­iz­ing Face of the French New Wave

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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One of the Greatest Dances Sequences Ever Captured on Film Gets Restored in Color by AI: Watch the Classic Scene from Stormy Weather

in Dance, Film, Music | December 4th, 2020

It real­ly is a won­der, know­ing what we know about the his­to­ry of racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion in Hol­ly­wood and Amer­i­ca in gen­er­al, that the musi­cal Stormy Weath­er even got made in 1943. Along with one oth­er sim­i­lar film Cab­in in the Sky, it’s one of the few Amer­i­can musi­cals of the 20th cen­tu­ry with an all-Black cast, top billing and all. And what a cast, just some of the most tal­ent­ed artists of their time: Bojan­gles Robin­son, Lena Horne, Fats Waller, Cab Cal­loway, and the Nicholas Broth­ers star. Kather­ine Dun­ham, the “queen moth­er of Black dance” per­forms and chore­o­graphs. Cole­man Hawkins, though uncred­it­ed, is there too, play­ing sax.

The film also gave you its money’s worth, with near­ly two dozen musi­cal num­bers in less than 80 min­utes. And the top per­for­mance is the one that clos­es the film, seen here remas­tered from a high qual­i­ty source (make sure your YouTube is set to 1080p) and col­orized with DeOld­ify, the machine-learn­ing col­oriza­tion tool. (Your mileage may vary with the col­oriza­tion, but hey, it’s a start. Check back in a year or so and we might have anoth­er ver­sion that looks like it was tru­ly shot in col­or.)

If you’ve nev­er seen the “Jumpin’ Jive” num­ber, or nev­er heard of the Nicholas Broth­ers, you will soon find out why Fred Astaire called it the great­est danc­ing he’d ever seen on film. Their jour­ney down the ris­ers, one leapfrog­ging over the oth­er and land­ing in the splits, has nev­er been matched. There’s moments where they just seem to float on air. The band leader, Cab Cal­loway, who knew how to slink and slide around a stage, wise­ly gives them the floor. And at the end, while applause bursts out, the entire club is invit­ed to flood the dance­floor. It’s pure joy on film.

Old­er broth­er Fayard Nicholas was 29 in the film, his younger broth­er Harold was 22. Eleven years before that they had moved to New York from Philadel­phia and wowed the audi­ences at the Cot­ton Club with their mix of tap, bal­let, and acro­bat­ics. It was when pro­duc­er Samuel Gold­wyn saw them at the Club that their career took off. But their sequences were always sep­a­rate in white musi­cals, so that racist cin­e­mas in the South could eas­i­ly edit them out. Not so in Stormy Weath­er, where they end the film.

It is often writ­ten that this sequence was shot in “one take” and impro­vised, but that is plain­ly not the case. There’s eleven cuts in the dance sequence where the cam­era repo­si­tions itself. That’s not to take away from the Nicholas Broth­ers’ mas­tery, and hey, maybe they zipped through the sequence, as danc­ing was like breath­ing to them. Let’s just cel­e­brate this for what it actu­al­ly is: the Nicholas Broth­ers at the height of their pow­ers, bring­ing the house down.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cab Calloway’s “Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary,” a 1939 Glos­sary of the Lin­go (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renais­sance

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

A 1932 Illus­trat­ed Map of Harlem’s Night Clubs: From the Cot­ton Club to the Savoy Ball­room

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Watch Digital Dancers Electrify the Streets of Istanbul

in Animation, Dance, Technology, Travel | November 30th, 2020

Are you open to the idea of oth­er­world­ly beings mov­ing amongst us, benign but unseen?

Direc­tor Gökalp Gönen seems to be in the above video for jazz inno­va­tor Ilhan Ersahin’s “Hur­ri-Mitan­ni” (Good News).

Things kick off in a decid­ed­ly low key manner—a young woman sets off for a night­time stroll through the streets of Istan­bul, her face delib­er­ate­ly obscured by a snug­ly tied black and white cloth.

Turn­ing a cor­ner, she pass­es an anony­mous fig­ure, wrapped head to toe in sim­i­lar stripes.

Does this unex­pect­ed sight elic­it any dis­cernible reac­tion?

Our guess is no, but we can’t say for sure, as the cam­era los­es inter­est in the young woman, opt­ing to linger with the svelte and exu­ber­ant mum­my, who’s danc­ing like no one is watch­ing.

Else­where, oth­er increas­ing­ly col­or­ful beings per­form vari­a­tions on the mum­my’s box step, alone or in groups.

As their out­fits become more fan­ci­ful, Gönen employs CGI and 3D ani­ma­tion to unhitch them from the laws of physics and famil­iar bound­aries of human anato­my.

They pixel­late, sprout extra legs, project rays rem­i­nis­cent of string art, appear more veg­etable than ani­mal.…

Some grow to Godzil­la-like pro­por­tions, shed­ding lit­tle humanoid forms and bound­ing across the Bosporus.

A small spiky ver­sion ignores the paws of a curi­ous kit­ten.

These fan­tas­ti­cal, face­less beings are invis­i­ble to passer­by. Only one, per­form­ing on an out­door stage, seems eager for inter­ac­tion. None of them seen to mean any harm.

They just wan­na boo­gie…

…or do they?

The director’s state­ment is not eas­i­ly parsed in trans­la­tion:

A group of anony­mous wan­der­ing the streets. Every­where is very crowd­ed but iden­ti­ties are very few. Try­ing to be some­one is as dif­fi­cult as writ­ing your name on the waves left by this fast-mov­ing giant ship. Every­one is every­one and every­one is nobody any­more. This silence could only exist through glow­ing screens, even if it found itself nooks. On those loud screens, they remind­ed who actu­al­ly had the pow­er by enter­ing the places that were said to be inac­ces­si­ble. But they did­n’t even care about this pow­er. The areas where we had pas­sion­ate con­ver­sa­tions about it for days were a “now like this” place for us, but they looked like this to say “no, it was actu­al­ly like that” but they did not speak much. They had the charm of a cat. When they said, “Look, it was like this,” they became part of every­thing that made it “like this” and became unno­tice­able like paving stones. They just want­ed to have a lit­tle fun, to be able to live a few years with­out wor­ry. In five min­utes, fif­teen sec­onds at most, they exist­ed and left.

A few crea­tures who got left on the cut­ting room floor can be seen danc­ing on Gönen’s Insta­gram pro­file.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Rare Grooves on Vinyl from Around the World: Hear Curat­ed Playlists of Ara­bic, Brazil­ian, Bol­ly­wood, Sovi­et & Turk­ish Music

The Dance The­atre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Former Ballerina with Dementia Gracefully Comes Alive to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake

in Dance, Music, Neuroscience | November 11th, 2020

Accord­ing to dance/movement ther­a­pist Eri­ca Horn­thal, “dance/movement ther­a­py oper­ates on the premise that our life expe­ri­ences are held in the body, and that through the use of move­ment, mem­o­ries and emo­tions can be recalled and re-expe­ri­enced despite cog­ni­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal, or phys­i­cal impair­ment.” The video above of for­mer dancer Mar­ta C. González shows in effect how music might acti­vate those mus­cle mem­o­ries, as a record­ing of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake sends Ms. González, a for­mer bal­let dancer, into an ele­gant rever­ie when she had been bare­ly respon­sive moments before.

The video was report­ed­ly tak­en in Valen­cia, Spain in 2019 and “recent­ly shared by the Aso­ciación Músi­ca para Des­per­tar, a Span­ish orga­ni­za­tion that pro­motes music ther­a­py for those afflict­ed by mem­o­ry loss, demen­tia and Alzheimer’s dis­ease,” writes Anas­ta­sia Tsioul­cas at NPR. It has since been shared by celebri­ties and non­celebri­ties around the world, an “undoubt­ed­ly mov­ing and uplift­ing” scene that “speaks to the pow­er of music and dance for those suf­fer­ing from mem­o­ry loss.”

Many such videos have made head­lines, illus­trat­ing the find­ings of neu­ro­science with mov­ing sto­ries of recov­ered mem­o­ry, if only for a brief, shin­ing instant, in the pres­ence of music. The González video doesn’t just warm hearts, how­ev­er; it also serves as a cau­tion­ary tale about shar­ing viral videos with­out doing dili­gence. As Tsioul­cas reports, “Alas­tair Mac­caulay, a promi­nent dance crit­ic for­mer­ly with The New York Times, has been chas­ing González’s his­to­ry and post­ing his find­ings on Insta­gram.” His most recent post pos­si­bly iden­ti­fies Ms. González as a dancer from Cuba, but the details are murky.

The video’s text iden­ti­fies her as the pri­ma bal­le­ri­na of the “New York Bal­let” in the 1960s, yet “there is no such known com­pa­ny and the New York City Bal­let does not list any­one by that name as one of its alum­ni.” To com­pli­cate the mys­tery of her iden­ti­ty even fur­ther, Macauley says the clips that appear to show a young Mar­ta González, who passed away in 2019, are actu­al­ly “a for­mer pri­ma bal­le­ri­na from Russia’s Mari­in­sky Bal­let, Uliana Lopatk­i­na.” So who was Mar­ta C. González? Sure­ly some­one will iden­ti­fy her, if she was a promi­nent bal­let dancer. But no mat­ter her per­son­al his­to­ry, Tchaikovsky “clear­ly evoked a strong, tru­ly vis­cer­al response,” as well as a grace­ful­ly mus­cu­lar one.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

The Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders: A Tokyo Restau­rant Where All the Servers Are Peo­ple Liv­ing with Demen­tia

How Yoga Changes the Brain and May Guard Against Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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The Dance Theatre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

in Dance, Life | October 16th, 2020

It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to find an unblem­ished square of pave­ment in New York City.

Unless the con­crete was poured with­in the last day or two, count on each square to boast at least one dark pol­ka dot, an echo of casu­al­ly dis­card­ed gum.

Con­firm for your­self with a quick peek beneath the exu­ber­ant feet of the Dance The­atre of Harlem com­pa­ny mem­bers per­form­ing on the plaza of the Adam Clay­ton Pow­ell Jr. State Office Build­ing dur­ing the 46th annu­al Harlem Week fes­ti­val.

For obvi­ous rea­sons, this year’s fes­ti­val took place entire­ly online, but the Dance The­atre’s offer­ing is a far cry from the gloomy Zoom‑y affair that’s become 2020’s sad norm.

Eight com­pa­ny mem­bers, includ­ing co-pro­duc­ers Derek Brock­ing­ton and Alexan­dra Hutchin­son, hit the streets, to be filmed danc­ing through­out Harlem.

Those who gripe about the dis­com­fort of wear­ing a mask while exert­ing them­selves should shut their traps until they’ve per­formed bal­let on the plat­form of the 145th and St. Nicholas Sub­way Sta­tion, where the dancers’ pris­tine white shoes bring fur­ther buoy­an­cy to the pro­ceed­ings.

The City Col­lege of New York—in-state tuition $7,340—provides the Neo-Goth­ic stage for four bal­leri­nas to per­form en pointe.

The Hud­son Riv­er and the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge serve as back­drop as four young men soar along the prom­e­nade in Den­ny Far­rell River­bank State Park. Their casu­al out­fits are a reminder of how com­pa­ny founder Arthur Mitchell, the New York City Ballet’s first black prin­ci­pal dancer, delib­er­ate­ly relaxed the dress code to accom­mo­date young men who would have resist­ed tights.

The piece is an excerpt of New Bach, part of the com­pa­ny’s reper­toire by res­i­dent chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and for­mer prin­ci­pal dancer, Robert Gar­land, described in an ear­li­er New York Times review as “an author­i­ta­tive and high­ly imag­i­na­tive blend of clas­si­cal vocab­u­lary and funk, laid out in hand­some for­mal pat­terns in a well-plot­ted bal­let.”

The music is by J.S. Bach.

And in these frac­tious times, it’s worth not­ing that only one of the dancers is New York City born and bred. The oth­ers hail from Kansas, Texas, Chica­go, Louisiana, Delaware, Orange Coun­ty, and upstate.

The group seizes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ampli­fy a much need­ed pub­lic health message—wear a mask!—but it’s also a beau­ti­ful trib­ute to the pow­er of the arts and the vibrant neigh­bor­hood where a world-class com­pa­ny was found­ed in a con­vert­ed garage at the height of the civ­il rights move­ment.

Con­tribute to Dance The­ater of Harlem’s COVID-19 Relief Fund here.

via @BalletArchive/@Ted­Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bal­le­ri­na Misty Copeland Recre­ates the Pos­es of Edgar Degas’ Bal­let Dancers

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.   Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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