Choreographer and teacher Maria Torres, historian Cassie Mey, and dancer Abdiel are each passing along Hustle social dance traditions in dynamic ways. Former Associate Curator Ali Rosa-Salas guides this 2022 PillowTalk about the origins of The Hustle, the resurgence of its popularity worldwide, and preservation efforts such as creating original theater works, oral histories, and producing intergenerational dance parties.
[Music begins]
Norton Owen: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, with content from the Pillow Archives. I'm Norton Owen, the Pillow's Director of Preservation, and it's my pleasure to introduce this episode, revisiting a 2022 Pillow Talk entitled Documenting the Hustle. Associate Curator Ali Rosa-Salas guides a conversation with Maria Torres, Cassie Mey, and Abdiel, who are each helping to preserve this social dance form in different ways, including original theater works, dancer training, oral histories, and intergenerational dance parties.
Ali Rosa-Salas: My name is Ali Rosa-Salas, and I'm one of the Associate Curators here at the Pillow. For this conversation today, we are going to be talking about the Hustle. The Hustle is a child of the seventies disco era with foundational roots. In the Nuyorican and Black American communities of New York City named after its fast paced, syncopated footwork, this partner dance is groundbreaking for the ways in which it has brought a diverse array of communities together who connect through dynamic improvisation. And what makes Hustle particularly unique in the whole spectrum and range of social dances is really the, the ways in which gender and power are explored. The roles of leader and follower in Hustle, unlike other social dances, are really gender neutral. A man, a woman, non-binary person could lead or could follow. And that's been a core part of the movement form since its inception. So today Hustle has a truly global reach. For myself as a recent member of the Hustle community, thanks to mentors like Maria, it certainly is experiencing a renaissance, I will say right now around the world. So for today's PillowTalk, we're going to be delving into Hustle history and also contemporary efforts to sustain, revitalize the culture and also to archive and preserve its roots when we have culture bearers like Maria still with us. So I'll be joined first part of this conversation with Maria Torres. Legendary, foundational, Hustle icon, culture bearer, they're not, they're, they're no more adjectives I could use to describe how important Maria is to, to this culture. Also Maria is a Program Director of The School at Jacob's Pillow Afro-Latin Immersion Program. So we'll have a chat, then we'll move on to a conversation between me and Cassie Mey, who is the Dance Oral History Archivist of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. And then we'll conclude our conversation with Abdiel, who's a contemporary Hustle dancer, a Hustle community facilitator, and also one of the co-creators of Do the Hustle, which is a dance theater work that's being made right now around Hustle history. Do folks know what the Hustle is or looks like at all? Ish? We're going to do a little demo. Is that okay? [Audience: Yeah]
[Music interlude, by Charli Glogovac ]
Ali Rosa-Salas: Thank you so much, Maria. That was pretty iconic [audience laughs]. So I want to jump in here, Maria, with your first memory of encountering the Hustle. Can you recall that for us? What that experience was and how that experience drove you to be so committed and invested in this culture?
Maria Torres: Well, my first experience with Hustle was at my home. My cousins used to come over on weekends to my house and we would dance. We would have dinner, all the family get together, then we move into the living room and we would start dancing. And it was mostly all the time was always salsa, but my cousins one weekend, I remember they said, "Oh, you gotta, we gotta teach you, we gotta teach you this dance." So I said, what is it? And they said, "Well, check it out." And when they showed me the dance, because we, I was always performing like in my house, I know it's going to be a performer. I was like, I fell in love with that dance because it had such amazing intricacy and musicality and anything that to me was syncopated or had dynamic changes, I was always gravitated to that. And I said, Oh, I got to learn this dance. And that was it. That was like really, truly my first encounter with that dance. And from that, because I was too young to go to the clubs every, like every day I would practice. And because I didn't have a partner, I had two sisters. I taught them how to follow and then I led so that I could at least keep up with the dance and then be able to, when I go to the studio, I can then be able to follow. And that's what winded up happening is that I winded up going into the studios, the local studios in Brooklyn, aside from my hanging out with my cousins and I started to just integrate myself into the community and learning and absorbing all the different styles, whether we're just in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, every borough that I went to. Long Island had a different style. And I paid attention to that. So I said, I'm going to be the best in this dance. And I'm going to learn how to like connect to each partner because it was such a physical thing. But also that the floor craft was really exhausting. If you didn't keep up, it was 130 beats at the time [audio of beats in the background]. Now it's different. We dance slower, but at that time it's 130 beats per minute. You have to keep your stamina up and each partner danced differently. So my goal was how do I become the best at this and be able to lead and follow or follow someone and improvise? I didn't want to do any routines. I didn't want to do any like anything like that because I did, I felt like that dance required the, the feeling and the touch of a partner and that's what got me into it and I'm still doing it today.
Ali Rosa-Salas: You sure are. And I'd love to hear about the ways in which Hustle movement vocabulary has informed your career overall. I mean, you've worked on Broadway, television, and you have a, your career spans like such a wide array of disciplines and entry points into the entertainment industry. And I'd love to hear more about how that legacy and experience of dancing in social context, in parties at home through the Hustle has informed how you work overall.
Maria Torres: Well, the dance, that dance definitely brought me a lot of attention because as I got better, what winded up happening is that there was a lot of different groups from different boroughs and there were a lot of big competitions at that time. At that time, there was a huge competition called the something Ball. I forget the name of it. It was at the Madison Square Garden. The Harvest Moon Ball. Exactly. Harvest Moon Ball. Thank you. There you go. Harvest Moon Ball. There you go. And Walter and Gloria Darian were like my godparents because my mom didn't want to let me do anything unless I had guardianship with me. So Walter and Gloria, who had a studio on 86th Street in Brooklyn, they said, they encouraged me to enter this big, huge competition. And I was petrified because that's not what I, I did. That was not in my wheelhouse. My wheelhouse was, I put the music on and I would just go. They just said, no, you're, you're ready. I think you should really try to do this. So, a dance partner of mine, his name is Melvin Scurry, he was in high school with me, so we started dancing in school during lunchtime [Rosa-Salas: Oh wow]. And we just clicked. And he said, "Okay, I'll put the routine together, and I'm gonna make your costume, and don't worry about it, and you gotta remember it, don't, you don't have to worry about a thing, I have everything ready for you." And sure he sure did. He got me like an organza blue outfit that I was all dressed in blue. I look like a little dark blue angel. I had heels three and a half inches [Rosa-Salas: Wow], right? Three and a half inch heels. Cause I had to wear, he was six feet tall. So on five feet, I said, you got to wear three inches at least. So I did that. And that competition over 200 couples and only the top 20 would get chosen. I didn't think at all about, I didn't want to think about that because going into Roseland at that time, it was like, I don't know if everybody knows what Roseland is, but Roseland was this place that kind of place that when you walked in, it was this huge cavernous place and it was filled with people spinning and turning, splitting, kicking. And I was like, I'm not going to remember anything. I'm not going to remember anything. It's just, just breathe. Let's go. And he said, just when the music goes on, just pay attention to me. And that's what I did when they called our number, I paid attention to him. I, in the middle of the routine, my heel that was really high slipped and I went into like a Russian split, but I kept it going like it was part of the routine. And little did I know, when they started to announce the couples of the top 20, we made it [Rosa-Salas: Wow]. And people were asking me, like, they would say, "Oh, we really like that part where you did that split." And I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, that was great. That was great. That was great. That was cool. I'm just playing it off. That was great. Yeah, that was, that was Melvin. Did I say it right, Melvin? You came up with that one. So, that got me to like, to get into groups, dance groups [Rosa-Salas: Right. Right]. Then it sort of like snowballed from there. I started doing more competitions, and then from competitions, I wound up getting scholarships, and then before I knew it, I was entrenched and really doing all of it. Dancing Hustle, which is more of the social, but then getting more into the performance style. And that's where the Hustle, to me, became a real good tool because Hustle is like, I call it the jazz of partner dancing. It's got such an intricacy in terms of musicality and variety that it literally is, it gives you an opportunity to find what speaks to you. And what speaks to me is that I'm a foot worker, you know, person that doesn't want to just do tricks. I, I want to feel, how does the body move with a partner? And so that really, you know, opened up a lot more doors from there. I won a huge competition at 17 was 10,000. It gave me an opportunity to take that money. Half of it, I put it back into training the other half to school. And before I knew it again, I'm going getting involved with more competitions. And then I was asked to be part of the United States Ballroom Championships. I'm glad I didn't know what I was walking into because I didn't know how important that was. And I'm really glad, like I was like this kid that just, I heard music and I just danced and I'm glad that I had that because when I went to the, um, United States Ballroom Championships. Again, another huge place on 53rd Street and 7th Avenue, Sheridan Center. We walk in and it's packed with all these bodies. And I'm like, shocked. And then there's cameras and everybody's like, filming. And we got interviewed. And I'm like, you know, I'm looking, there's nobody that looks like me. First of all, my partner was darker than me. We're the only two dark ones in the entire place. So I have to say that. So I walk in, I'm like, Okay, so where are my peeps? And then when we actually danced a competition, we won third place. That led for me to get the beginning of my dance training, not only in ballroom, but to travel nationally representing the Fred Astaire Dance Studios. And at the same time, being able to be trained not only in Hustle, but in all forms of partner dancing. And I was so blessed because that really, that's what led me. To articulate the movement that I wanted to express through Hustle, right? [Rosa-Salas: Right] And Hustle at that time, wasn't like what we were dancing now. It wasn't, no. And as I went to each borough, I noticed that everybody danced different. So I went to each borough. I said, I'm going to be the best in each borough. So this way they all dance with me. And that's how, that's how I got better. Because that was the only way, you know, for us, it wasn't dance class. We didn't have the funds for that. But if we went to different clubs, guess what? It was a free lesson because we were learning all these different styles, you know? So, um, for me, it was like, it was that, that was like the, the, the hotspot of Hustle. And then it went away. Literally when rock ‘n’ roll came in, it killed the Hustle and we were out of the game. And, but underground, we were still doing it. That's the thing. It never went away for us. We took it from the clubs into the, into the studios and then we became, as we became adults and more refined in our, in our experience of teaching and different versatile, you know, becoming versatile, we were able to articulate what we were dancing. And that was in the 90s, yeah, that was in the 90s. And so when, when Eddie passed, it's, it gave me a, a real charge to want to bring all of these great young people that we were all part of this generation to come back and share their knowledge because they have now become like Broadway choreographers. Some went into modern. I mean, somebody, some of them were, you know, world ballroom championships. It was like a really diverse group of people of all ages, colors, and different backgrounds that under the banner of dance, specifically Hustle, because that's all I can speak to, right? For me, Hustle was the bridge to all dance, and that's where we all kind of felt like common ground. It didn't matter whether you were a celebrity or a, you know, a Broadway dancer. Anytime that everybody came into the circle of Hustle, we were all, it was, it was, all bets were off. It was about the dance.
Ali Rosa-Salas: The first time I ever, before I knew you was actually through YouTube when I Googled Hustle. And one of the first things that comes up is that duet between you and John Boots at the 1996 Hustle USA competition. I remember us having a conversation about it. And you said that was documented by Gregory Harrison, who has documented also a lot of Hustle competitions and socials from, from the 90s that someone like me who was born in the early 90s and knows about hustle just through being Nuyorican and seeing it You know just by growing up, really was like a dance history lesson and gave me the opportunity to have exposure and access to culture bearers and to see folks being social and. So I'm just super grateful for a person like Gregory who I know has passed for having a camera and for documenting so because this is the discussion about documenting the Hustle and archival histories, I'm wondering if you could speak more to that practice of a video documentation and the encounters that you've had with perhaps seeing yourself on YouTube being documented and how that perhaps helps you reflect on just the arc and evolution of the culture?
Maria Torres: Gregory Harrison was my videographer because in the 90s Hustle went away. I mean, I was a kid and so Hustle gave me the opportunity to go from this local kid into becoming a artist that was well versed in all styles and in all mediums of dance. But the resurgence of Hustle came back when my friend Eddie Vega passed away in 1992. He was a young man who was a virtuous, unbelievable dancer. He was like the Mikhail Baryshnikov of Hustle. He won so many competitions and did so much at such a young age. And I was devastated because I spent the last two years of my life, of his life, really being by his side. And one of the things that I wanted to, that I promised is that we wouldn't let Hustle die. So for, it was that, that was taken and I think I believe in 1994,1995. It was like literally like think one of the first or second big competitions that I put together Hustle USA and Gregory Harrison was a videographer that we call to really document all this stuff because we wanted to be able to say here we are where I'm bringing the community back. We're all coming back. And not only that, but all the amazing dancers that hadn't seen each other for 20 years. And so I found it really important to not only to have the competition that would lead to passing it on to the next generation. Cause I'm really, really big on that. That's why I'm also, I'm here at the Pillow. Um, and also why I became an artist, right? In general. But I think for me, when Gregory, um, I didn't know that. He was going to post it on YouTube. So the thing was, is that we will have the video and then everybody that was there would get a copy if they want it to have for themselves so that they can learn how to dance better, you know? And it was like a memento kind of thing. And that specific piece I did with John Boots, Mauricie, it was about improvising. How do you improvise and not do not look like you're doing a choreography? And I said, John, don't worry about it, just show up on the day of. We'll put on a song, whatever the song that we both want, and we'll just dance. 'Cause they need to really see that part of it, and that's what happened. That was a dance that was captured that, that day. I didn't realize that years later, decades later, really, like a decade later, right? It was in, I think in the early 2000s, is when he, uh, when Gregory had posted it. And to me, it was great because now a new generation had, had now been introduced to a dance that I absolutely adore and love and that's how we all started to communicate and get together. You guys brought me out of retirement. Um, not really because I'm I was in a show, they're like, can you, like, come and do a workshop in between shows? And I'm like, sure, uh, the only day I have off is Sunday. So why don't we do it on Sunday, like a Sunday afternoon? That's how I started with a lot of them. And so for me, I feel like documentation and passing it down by physically being there while I was still alive, because so many of my friends were actually taken by, you know, by the epidemic at that time. So I find it, uh, um, a way for me to still connect with them. So when I teach, I, I really, you know, call out some of the ones by the movements and the, and the, and the turns that I remember and I put them into the dance and that's how I stay connected. But it's also a beautiful dance, too [Rosa-Salas: Yeah]. And Gregory did an amazing job of documenting all of that year, that specific year [Rosa-Salas: Yeah]. We had, like everybody that showed up, so he has a lot of documentation.
Ali Rosa-Salas: It's an incredible archive and I'm so grateful that it exists and thank you so much for shepherding that and having the foresight to know that there would be folks like me who would be really hungry to be able to witness it, so thank you so much.
[Music interlude]
Ali Rosa-Salas: I'd love if you could just introduce yourself, situate, situate us with who you are and how you relate to Hustle as a form?
Cassie Mey: I'm very honored to be here and talking with you and following the amazing Maria Torres. I am the Dance Oral History Producer for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It's just a mouthful, but what it means is that I get to work with dance artists and people in the dance field that are contributing in recording their life story in oral history formats. Dance artists in a lot of different genres are, are becoming researchers and being interested in their own history and, you know, dance is an oral tradition, like it's passed along from person to person and like you got to witness Maria passing along dance history right now. And how deeply moving that can be to, to witness that and to hear those personal stories. And that, that gives us a way of, a way into history that just reading a book or, you know, it's, it's unique. And so dance practitioners that are starting to be interested in dance history forms that are, you know, not represented in the archives, what I call like archival silences or gaps of representation in the archives, especially street and club dance and some Black dance traditions in this country that haven't been fully represented in, in the collections. So certain artists have come into the Dance Division, like. Kwikstep and Rokafella, Ephrat Asherie, they're coming in and they're, they're talking about the cultural tradition bearers that are influencing them and important to them. So we're starting to like, Oh, this is, you know, something we need to really work on expanding. And because this is something that artists are bringing to us as like, we're interested in this. So we in the Dance Division are wanting to be responsive to the community. And I always like to, I listen, like when someone comes to me with a suggestion for an oral history, I take it really seriously, and I get suggestions all the time, and I love it. Like if anyone here knows a dance elder that needs, you know, their history recorded, please come to me, email me, let me know, because I, you know, I want the archive to represent the community and communities and like there are so many different dance communities. It's astounding. It's like a beautiful ecosystem, especially in New York City, where like the library itself is situated on lands that was once the San Juan Hill neighborhood, which was a vibrant neighborhood, mostly African American, Afro Caribbean, and Puerto Rican where, like, jazz greats like Thelonious Monk came up and that community was bulldozed over for, you know, Lincoln Center's construction, really, ultimately, but anyway, that's a, with that history in mind, you know It's important that the Performing Arts Library in New York City represents the dance forms in New York City. And this year happens to be the 50th anniversary of the first Kool Herc Party in 1972 that launches like Breakdancing, B boys, the precursors to what we know as Hip Hop today. We're, we're starting to recognize that, as Maria was beautifully articulating, culture bearers in this, in these forms of street and club dance, like, have passed in the 90s with the first wave of the AIDS pandemic. And so it became, like, pressing, like, these histories need to be recorded, because there's been a lot of cultural appropriation in the realm of street and club dance, and especially around Black dance. And so it's really crucial that the innovators, the originators, that their story is told so that we, um, really understand the actual history and not these like false histories don't get multiplied.
Ali Rosa-Salas: You mentioned a term archival silences, which is really powerful. And I think that, you know, archives are curatorial spaces and they hold a lot of power in terms of that sort of decision making power to rectify those silences or those, or those gaps. I'd love to hear more about this methodology of documenting and recording these histories and if there's any approaches that have been different as there's been, you know, a dedication to documenting street and club dance styles, as opposed to maybe other dance forms that the library has been archiving. So, methodology, I'd love to hear you speak more to that.
Cassie Mey: We haven't shifted our methodology on purpose. When I became the oral history producer in 2016, I had done a long kind of apprenticeship as the oral history assistant, got my library degree, I was a dancer for a long time. In my apprenticeship, I was noticing, I was like, okay, it's really important that dancer stories get captured. Like, there are 500 oral histories in, in the collection. It's been recording continuously since 1974. There's always been a kind of, hopefully, broad angle with, you know, what people are recording about and bringing in author, narrators and dance artists. But I, first of all, I really wanted to center dancers' voices as a dancer myself. It was like, I, it's a dance oral history project. Like we have to center actual practitioners in the field. I wanted to, to pay them, an honorarium because I feel like dance is so underfunded and so many dance elders that I encounter are at a point in their lives where like they feel forgotten or they don't have resources. And so it's really important to me to come to them with something to offer. Like your story is important and I want to honor that. You know, in the oral history field, that was like brand new. No one was giving honorariums and it was actually seen [Rosa-Salas: Oh. That’s interesting]. Yeah, it was because they come, it's coming from like a journalism background and like an academic, like anthropology background where you wouldn't pay someone for their story. But I mean, just for me, a life story of a dancer is like a treasure, and um, it's what you have at the end of your career. And so I felt like honoring the narrator that way. The other way I wanted to honor the narrator was to invite them, ask them who they want to interview them. And I, and I want to really work with the narrator that I invite on, like, picking a person that's, like, a good, a good match, but also who really understands who they are and is an insider type of interviewer who's within the community, who's not an outsider and coming in and looking at it, from an outside eye. And I felt like that would decolonialize the archive a little bit and that was important to me and the other angle of that is to think about empowering dancers in different dance communities to learn how to hold oral histories to learn how to talk to their elders and to also utilize these tools and also to give them money and to like support them financially and so that I wanted to really, I wanted to leverage the archive to pull the resources out, and that was my vision, and so having that in place actually allowed for a really beautiful connection with encountering street and club dancers, but it really, like it was important to Maria when we talked about doing her oral history that it wasn't just about Hustle. Like Hustle's an important part of your story, but as you heard, it's just a small part in, in, in a foundational part, but also like it builds what her life became and grew into. And so I think of it, it's funny because it's like about community history because the oral histories speak to each other, but it's also about, each person's journey through the dance field.
Ali Rosa-Salas: I'm curious from an archivist's perspective, working on a project like this that's getting to meet people, people like Maria, learning about the history of Hustle and other street and social club dance styles. What have, what have you learned about the New York City dance ecology as a, as a result of having connections and building relationships with living culture bearers?
Cassie Mey: It's all interconnected. That a lot of dance practitioners, we think of, oh, there are a certain kind of dancer and like they get placed into one category. And in reality, like. I have recordings with folks who, you know, have made their mark in certain areas of the field, but then also talk about going to the Paradise Garage and the Loft every week, uh, every night, all night, all weekend, you know, and like, doing these dances. And I've learned about the interconnectivity, especially of like, B boying, Breaking, battles. And, and Hustle. I learned this from Charlie Rock, who is one of our original B Boy narrators, who was a Zulu King, an original Zulu King. He talked about Hustle in his interview, and he was like, well, I'm, I'm, this is not how he said it, but I'm just gonna say what I heard. Um, uh, he talked about like the battles happening, you know, outside on like, in the, in the basketball courts, right? And the battles are happening between, you know, this kind of like, alternative like rivalries of neighborhoods and kids and crews. But then afterwards kids were doing the Hustle to like woo the ladies and get, you know, come back together and to like bring. Like, so there's this kind of battle element, but then there's also this community building element, which is the Hustle. Like I had no idea that those two dance forms were connected at all and how, and then, you know, then it evolves into like the club dancing where it's, you know, moves from the streets into the clubs. You know, so the ecology of New York City dance is like very rich. It's very multifaceted. I think it's like the converging of all the cultures. And that particular moment in the ‘70s that we're kind of thinking about in this conversation, like those innovators, I don't know what was in the, like, what were people doing, like why they were the creativity and the innovation and the like, you know, what was happening in New York City, especially like we, we got so many cultural forms that are really important today. That I think a lot of that history is lost and it, and, and so I'm doing whatever we can to like chip away at that. I do want to mention that Maria's oral history is in, in the Dance Oral History Project. Abdiel conducted that oral history that kind of came to me through the Pillow, through Archie Burnett had a residency here. Um, so, you know, these connections continue. Like all these interweavings of, of, of dance. All of these oral, oral histories are free to the public. In some cases, you have to go to the library because the narrator wanted that. In other cases, more recent oral histories, including our street and club dance series, a lot of people choose to put their story online. So that it kind of counters, like, yes, the YouTubes are important and you find people that way, but then it also gives, like, the narrator's perspective, their testimony of what they remember happening.
[Music interlude]
Ali Rosa-Salas: We've kind of gone through a trajectory of speaking about the evolution of Hustle. And I say renaissance reticently now that I'm thinking about it. It's like the Hustle's always been here. It's, it's just, I think that there seems like a new pivot or turning point in the community, where there's, it just seems like a new energy that's been, that's bubbling up that's, in New York specifically and internationally, that feels really, really, really exciting. And so I want to delve into that with you, um, in our conversation. But before we get into that, I would just love to hear a little bit more about your entry point to Hustle because I think that that is really fascinating and I think speaks to the many different kinds of communities that get drawn to this particular dance form.
Abdiel: So I actually first learned about Hustle in the ballroom dance world: Foxtrot, Waltz, Tango, you know, all those partner dance forms. And um, it was via Arthur Murray, which is similar to a franchise Fred Astaire that Maria had traveled with. It was the codified version of Hustle that was very much, you know, whitewashed and commercialized from the mid 70s, late 70s era when the ballroom world really took influence on the form through codification. So when I had seen it first in the ballroom world, I was like. Uh, I wasn't attracted to it. It was very much what we call sometimes the hoppy Hustle [laughs] that the Latin sabore, the playfulness, the, you know, the street dance influences were not there. Um, so I, I didn't even like take a second look at it. I was like, what's this thing? It wasn't until I moved to New York City [Rosa-Salas: Hmm] when I had saw it amongst the actual cultural bearers and the older generation, specifically the older generation of social dancers who were dancing it still: Paul Pellicoro's DanceSport, 412, in the streets, in the parks. When I was like, wow, I was like, I got to learn this dance. What is this dance? And my, my friend's like, this is Hustle. I'm like, this is Hustle. She's like, yeah, this is the real Hustle. So anyways, that was, that was it. And it was funny because timing wise, I was actually a principal dancer with a Martha Graham Dance Company. Personally at that moment. I was looking for a place where I could really express the fullness of my identity as a person. I wasn't able to do that, you know, at Graham and at other, you know, professional institutions because there were still parts of me specifically concerning my gender identity um, and sexuality that just wasn't allowed to fully flourish. And don't get me wrong, like I love dancing with Graham. I loved all the experiences I had, but I wanted something where I could express everything. And it just so happened to be the Hustle community. When I saw them, I would wear my high heels. I would follow, you know, which I wasn't allowed to do in the ballroom world because I was a man. I had to lead. They let me follow, they let me wear heels, I would wear sequin tops, you know, dresses, capes, whatever, you know, and then I learned they're like, oh yeah, no, like, people been doing that, like, you know, this is a part of our history, you know, the celebration specifically of, like, queer people. And so that was it for me. I've just found my family there.
Ali Rosa-Salas: Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. I would love to transition to talk about your contemporary project called Do the Hustle, which is really, it's a dance theater work that's looking at the history of Hustle, integrating living culture bearers and looking at this historical arc and also the contemporary impacts and influences Hustle has on the dance and theater world in general. So I'd love to hear you talk about the development of live performance as an archival methodology and just sort of like what your process has been like creating a work that's documenting or exploring the history of a dance community, that's also integrating of folks who were around when it was, you know, first being invented.
Abdiel: during the pandemic, a lot had shifted for me specifically with my relationship to Hustle. I was already starting to compete in the ballroom world with my professional partner, Christine Bendel. And we were very much, you know, starting to get into the competition aspect, the performance aspect. We were actually supposed to perform here that summer in 2020 and host a Pillow party. But of course, you know, who took over.
Ali Rosa-Salas: Shut down.
Abdiel: Shut down. So like many of us, I was forced to, to, in the pandemic, I lost all my professional work. My father passed away in February and I was just, as part of me, almost like just I, death almost. It just felt like I had to find, re-find what is it that makes, that ignites me. And it went back all the way to the living room. At home, my mom is from Cote d'Ivoire, where I was born. And we always grew up around social dance. And it was at the, the, the graduation parties, at the Black History Month events, at the, you know, um, wedding receptions, like, we just did it everywhere. And my sister and I, we had, uh, my two sisters and I, um, we had a group called Akwaba, which in my mom's native tongue means welcome. And so we would choreograph routines in the living room and my mom would be in the kitchen and she would have her little scarf and she'd be playing her West African music and she'd be going, eh, eh, eh, eh, and just so much joy would exude. And she would teach us steps in the living room and we would synthesize all of that through, you know, watching her and feeling that and creating our steps and we would always perform at these social functions. So I wanted to find that inspiration of what was the seed of getting me into dance, but also in performance. And then being in the pandemic, recognizing that social dance has always been the, the, the place for me to really find that ignite, ignition point to dance. And Hustle also was that place for me to not only ignite, but also find my identity. So I wanted to, it was like coming back to a performance aspect. I didn't want to come through it from the Eurocentric proscenium context. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I did it for many years and I loved it, but I wanted it to be of a place that represented the cultural heritage of social dance of which Hustle actually emerged. It emerged in the streets in what they call hooky parties, like based in people's basements and social functions. Not in the dance studio, in the theater. So the work, do the Hustle, um, has, uh, several elements. One is the performance element is in three parts, which is a interactive performance mixed with a social dance class and party element. So that instead of just seeing it in a performative aspect, the audience will actually get to learn about its history, get to do the Hustle, physically, by learning it, embodying it. And then also understand its, its function as a social dance, which is inherent, inherently performative. I mean, when you, when you see Maria dance, it's a performance. Even when we're, you know, social dancing, or if you see anyone dance, They're performing their identity, their expression, their spirit. So, and that exists in the social dance floor. So what you'll see, what we're, what we're working on, at least in its very nascent stage, is something to represent the social dance floor as a performance experience.
Ali Rosa-Salas: My final question for you is specifically around the integration of culture bearers. We were able to witness, um, an, an, an excerpt of Do The Hustle this week at the Pillow. For me, it was just so astounding to see the integration of living culture bearers in that work and the ways in which you can, you know, witness the embodiment of history. What have you learned through the, through the integration of those living legends to develop and inform Do The Hustle, the theatrical experience?
Abdiel: In that performance that you saw, there were five generations represented from their 20s all the way in their two dancers in their 60s. And that's, that's really important because that's how in these communities of practice, oral tradition and history is passed on. It's not necessary through books and writing. It's through the body, right? The embodiment and that shared experience that, you know, comes from African tradition. There's the tradition of being in space with dancers and having that history being passed in that way. But also we do it conversation. And so I began interviewing people over the pandemic through a Instagram series I did called Hustle Monday Disco. I actually interviewed Maria for that. Ruthie, who I know is also here. I mean, Christine and other dancers. And there was a dancer we lost, actually, a legendary dancer, Floyd Chisholm. And that, for me, that was last spring, and that was it. That, when I, that happened, I was like, we can't lose any more of these living tradition bearers. We need to actually document and record their oral history. At that time, um, my partner and I were working with Duke Dang. And I told him about that and he's, he connected me with Linda Murray and we had a conversation and then I was working with Archie and he, he did that. He shared his, you know, Archie Burnett.
Ali Rosa-Salas: I thought Archie was known as Archie.
Abdiel: I point to the outside stage [Rosa-Salas: Right. Right] because you know, he used, he used his oral, oral history in his performance. So I was also observing that process and I was like, the oral history is really important to have, and so that's when I, um, Norton, while I was here at the Pillow last summer, I was looking in the archives. I'm like, well, what is in the archives around Hustle? And there's such a dearth of records. And so I wanted to, a dearth of records, I should say, from the actual communities of practice of where it originated from. Most of it is from the massly commercialized perspective in the mid, late 70s. That was when I got connected to Cassie and I was like going through their, their archives and I was like, where are, I don't see like the people I dance with that I see all the time that are still dancing in their 60s. They're not in here. And Maria Torres was in, in those archives, um, do, uh, in different theatrical representations, like, um, Swing on Broadway, um, 4 Guys Named José. But I wanted to see Hustle because. Maria Torres is a legendary Hustle dancer, and I didn't see the Hustle element represented. And I'm like, but these people are here. They're alive. So I nominated Maria Torres and we just had an incredible conversation and was like, this is the inspiration I think is like having also our, you know, our elders present as well to share their story and legacy. And so that's what the project is also there to do cultural historic preservation, as well as the immersive interactive experience.
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Norton Owen: That's it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today on behalf of Jacob's Pillow. We look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays and podcasts at dance interactive dot jacobs pillow.org, and of course, through live experiences during our. And throughout the year, special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series, please subscribe to PillowVoices, wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon, either online or on site.