Melanie George, jazz dance scholar, choreographer, and dramaturge, hosts this episode. Highlighting voices of students from the School at Jacob's Pillow and insights from Moncell Durden and Camille A. Brown, George offers a reflection on the communal aspects of jazz dance.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
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 Melanie George, one of our Scholars-in-Residence, who will be your host for this exploration of Jazz as a communal practice.
STUDENT 1: I’ve learned that it’s really not about you. I know a lot of people think that when it comes to social dance it’s really sometimes presentational and, you know, ‘look what I can do’ and stuff like that, but what I’ve learned personally, is it’s really not about you. The more that you allow yourself to be free, you allow yourself, as we’ve all experienced, taking that mask off, being vulnerable, and just allowing yourself to be open that might allow who you’re social dancing with, or who you are communicating with through your body, to be free. So whatever you’re willing to let go, whatever you are willing to be open with, that might allow them to have that freedom that they wouldn’t have normally experienced without you bein’ there, but it’s just, again, about community and being free and just shedding everything you think you are not capable of. [Applause]
[Music bubbles in, composed by Ellis Rovin, 2020]
MELANIE GEORGE: That was a student from the School at Jacob Pillow in 2015 reflecting on their experience in the summer program Social Dances: Jazz to Hip-Hop, co-directed by Camille Brown and Moncell Durden. We’ll be hearing from more students, as well as Moncell and Camille throughout this episode as we explore the communal aspects of jazz dance. [Music ends]
What I love most about that student’s reflection is that it is emblematic of the ways jazz functions beyond the stage. [Jazz music, led by an upright bass, moves in, Rovin, 2020] Asimplistic interpretation of jazz is that it is strictly about fun and sex. While it can be about those things, it is because first and foremost jazz dance is about humanity and agency. Fun and sex are only two aspects of a fully realized human existence. [Music ends] Jazz began as vernacular dancing, meaning it was created from the everyday experiences of regular people in relationship to each other. As a result, there is always room in jazz for individuals to put their personal stamp on the dance, while simultaneously honoring the group dynamic. It is not one or the other; the relationship is fluid, and reliant on both parts to function healthily.
In many ways jazz—the music and the dance—are a microcosm for democracy in America, where all voices are contributing towards furthering a common goal. This value is embedded in the history of the form and its critical connection to the African Diaspora. Though jazz dance is synonymous with change, it is through the arc of those changes over many decades that we see the capacity of movement to teach us about the values of citizenship, community, and the full spectrum of human relationships.
Moncell spoke about this at Jacob’s Pillow in 2015.
MONCELL DURDEN: For me, Jennifer Homans wrote this book called Apollo’s Angels, which is about the history of ballet, and early in the chapter she talks about (and it resonated with me), she talks about how we’re not—and I use this sometimes when I’m speaking to classes—about how we’re not just giving or imparting technical acuity, that the steps are not just steps—that they are related to a past that connects us to what our earlier generations and ancestors did, how they lived, how they thought, what movement meant to them. So, it’s really important to pass that on. And then when I first began teaching in universities, around 2003, you know, they want me to come in and teach Hip Hop. So, I’m thinking ok, this is a private institution. I can’t go in there with like, well this is the movement we did on the playground back then. I had to really go deeper, as Camille said, so the information that I already had at that time, I did more digging, so that they would begin to understand the relationship and how important this movement was. And the same thing, I found the same thing, that everyone knew who, you know they knew who Bob Fosse was, they knew who Luigi was, they didn’t know who Leroy “Stretch” Jones was, they didn’t know Al Minns, they didn’t know Norma Miller, they didn’t know, they didn’t know, they didn’t know. So I felt that it was my duty, I was like—let me bring some footage in here, show you who these people are. What they did. What the relationships are. So that you are much more well-rounded, in what this movement is and, in certain cases, have a more diverse cultural context to what it is and to what it meant. And then, that leading into, you know, socio-political understanding and what-not, so that the movement again was not just movement, it’s not just steps and it’s not arbitrary.
MELANIE GEORGE: [Piano music followed by violin underlies text, Rovin 2020] You may be wondering: “What is all this talk about social dance? I thought this podcast was supposed to be about jazz.” Well, jazz dance and social dance in America are closely linked. At one time they were one and the same. The jazz dance tree has grown to encompass theatrical and classical styles. It has travelled around the world, and now has homes in academia, conservatories, and is a bedrock of commercial dance. But the roots are vernacular, improvisatory, and egalitarian by way of the African American experience. And it is through social dance that community is most visibly present and actualized in jazz.
Camille Brown was asked to define social dance. [music fades] This is what she said:
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Social dance, for me, is things that happen within a community whether they be political, or just in terms of expressing yourself. And sometimes there’s resistance, and there’s a need for a response in the way of movement against whatever’s happening politically. And sometimes it’s a way for people to just be with each other and communicate and share their joy. But like Moncell said, I think it just depends on, you know, the community.
[Music comes in, Rovin, 2020]
MELANIE GEORGE: A core aspect of social dance that facilitates communal relationships is the use of improvisation by soloists and the ensemble. If democracy involves the free exchange of ideas and power derived from the people, then its artistic embodiment is improvisation. Improvisation provides an entry point for the performer and observer on their own terms, allowing for multiple responses. The dancer’s role is elevated to active citizenship, from performer to composer.
This notion reflectshistorianCarl Becker’s view that democracy’s [quote] “… fundamental assumption is the worth and dignity and creative capacity of the individual, so that the chief aim of the government is the maximum of individual self-direction…” [end quote]. Through improvisation, the dancer is given an opportunity to engage, dialogue with, and personalize the dance. Moving away from right and wrong towards what if and why not.
Scholar in Residence Suzanne Carbonneau touches on this idea in her conversation with Moncell and Camille. [music ends]
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: So maybe that brings us to the idea of improvisation. Can you talk about that?
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Oh, improvisation…
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: yeah…because we think of social dances as the way we know them, as kind of set, but there’s—this is a different kind of tradition.
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Well, I think improvisationis the freedom to live within a structure, aah, so I know we are doing it with the students, giving them something set, but allowing them to have the freedom to do that and what does it mean when you put on, the context of being enslaved, what does it mean to find your freedom in the midst of being enslaved? And how do you negotiate that in your body?
MONCELL DURDEN: That’s, just to add to that,the way that I define dance—I use dance as an acronym, and it’s Discovering the Autobiographical self, Negotiating in Creativity and Expression.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Can you say that again, please?
MONCELL DURDEN: Discovering the (D) Autobiographical self (A), Negotiating in Creativity and Expression. Which you know, leads into a whole other thing when you break down the words themselves. What are we discovering—the autobiographical self? Yes, so we are unearthing things about ourselves and we are negotiating space—our body—our ownership. And then how we create—and what, in terms of production and what that is, even with our own movement, not necessarily for presentation and what that expression is and getting into a sense of emotion. Because when you break the word emotion down, ‘E’ is for energy. ‘MO’ means ephemeral. And ‘TION’ is action. So the, and it’s short like these dances are, they’re in the body, but then as a manifestation sometimes, sometimes they’re short-lived, because we know that in that era, that dance was hot. It’s not hot now, but we can still do it because it’s in the body. But it’s that motion that’s created between that energy and the action that that energy has.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: So… oh sorry, go ahead…
CAMILLE A. BROWN: I just wanted to put on the context of what I had said before—the rejection through agreement. When you put that and then that political aspect to it, it becomes a whole other thing so then it no longer becomes about steps, it becomes really about communicating to that person or communicating to a higher being. Or just communicating to yourself.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: It also seems to say something to me about the idea about the individual and community. And the relationship between individual and community.
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Mmm hmm. In terms of … what do you mean?
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Well, that all of this takes place within a community,
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Mmm hmm
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: …and everybody is… and everyone is taking part in a ritual or a social experience, but communicating as a group—but there is also room for the individual to be expressive, too. And to have, as you say, freedom. [Music note: piano-led Jazz music pops in, composed by Ellis Rovin, 2020]
MELANIE GEORGE: In jazz dance, improvisation starts from a shared movement vocabulary. This is comparable to the way jazz musicians improvisewithin the blues. In music, the players know the key signature, the chord changes, and the time signature before embarking on an improvisational journey. Likewise, [music shifts to electronic drum and synthesizer, Rovin, 2020] there is a bank of dance steps created by jazz dancers, b-boys and b-girls, house dancers, and every social dance form within the jazz dance family tree.These steps are shared in social environments, providing a starting point from which the dancer can depart. [Music slows, as if a deejay is slowing a record, and stops]
Moncell has an encyclopedic knowledge of the lineage of social dances from the African American community. He’s about to gives us approximately 60 years of history of dance steps and the tradition of passing down movements among family and friends.
MONCELL DURDEN: Oftentimes I’ll talk aboutthe Soul Train line. And even when I was in Chicago. You know—who knows the Soul Train line? And, of course everyone in Chicago is like, Soul Train line started here. [laughing] So I’m like, well, ok, yes, it did, but, what is the influence? And the influence is actually the Camel Walk. So if we’re doing, if—can I?
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Please.
MONCELL DURDEN: I’m going to keep it, you know, small spaces… [laughter] So in the 1800s, Camel Walk has been going on for a long time. But in like 1880 or so, a lot of times you saw the Camel Walk it was very rigid in a sense, which a little later on, had a hook in it. But the hook had already been there in African movement. So later, 1924, it has a nice tempo to it, but in 1957, it got slower. Which became known as The Stroll. So, you know, Dick Clark gets a group from Canada, The Diamonds, and gets some writers here and writes this song called “The Stroll” because there was no song called “The Stroll”—there was just the movement. And they did the movement to Chuck Willis’s “C.C. Rider,” right? Don Cornelius reflects, ‘when I was young…’
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Maybe not everybody knows who Don Cornelius is?
MONCELL DURDEN: Ok, so Don Cornelius is the creator of the TV show Soul Train. What was it 30 years? 35 years? 40? Yeah! [laughter]. So, he’s the creator of that and it started in Chicago and went to California. And to feature his dancers—because in the early stages, he couldn’t get all the big-name groups—so he featured his dancers, and a concept of featuring them was the Soul Train line. But again, he reached back to his childhood and said, “I remember the dance we used to do: The Stroll.” It’s linear—you have two groups one on each side and they are going back and forth and then two couples meet in the middle and they go down—well, that was the Camel Walk; he renamed it the Soul Train Line. So there is one through-line. And then I’ll give two more. Or if you want me to sit down, I’ll sit down. [quiet ‘nos,’ laughter] So, the other step, the Drop Charleston—is here and you drop down. Well, it’s not been confirmed, but I talked to a lot of the elders from the late 60s and 70s, who were into a style of dance called Rocking, and it’s very heavily Latin-influenced. And what breakers, or B-Boys as we call ‘em, do is that they do a step called the Charlie Rock, where it’s a one-and step. So whether they saw that or not, and took it, I can’t say. But there’s just this similarity in movement. So when you look at a lot of jazz movement—James Brown for example, was heavily influenced by movements associated with the Apple Jack. And he made it his thing and then he mixed that with the Mashed Potato and he comes up with the James Brown. Which was also mixed in with the Slop, and all three of those are heavily influenced by the Charleston. So there’s James, who was born in 1933, the Apple Jack which is popular in 1940, and he’s doing that…
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Can you show us the Apple Jack?
MONCELL DURDEN: That is, a couple different ways that I learned, right? One we were doing today, which is [moving feet sounds] this. Another way was, [sounds of moving feet] on the heel. And then, sometimes people doing it, would kind of go up on one leg and walk and then go into a thing. James Brown took that walk, as we know and did it his whole career. But then you are looking at a Mashed Potato, which is coming from the Charleston, so if the Charleston is front and back, your Mashed Potato was to the side. Which ends up creating the Slop, which is a push [sounds of moving feet] back. And James mixing all of that together, comes up with James Brown, but James is also influenced by tap dancers. So, particularly people say Lil Buck, and he would try to imitate that so, James works footwork, that’s ‘cause he’s trying to tap. But he’s not a tapper, so he uses that and he uses the splits that the tappers are doing and, you know, the flash acts are doing so all that gets blended in. And who is hip hop’s biggest influence? Or let’s say one of, let’s say one of? James Brown. So again, when we think about James as a child, seeing what, to put a name on it, let’s just say the Savoy era, the 40s. James being influenced by the jazz scene and what’s happening—James growing up and it wasn’t just James, it was Jackie Wilson and on and on and on, but James growing up and my parents being influenced by James doing what he does. Let’s think about Cholly Atkins, who taught Motown groups, and he’s teaching them all this stuff from the 20s, 30s, 40s. So all this, this information is being passed down because they are imitating the favorite groups they like who are doing steps that’s coming from back then. The hip hop crowd is imitating James so there’s the connection. And it’s just going on and then not to forget our parents. Our family who are doing dances and we’re young and we pick it up and we go on, and so there’s a lot of ways that—I’m sorry, I’ve talked a lot—there’s a lot of ways where it’s getting connected and passed on.
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Um, just to piggyback on the Camel Walk—the Camel Walk in the 80s for me when I see it is Janet Jackson’s Pleasure Principle. And then even further, Single Ladies, here, with Beyoncé. [sounds of moving feet]. And then in terms of the Charleston, in the 90s, they had the thing called the Kid ‘n Play [sounds of movement and vocal percussion: do-n-ba-and] then you hook and then you go around and around and around. So, you know, it just keeps going on and on and on and on and you know, I think that’s one of the reasons why I say, I question: well, what is the definition of originality?
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Exactly!
MONCELL DURDEN: Right, right.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Exactly!
MELANIE GEORGE: [music floats in, under text, Rovin, 2020] Connections and community by way of lineage. You hear it their words so clearly. It’s what the student at the start of the episode referred to and what I’ve experienced so many times in my own jazz practice. These are not isolated events. We have been replicating them for as long as jazz dance has existed—longer actually,becauseit originates in West African traditions. In jazz we see the opportunity to bridge and bond with others.
STUDENT 2: Social Dance is about the community. It’s about connecting and communicating with one another. And sometimes that’s not always stressed, in a technical sense. So this was much more about spirit and heart, than it was about details of perfection. [Applause]
STUDENT 3: When I got here, I had a slight feeling about social dance, how it’s, it’s kind of important—it kept on reocurring in my life.But right now, social dance has taught, like what I’ve learned throughout this two past weeks, is that it goes way back to the motherland. And it’s all connected and it’s keepin’ us – me – as a male, as a black male- alive. Keepin’ me connected, keepin’ me strong. So I believe that is so important for society, for culture, to have social dance because that’s where change, that’s where change happens, in the street to the office, ya know… [Applause, whoops] [Rovin music fades out]
[Closing music comes in, composed and performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: That’s it for this episode of PillowVioces. 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 danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org, and of course, through live experiences during our festival 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 onsite.