In this episode we share a PillowTalk that took place at Jacob's Pillow on August 15, 2021. Pillow Scholar and Associate Curator Melanie George hosts this conversation with a foremost tradition-bearer of Black American social dance, LaTasha Barnes, who places jazz dance in the context of House, Hip-Hop, Waacking, and Lindy Hop.
In this episode we share a PillowTalk that took place at Jacob's Pillow on August 15, 2021. Pillow Scholar and Associate Curator Melanie George hosts this conversation with a foremost tradition-bearer of Black American social dance, LaTasha Barnes. Through her work, The Jazz Continuum, Barnes places jazz dance in the context of House, Hip-Hop, Waacking, and Lindy Hop. LaTasha Barnes is an internationally-recognized and award-winning dancer, choreographer, educator, performer, and ambassador of culture. She has been honored to be a frequent collaborator with Dorrance Dance, Ephrat Asherie Dance, Ladies of Hip-Hop, and Caleb Teicher & Company.
Special thanks to New England Public Media for their support of this episode of PillowVoices.
[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 bring you this recast of a PillowTalk titled The History of Jazz Dance. We join Pillow Scholar and Curator Melanie George in conversation with LaTasha Barnes. who is a tradition-bearer of Black American social dance.
MELANIE GEORGE: Let me formally introduce artist extraordinaire, and someone who I’m so proud to call my very good friend, LaTasha Barnes. So, we’ve been tasked with talking about the history of jazz dance in 45 minutes and, that’s not real. So, we’re gonna, we’re gonna just sort of let the conversation go where, where it goes. We’re really gonna approach this as a conversation and less of a sort of interview, but we will definitely leave time at the end for you to ask whatever questions you might have. We’re really fortunate in that we work in the same idiom and so I think there’s a lot of richness to talk about. But, for those who don’t know, why don’t we start with your history and how you come into being really grounded in these art forms, in these dance forms as opposed to any other dance forms.
LATASHA BARNES: Wow, right out the gate. Honestly, I guess, start with my mom’s favorite joke, that I was dancing before I was breathing. Some people say unfairly, my mom was an athlete and a dancer, and my dad was a DJ. So, I was quite literally getting it on in utero. My mom likes to joke that I would throw off her groove as she was at the party just trying to rock out with my dad and that she would have to take a seat, but if she didn’t sit next to the speaker, I would still be…
MELANIE GEORGE: Always a soloist from the beginning.
LATASHA BARNES: Always a soloist. But once she got close to the music, close to the bass, then I would be in agreement with everybody and everything. Metaphor there. Yeah. And my great-grandmother also was a dancer. Unbeknownst to me when I was growing up with her, but you know she kind of, anyway, have southern grandmothers, you know, they kind of leak things out every now and then. In conversation, you’re like, I’m sorry, what? And she once told me, yeah, you know, my friends and I saved up some money to go up to New York and dance with some fancy feet, you know, dancers with their fancy feet. Yeah, happy feet, something, some, Sarah’s, St. Thomas Ballroom. I was like, what, what are you? What? She was like, Savoy, something. I was like. You mean the Savoy Ballroom. Yeah! Yeah. In Harlem. And I’m like. Just casually, you just.
MELANIE GEORGE: So, so we should probably contextualize that because I’m not sure everyone knows the historic significance of the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem and that being a center for jazz and innovative social dance coming out of a Black tradition. And, frankly, a lot of integration. Which is part of how a lot of those ballrooms got shut down because of the opposition to Black people and white people integrating. Because this music was dance music and it absolutely comes from a, a Black American base, but it was music for everyone. It was America’s popular music.
LATASHA BARNES: And just the fact that she was even able to save enough to travel from Virginia…
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah.
LATASHA BARNES: To New York just to dance. Like that, that depth of importance to movement and sharing with the best, I guess, some of those that were considered the best, I guess I got that honestly.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah.
LATASHA BARNES: But she taught me my first Swing Out, of course it wasn’t called, she didn’t call it a Swing Out, she just said this is how we dance. And listening to Louis Armstrong, which she always did. She told me run, jump, and squat. Hold my hand, run, jump, squat. Then run, jump, squat. And for all my Lindy Hoppers in the room I know you’re all like, that’s, that’s legit. That, that, that, that checks out. And it just continued from there, gratefully. I was sharing with Melanie and some other folks last night or the other night, a photo of my uncle when he was, I guess he was 12, no. Yes. He was 12, cause we’re very close in age, and his Pop watching over there on the rocks with their suits, and their white gloves. Very Beech Street.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yes, very, very 1980.
LATASHA BARNES: And it’s always been surrounding me.
MELANIE GEORGE: So, so the, so one of the things that I think is interesting because when we met, which, 28 maybe, I knew you as LaTasha, the Hip Hop House dancer. I did not know you as LaTasha who does Lindy. And so, and I know that there are people that kind of only know you as LaTasha who does Lindy and solo jazz. And so, I’m curious like what was, what was that transition for you?
LATASHA BARNES: That’s an interesting question. It honestly really started to become even more of a, of a requirement as I started to see the calling of me serving as a tradition bearer for African American social styles become more obvious, because more crystallized in everything that I did. It was that weekend actually, you and Ms. Karen.
MELANIE GEORGE: Oh, yeah. So, we were at, what was that event called?
LATASHA BARNES: Augustus…
MELANIE GEORGE: Augustus something something. In West Virginia, it was a, arranged by a woman named Emily Oleson and she used to run a now defunct dance program at one of the colleges in West Virginia and she started this summer event around vernacular dancing of all kinds. And specifically, I feel like there was an Appalachian slant to it. But she was really invested in bringing in Blackness and specifically bringing in Black vernacular dance forms. And so, we met because my mentor was there, Ms. Karen Hubbard, who is retiring very soon from UNC Charlotte. And she studied with a man named Pepsi Bethel, who is, you know, iconic but unsung.
LATASHA BARNES: Yes, true.
MELANIE GEORGE: And Karen’s one of the few people to retain what his class structure was and what the vocabulary was. And you, it was, it was sort of very hard to find people who knew Pepsi’s work, you could find a lot of Frankie disciples, I think, you know a lot of Frankie disciplines and a lot of Normal disciples. But Pepsi was in this sort of niche because like LaTasha, he was bridging concert dance and social dance. He was performing on stages, he actually, I have a photo of his dance company on the, I bought it off of eBay, and on the, on the back of it the sticker says that he was performing at someplace in the Catskills. Like, you know there used to be all those summer performances. And so, his company would go up there in the summer and perform. And yeah, so then you fall into this Lindy place, and I think you just named something that’s really important that we just need to kind of call out and name, and it’s why is it important to be a tradition bearer and what, truly what is the history of jazz that it would need tradition bearers. Because that really is the story of why this kind of work needs to be presented. So, I’m gonna let you speak on it and then I’m going to be like your Greek Chorus and just sort of like pipe in.
LATASHA BARNES: And I apologize if my earrings are jangling in the mic, fashion, just saying. Priorities. But in, in that regard, it was such an interesting calling in that moment, in that weekend. Seeing the overlap. Wanting to know and understand more about why some of the things I saw being shared in her class and other jazz classes, vernacular jazz classes at that time as they would be distinguished, why they were so similar to the Hip Hop movement, to the House movement, to Jookin' movement, to DC Hand Dance movement. I was, I really just wanted to understand why these things are similar. And nobody could really sus out for me why. So, I was like, ok well I guess I’ll just learn the thing and feel out why, maybe if there is some way to feel why. And then my process of documenting how I felt why, I stumbled into a process. And then it was a process of unlocking these connections for other people. And I, I fully never intended to set out to be this tradition bearer and do this thing. I just wanted, I wanted to, to recognize and uplift the Blackness that I saw was inherent in it, but also absent somehow. It’s still very much Black social dance, but there was, there was something missing in the pot. And I didn’t know then, logistically, strategically, forecasting-wise, how to bring more Black people into the space. All I knew how to do was be present.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah. I think that, sorry go ahead.
LATASHA BARNES: And I figured if I could share that with others, that even though it is a bit of a monochromatic presentation sometimes, that this is still our space because it’s holding our art.
MELANIE GEORGE: So, I’m going to say the thing you’re not saying, ok, which is, I’m gonna say it. Cause we have to name it for people to understand what we’re talking about, ok. So, the history of popular music in America, which is, in the way that it functions with popular dance is that it has been primarily Black. And as music and dance styles evolve, these traditions that she’s talking about sort of, sort of were, unless in vogue. But, but the way that it gets framed in history so much of the time is like, hip hop is so completely separate from jazz, and that’s false. That’s a completely false, ahistorical frankly, narrative, right? What happened for all those great dancers from the Frankie Mannings, Norma Millers, Dawn Hamptons era, the, why these Lindy, Lindyhoppers, the Savoy Ballroom era, and frankly the tap dancers too is that when you get to sort of 1960 and forward, there’s less work for them, right? Rock and roll changed some things, the musical Oklahoma! changed some things, you know, and there was just less work for them. But they found that abroad, particularly in European countries, people wanted to work from them and learn from them and so they went to places like Sweden or Herrang Dance Camp has been happening for a long time. And they took those traditions that it seemed like no one here was really that interested in.
LATASHA BARNES: Seemed like.
MELANIE GEORGE: Seemed like, again, I’m taking, I’m choosing my words really carefully, right? And taught those dance styles there, which is great because they’re still alive and there’s people who have first-hand knowledge of working with them. However, …
LATASHA BARNES: Comma.
MELANIE GEORGE: The byproduct of that is when you look at the global Lindy Hop scene, it is predominantly white. And we’re talking about a Black American art form.
LATASHA BARNES: And when you look at the global hip hop and house dance scene, primarily white also. And it’s really fascinating that we have the same phenomena happening, that happened in the past in jazz, happening again with hip hop and now happening again with online dance culture.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yes.
LATASHA BARNES: It’s, it, it seems to continue to perpetuate in a way that no one understands, but we all understand what’s happening. We just have a problem stopping it and also making sure we stay present as things move into different spaces.
MELANIE GEORGE: And so what I think what we’re trying to contextualize here by naming this is, yes we inherently understand that social dances are meant to be shared and danced with other people. It’s not the who gets to do it, it’s who gets to say that they, that they created it.
LATASHA BARNES: Right.
MELANIE GEORGE: Right? The contextualizing of origin and how that functions with disenfranchisement and systemic racism is the thing that we’re talking about here. So what LaTasha has done on this stage for you all this week of drawing that line from the earliest of jazz to things that are happening literally on TikTok right now is filling some really significant gaps in the way that history gets told.
LATASHA BARNES: That’s the hope anyway. And also, the process. And as Melanie has been even more privy to than most, in addition to bridging those gaps, performatively and visually, building up and girding our, our artists who are in this, this work to also stand in that gap. And, and to carry the knowledge of the things that they’re gaining from this experience as well to the communities that they’re a part of that may or may not be fully aware of how important and impactful jazz actually is to what they do now. We have our own running joke, Ms. Dawn said to me once that she looked at jazz like, it’s not a villain in that sense, but like the character that was always captured at the end of Scooby Doo. And then they unmasked, and it was the person that they thought it was the beginning but they overlooked.
MELANIE GEORGE: If it wasn’t for those meddling kids, I would have been successful.
LATASHA BARNES: Right. But she says the, the mask underneath the mask is basically, is like, it’s jazz. It’s like they capture it, and it’s hip hop, but then they take it off and it’s like, ha, it’s jazz. They captured and it’s, you know, litefeet, or beat feet, and they’re like, ha! It’s jazz! Underneath it all, it’s always jazz, and it’s always coming out of this desire to be present, to represent ourselves, to tell our stories and to celebrate our stories together in, in concert with the music and in agreement with the music. But that is something that, as we were sharing many times, as we’ve discussed a lot of academic, you know, and intellectualized ideas about this, it really was just, really challenging listening to my elders put on in one way in a particular space and then sharing something else when they were in private with me. And I’m like how am I supposed to stand in this if you don’t actually speak to it when you’re out in front of people? We’re not going to be able to make and hold space for, for your people if you don’t let people know that this is still of us. I love and appreciate everything that you’ve done, and I understand why you had to do some of the things that you had to do, but you need to fix it. You need to say this is still Black art. This is still for Black people. This is still for us to tell our stories. It’s great that we get to celebrate it in a global capacity, just as you shared so beautifully in your pre-show talk, but we have to stop adapting to accommodate everybody all the time. We can make space, sometimes, the we, we’re confident in that in relationships and it still baffles me, in relationship conversations, consent, setting boundaries, making sure that you communicate these things. Dance is no different.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yes.
LATASHA BARNES: Dance is the ultimate communicator.
MELANIE GEORGE: More intimate in a lot of ways.
LATASHA BARNES: More intimate in a lot of ways. You’re saying things that you haven’t even said to yourself sometimes out loud on that stage. And if you’re not, if you’re not, if you’re not asserting in that moment, this is my space, the people that I come from, the people that I celebrate, the people that I love are welcome here. And you have to, you have to deal with that if you’re going to celebrate me in this space, then you messing up. It’s just, yeah.
MELANIE GEORGE: Can you talk a little bit about intergenerationality and how it fits into your work. Even within the cast there’s a, I’m not gonna give anyone’s age, but there’s a range of ages in the cast. I think I’m probably the oldest of the crew, but there’s a, but that also ties to you sitting at the feet of all of these elders. And so obviously that sort of intergenerational thing that happens within Black families and multiple generations living in a home is part of it. But I’m curious about its prominence in your actual dance practice.
LATASHA BARNES: And it is that prominent because of my upbringing and my experience. I don’t know if we’ve talked in detail about this, but I was in that deeply intergenerational household. It was me, my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother all in the same house for 18 years. Loving my life, but it was time to go. I digress. But in this, this nurturing and reciprocal celebration and picking and elevating and challenging environment was how I learned to navigate the world. And it is not a surprise that it is also how I learned to navigate the capital ‘D’ Dance world. You know, we, we make a lot of some of us make a point to really adhere to these hip hop labels and house labels and jazz and experimental dance and all of these other kinds of things. We understand why, and it does help situate and help some people find their place, but you do reach a certain point where you recognize that it’s all just movement and communication. And if you don’t regard it as such, you’re going to miss your opportunity to be what you’re supposed to be in regards to that. And that was what I learned at home. If I constantly just looked at myself as the little kid, then I was gonna miss my opportunity to be in the kitchen with my great grandmother, to learn the things that she needed to pass on to me. Or to be with my mom in her at-home salon. To learn things that she needed to teach me about how to care for myself or how to care for my friends, or how to make money doing so. But, in the context of dance, I recognize the value. I’m so, so grateful that I was surrounded by others who also recognized that value, of having someone who is more experienced. Not in every single way, but in some ways. And to be able to differentiate between someone being a be all, which thankfully none of the people in the cast have that ego issue.
MELANIE GEORGE: Right, right.
LATASHA BARNES: But to recognize that there’s some people who can help you in the business mind of things. And also, they have this hidden understanding of the idiosyncrasies of Prince.
MELANIE GEORGE: She’s talking about me right now.
LATASHA BARNES: Just saying, just saying. But then also can tell you, like, why Charlie Parker and Eubie Blake are who they are, it’s like, you know, ok yeah you need those people too. Or to have someone who can teach you how to make your own clothes, or to also stand in your musical choices even if they at don’t seem to be aligning with what your generation is celebrating or wanting you to accept about the music that you’re listening to. So, the power of having shoulders to stand upon in your, in your creative process as opposed to reaching a place and then being elevated. That's, that’s what the intergenerational experience has allowed for. And my personal experience and I hope for most of the cast as well.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah, it, I, I observe it as being this sort of really efficient path to freedom, like, there, like the thing you’re talking about the people that call themselves, I’m the hip hop dancer, I’m a litefeet dancer, I’m the whatever. I think for a lot of folks watching what you do it seems like, oh this is super complicated, but it actually, it actually removes some of the complexity by not having to, sort of uphold these really rigid lines of what’s what and who’s who. And to have a conversation about Marjory Smarth, House legend Marjory Smarth one minute and then to have a discussion about Mable Lee the next minute and they're, what 50 years apart, 60 years apart in age. Yeah.
LATASHA BARNES: And that’s, that’s a really apt...
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah, I’m smart, yeah.
LATASHA BARNES: And you know, and this is just a little peek inside my brain, you saying Marjory immediately makes me think well first of all her host and then second her legs how they moved and then you say Mable, and of course everybody knows Mable Lee and those legs. But how they both were able to say so much with just the tiniest movement. And they just, enamored an entire room and take over an entire song with just a single step. And they were both amazing prolific women who just stood in their power in the moment. You know, they had other things going on in their lives too, they had to navigate, but in that moment, they could say the thing that they really intended to say. And show up in the room in the way that they sometimes felt that they could not elsewhere.
MELANIE GEORGE: So, I’m glad that we’re talking about women because I feel like your role as a woman doing this work is important. Not only being a woman, or a Black woman, I should be real specific about that, your role as a Black woman doing this work. But I do think, particularly the way you talk about your experience with Ms. Norma and Ms. Dawn, and, and even the way you got so giddy about Dianne Walker attending your master class for the school earlier in the week. I mean Dianne Walker, legend Dianne Walker. I got to say, if you all don’t know, you know. But there’s something about women doing this work that, we are socialized to be caretakers, right? And, you know, I know the stories about how, like when Dormeshia and Derick were touring with Black and Blue, like how Ms. Dianne took care of them, really took care of them because their parents were not on tour with them. And I’ve seen a version of that with you just in the time that we’ve been here. And it wasn’t like it was foreign, like I knew it was happening, but like I saw a lot of it over the, over the past two weeks and I feel like it’s tied to this idea of being a tradition bearer is also being a caretaker of people, places and things. Yeah, like, so I’m wondering if you have any thoughts around your womanness and your Black womanness and doing the true labor that you’re doing. The, the artistry, yes, the artistry is happening, but there’s also a lot of labor, a lot of hidden labor that’s happening in what you’re doing. And so I just want you to speak to it.
LATASHA BARNES: I don’t know if I can.
MELANIE GEORGE: Girl, stop, start talking, come on.
LATASHA BARNES: I know, I’m just in that space where I might cry thinking about this. Just framing it in that way. It’s been a lot of, it’s been a lot of opposition to me doing this work. Even from people who i thought were in my corner to start, and things have worked themselves out, but it’s. I love the way the Black women, women and specifically recognize that we have a job to do. That it literally is a game of you can get steamrolled or you can get onboard and I’m grateful and I take that from my great grandmother and from my mother and from my entire lineage and add to that before I send the power of Ms. Norma, Ms. Dawn, Ms. Barbara, and Ms. Sugar who are still with us thankfully. And Marjory.
MELANIE GEORGE: And Mickey.
LATASHA BARNES: And Ms. Mickey, and Michele, and you. And I, I’m just grateful that, as I know I have to make those hard choices of some relationships to suffer, some people to upset in the process, some style being dismantled only to rebuild. That I know that I have the fortitude to do that. That I can trust that the other women who are on this pathway with me even if it’s not in the exact same way. You say got each other's back, we got my feet.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah, yeah.
LATASHA BARNES: I like to say. Cause you, it’s not in the ego sense, but in the remaining standing, you guys keep me grounded, to keep me moving forward, to keep us all moving forward and it’s, yeah, the, the sacrifices of that, the constant reimaginings of your life and how that’s gonna look and how that’s gonna flow. The necessity of detachment and doing this work and not just in the sense of, like a lamentable sense of not being able to have a family or be with people to do that kind of thing. I mean just being centered in this you can’t, I’ll do the pushups later you guys. You really have to choose.
MELANIE GEORGE: So, when they say can’t, LaTasha makes then do, what is it, 10, 20, 20 pushups. So, LaTasha said I can’t. Let’s get that on, on record.
LATASHA BARNES: But it’s, it’s in alignment again with that caretaking notion, right? There’s far too much belief and, and empowerment and place-holding and space making and drive and drawing out happening in this space and in this work for you to negate it, and I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna deal with it. And if that’s the headspace you’re in, well you need to work that out, literally. We’re gonna associate some forced effort every time you try to negate the power of what you’re doing, and that’s self-reflective. And know, just like Michele continues to reiterate, my amazing production manager and wonderful friend, Michele Byrd-McPhee, you saw her dance a little bit tonight, she got up in the line dance and did it, you know, she continues to say that too, you know, just no we stand and look out for each other, we do. And we’re not gonna allow each other to, to fall and fail, like that’s just not something we do. And it’s, it’s pretty successful. But just the celebrated, you know, milestone for her yesterday, but she constantly reminds me giving birth to this project has been, as you described it as my life’s work and I’m still like, but I’m still living, is it done? We finished?
MELANIE GEORGE: I didn’t say you completed the work, I just named it.
LATASHA BARNES: But you know, that, that’s, that’s part and parcel that, that labor, right, for ourselves. Like, detaching from what we’ve been taught from language is supposed to mean about the work that we do and how we stand in the world. That seems to have been more, more crucial, one of the more crucial exercises for me to even be able to push blues right up against R&B. Or to put hand clapping rhythms right next to big band swing, or to jam it right there in between, you know, Brazilian overlaid with house music. Who does that?
MELANIE GEORGE: You know I recognize in you, with the kind of work I’ve had to do, and I see it in Michele too, is Michele here? I see it in Michele too. Which is there, there comes this society, once you figure out the passion of it, this is the thing I love, this is the thing I want to pursue, it becomes this decisive moment where you say, I’ve decided this is important as opposed to waiting for someone allowing to be important. And why, why Lindy? Like, like, you could have, I mean, you could have been, you could have been anything, you know, like, right? And could have been anything within the lineage, why, why Lindy?
LATASHA BARNES: I was saying that earlier today as we were talking about some of the press that’s gone out, and the Lindy in particular was just a catalyst with a revisiting for the initiation of my awareness of my place inside the continuum. It’s not about the Lindy, it’s about my Blackness, and it’s about my understanding of how that’s tethered to everything else.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yes.
LATASHA BARNES: For the nerds in the room, entitlement theory, you know. But the Lindy quite literally in its, in its shaping, the momentum of the shared energy back and forth in creating is what made me realize that that’s literally what I was doing. And I felt my grandmother when i was over here, then I felt my cousins in this one moment of a shuffle ball change at the end of a pass by and I’m like, oh I can put this here, why does this still fit, oh cause I’m still holding onto this grounded practice, this grounded principle. It’s like, well, what’s that grounded practice and principle in this step? Oh. This is a lot like this tonight. Well, this is a lot like this… so this is probably this and can also possibly be this that informs this, but this looks a lot like this now, but it didn’t look like that then. Oh, cause that person was actually a this, and they went back to this too and infused this thing with this other element of being and existing. Which then sired another way of functioning in that style that it already generated itself, so it just keeps folding back in on itself and producing new, new art. New ways of expressing, and I’m like, oh that’s not just the art, it’s us as people too.
MELANIE GEORGE: But you know what’s interesting about that though? I feel like for a variety of reasons, we're more equipped to be able to recognize that in music than we are in dancing. Why do you think, like, and I'm talking about from the same Black artistic traditions, we’re more able to see how those different musical you know, like how gospel intersects with the blues intersects with jazz intersects with, you know, R&B intersects was funk intersects with hip hop intersects with the house intersects with tech, like we're able to see like, Oh, this person played with that person, and they brought this into it. But dance we seem to, maybe it's not we, people seem to segregate dance. And then there are blinders on, cause one of the reasons why the jazz continuum seems so revolutionary, because we're not actually talking about dance and the way that you're putting it together. Like we're not, we're not dealing with that way. We're not teaching the classes that way. Everything's always so discreet. What is it about dance? That's different from the music. And the reason I'm asking this is because the music is so critical to our understanding of the dance.
LATASHA BARNES: It is, it is. And this is something that our musical director John was asking earlier today.
MELANIE GEORGE: John, John Jones.
LATASHA BARNES: And it’s, it’s not, for those who are like, when I say this question, but he was a part of the show, how does he not know this? It’s not one of those, you should know questions, it’s, it’s something that you continue to unpack even as you get into this thing, and you know he was curious why, the same question, why music and dance have become so, so separated and interesting that you use the word segregated because it is a learned behavior.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yes.
LATASHA BARNES: As people have endeavored to segregate people that try to do the same thing with the labels of things, which is why I like to throw them off as often as possible. But in that, from this colonized notion of separation and isolation to separate or celebrate rather the music was set apart from the dance in order to take out some of the wildness that comes about when Black people are really allowed to let loose, or when Black music is really allowed space to let live because that was things you can find in old newspaper clippings. Talking about, you know, white teenagers are being infected by the spirit of the Lindy Hop, and it’s the wild jungle dance and they’re gonna be taken over. And you’re like, I’m sorry, what? You’re welcome? But in that, like, sadly it, you have to get into that dissociated, disparate oh these things should never be aligned space to really understand why it was separate in the first place.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yes.
LATASHA BARNES: And to acknowledge again, just like the show, one of the explorations, the acknowledgement is always key. Acknowledging why these things were set apart. I don't wanna get too much into it because it's just whatever, they did it, it was stupid. We’ve learned, you know better when you do, you know better, what is it? You do better when you learn better, know better.
MELANIE GEORGE: See no better, do better.
LATASHA BARNES: Yeah, that one, Maya Angelou. And so, in my knowing better, it, it’s, it’s in that effort that we, we continue to build the Jazz Continuum. To showcase that, like, no, it is not just in this binary way of thinking, right? The music and the dance, the music and the dance. It’s like, no, no, no, this is x, y, z axis that exists also where everything is everything and nothing.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah, yeah.
LATASHA BARNES: And the music inspires the dance, which inspires the artist, that inspires the music, which inspires the dancers, which inspires...and it just continues to cycle back upon itself when we allow it to. When we get in its way, however, that’s when things tend to bifurcate, and we set apart in a way that is not actually helpful to anything or anybody.
MELANIE GEROGE: Yeah, yeah, there’s a, there’s people don’t talk about it a lot, there is this unspoken hierarchy in the arts in terms of the, the rankings of forms. Yeah, you laughing John, but music’s at the top and dance is at the bottom.
LATASHA BARNES: All the dance education people going, yeah.
MELANIE GEORGE: I mean, in terms of how we engage with art forms, in terms of how we fund art forms, in terms of how we have access to art forms. And, yeah, and, and that, that thing that you’re, that you were just naming, that you were just talking about also speaks to then about the fact that we have less understanding is because we rank things and choose and it’s, it’s willful I think is what I’m trying to say. It’s willful.
LATASHA BARNES: And it’s not out of a place of, especially for those who, who are art enthusiasts, right? It’s, it’s not intentionally malicious.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah.
LATASHA BARNES: However, if you experience a thing and you don’t bother to take some time to goggle and even learn some incorrect things that might lead you to some factual, more truthful things.
MELANIE GEORGE: Google is free, Wikipedia's dangerous.
LATASHA BARNES: Right? But to at least allow it to expand your mind about how to research and gain some knowledge about this thing that you just consumed and enjoyed. If you don’t take the mantle of actually being responsible for this experience that you just had, then it was for nothing. And that’s the whole point of the continuum, that’s the point of artistry in and of itself. You have an experience; you have a responsibility to care for that experience. And the way that you share it with other people, you know, like we talk about seeing a good movie and how you tell people, like, oh my goodness. And it started with so and so and they did this, and they alluded to this thing in this book that you know that everybody’s read and that we all understand and never want to bother with, uyeah they actually approached it in this way, but then they flipped it and there was this entire other thing, and it was amazing. Not only did you just talk about the movie and gain a fan for a movie, you just made five different points of reference that people can look to to learn more about the thing and you actually expanded their minds about what they were going to see by letting them know that it was inverted from what they thought the thing was going to go. Because you cared. You care about the experience that you had enough to actually look up those correlations that you thought of in the moment to make sure that you are really rooted in that when you share it. People don’t take that same care with dance, and it pisses me off. It’s really annoying. And none of the cute, like, this is so amazing. No, like, this is, put some people on stage sometimes, like, really? UYou just wanted to stand here and dance for you and then you go on about your business and that’s it? And that’s, that’s the thing I was trying to say in my introduction to this show about we took a lot of care to maintain the environment in which these dances occur, and this is not a performance for you. Right? You’re being welcomed into a thing, but there’s a version of that performing for you that’s grounded in exploitation and we’re disinterested in that. Extremely. We reject that as a principle.
MELANIE GEORGE: So, the question was about, Latasha taught a class this morning 10 o’clock over in our Great Lawn tent, and at the end of that class she said, well now that I’ve shared that with you, it’s incumbent upon you to take this on and also share it with others and also carry it forward and the question is how does one do that? Even if one is already a believer and is really to, like, spread the gospel, what does the gospel-spreading look like?
LATASHA BARNES: I know you love when I say this, but you answered your own question. You showed up. You showed up to gain the experience to have personal awareness and regard for the thing. That’s step one. And to me personally as I’ve learned from myself and my own journey, that’s been the most crucial step. It’s not necessarily to model what you’re doing after what I did but showing up is the first part. For those who have engaged me in academic settings, I talk often about my thesis which is the absence of Blackness in African American social dance, cultural surrogacy, and an affect a notion of perform about just how movement moves through communities and gets held and gestated by communities not of its origin and moves throughout the world and how that both affects and effects what happens on the outside of it. Yeha. it’s showing up. I open that my, my research with a TI quote, ‘where they at though’? And it wasn’t about the music or the art like specifically, it was about Black people. Where are we at when it comes to being in the spaces where our art is, we’ve taken a backseat to celebrating in these spaces because you know I’m just gonna say the thing, oh it’s too many white people for me. And it’s like, yeah, I understand that. But at some point, if you actually really do love and care for the thing, you’ve got to show up for it. And if that goes with you showing up for yourself first, great. If sadly it doesn’t move beyond that or if it takes 10, 15 years to move beyond just you, if it’s worth it, then it’s worth it. And that’s not to diminish anyone else’s experience or hardships that people have had to go through to try to hold the mantle. We’re just talking about the fullness of the experience, there’s not just one way. There’s not just one way to do this. But the first thing to figuring any of it out is showing up. And the more that we get people to do that, the more we can continue to have spaces to celebrate this. Small, big, high, low, whatever, we want to pretend to call it space.
MELANIE GEORGE: You know, curiosity is your greatest asset. Being curious about a thing and pursuing your interest in it with a balance of enthusiasm and reverence for it. Right? So like part of the thing that I think we’re up against is, there are people who, who have a little bit of exposure to a thing, but they’re running with some false narratives about its origin, about attributing proper credit, about actually just the whole evolution and history of the form. Who gets credit for things. I mean, Latasha and I could have a whole other panel talk frankly about about the intersection of witness and Blackness and Jazz dance in the United States and how that, how that plays into theatrical jazz dance and a specific series of white men being called the fathers of Jazz. which is a, which is just completely false. It’s so ahistorical. And honestly one of those men even said all jazz dance comes from the Lindy, so like, so like, so the history’s all wrong, but I’m naming this to say there’s an excavation that you have to do if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna be a, if you’re gonna spread the gospel, you’ve got to do that excavation so that what you’re saying is true.
LATASHA BARNES: Yeah.
MELANIE GEORGE: You know, enthusiasm is the palace that you start, but you’ve got to undergird that with information. And, you know, accurate information. Which is the thing that I was saying about Google is free, Wikipedia is dangerous. There’s a lot of false information out there on the internet and so you got to do your due diligence. Latasha is blessed because she is one of the last generation to study with the folks who actually made the thing, alright? I’m talking about that early jazz era. But we still have time with the Hip Hop founders, we still have time with our House founders, we still have time with the people who are creating now. And so how are we documenting their stories which is the other thing, there is this complete absence of documentation. Especially on our part. And this is, this was the primary reason I, I went into ethnochoreology as opposed to just anthropology. It’s about the cultural origin points of art and understanding yes, I want to get it on camera and get it noted, but sometimes we just sit in here being present and taking in their story verbally is gonna have to be the thing. And I’m gonna have to find a way to continue to reflect on this and try to siphon out other bits of this to strengthen this story. Just like we were talking about undergirding, it’s not just with us individually, it;s with the art as well. This sane thing that we apply to our individual lens, we have to apply to the art. The art is the container of our lived experiences and should be treated no differently. The same way we regard ourselves is how we should regard our art. And it’s why I keep going back to it sounds too simple but showing up is the beginning of the thing. And even if you have showed up in the past and you have your issues with not continuing to show up, maybe reconsider? Just a little bit. Try to show up again, see what might sit differently with you, you know? If it still is not for you, it’s fine, it happens. But show up for each other and for, for our art.
[Music begins, composed, and performed by Jess Meeker]
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 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.