Video series interlinks dancers, urban spaces
Like many a music journalist, I’ve cringed hearing the oft-cited observation that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Usually but never definitively credited to actor Martin Mull, it’s a line that came to mind when I got word of KQED’s ambitious new video series “If Cities Could Dance.” Produced by Kelly Whalen and Claudia Escobar, the eight-episode series tackles the Mull equation from a reverse angle. What can movement tell us about urban spaces?
Judging from the first three pieces, which are set in San Francisco, Detroit and New Orleans, dancers can serve as harbingers of change and manifestations of generations-old traditions. They can embody resistance to harassment and oppression and enact rituals that transform public spaces into catwalks or protest zones. More than anything, the videos capture the way that human bodies are active agents on urban streets, refusing to be confined or defined by built environments.
The series kicked off on April 10 with an episode shot in San Francisco featuring Jocquese Whitfield (aka Sir JoQ) and vogue dancers Shea Mizrahi and DJ Spiider turning downtown streets into backdrops for their dramatic poses. April 17’s segment captured Detroit dancer Erika “Red” Stovall reclaiming street corners and abandoned settings with moves gleaned from West Africa via the Mississippi Delta while talking about the need for women to feel
safe in public spaces. April 24’s irresistible video documents Rodrick “Scubble” Davis displaying his rhythmic footwork with a bevy of second line dancers in New Orleans.
“We filmed Scubble dancing in front of the Candlelight Lounge, a place he used to stand outside listening to brass bands playing all night, but he couldn’t get in as a kid,” Whalen said. “There’s such an amazing tradition in New Orleans, but it’s even more powerful and deep when we marry a dancer’s movement to these locations.”
The series posts a new episode every Tuesday through May 28 (full disclosure: I contribute music
stories to KQED Arts as a freelancer, and my wife works as a science reporter for KQED). A grant from the Oakland-based Kenneth Rainin Foundation allowed the series to take on national scope, with upcoming segments covering Portland, Oregon aerialist Jack StockLynn and his Sir Cupcake’s Queer Circus (Tuesday), San Jose’s popping Playboyz Inc. crew (May 15), and leading figures in Baltimore’s explosively kinetic style-club dance (May 22). The series concludes in Oakland with a piece on Frankie Lee Peterson III, a muse for a wide array of Bay Area choreographers.
In some ways, “If Cities Could Dance” came about
because earlier KQED Arts pieces on dance “did really well,” Escobar said. “We decided we wanted to create a whole series around dance, with all the videos very related to the city and the street.”
“The camera loves movement,” Whalen added. “These artists, through their bodies, are reminding us of the soul and the diversity of these places in a way that’s very visceral. We find that whenever we take dance, or any art practices, off the stage and into a novel location, something magic happens. Audiences love these kinds of experiences.”
Indeed, KQED’s effervescent 2015 portrait of the young Orinda ballerina
Miko Fogarty dancing in locations around the city has been viewed more than 175,000 times on YouTube. “If Cities Could Dance” offers some of the same pleasures, but also concentrates on challenges facing the dancers, such as exorbitant rent and gentrification-driven cultural erasure.
In Detroit, Stowall talks about femininity and the need to reclaim the street in the face of catcalls and harassment. Looking both self-confident and vulnerable in deserted spaces, she dances in front of the old Michigan Central Station train depot, a point of disembarkation for many thousands of African Americans during the
great migration from the South.
“There are often layers of information and meaning and symbolism in the locations that are really powerful,” Whalen said. “These are love letters from and to these cities via this visceral form of expression, fully tied into their own personal journeys. For Jocquese, voguing was a safe space to come out. Many of the poppers from San Jose felt it gave them a way out of the gang life. It is ambitious trying to do stories of places, and hopefully, we’re elegantly weaving in their personal journeys, too.”