Missy Elliott – WTF (Where They From) ft. Pharrell Williams

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Missy Elliott has returned in spectacularly weird style in the vibrant, clever video for “WTF (Where They From),” her new single with Pharrell. The clip opens with a handful of New Yorkers already singing along to “WTF” and goes on to feature the rapper and a rotating cast of dancers working locations around the city. Though the concept is simple, the execution is far from it. Continue reading

4/24/15 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Bunny Briggs – Duke’s Dancer

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Bunny Briggs says he was born dancing: “When I finally faced the world my legs were kickin’. They let me loose, and I just started dancin’ . Just started right out dancin’. And been dancing ever since.” He was born on Lenox Avenue and 138th Street in Harlem, New York. At the age of three his mother took him to the Lincoln Theatre to see his aunt Gladys, who was a chorus girl. After seeing the dapper Bill Robinson perform at the Lincoln he rushed home to say, “Mamma, I want to be a tap dancer”. 

Bunny Briggs with Benny Carter Orchestra

After appearing at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1960 with the Duke Ellington band, Briggs became known as Duke’s Dancer. Briggs became the chosen soloist in Ellington’s Concert of Sacred Dance, in David Danced Before the Lord, which premiered at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco (September 16, 1965). Dubbed by Ellington as “the most superleviathonic, rhythmaturgically-syncopated tapsthamaticianisamist”.

Bunny Briggs Performs Come Sunday from Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert of Music

Briggs was nominated for a Tony Award in 1989 for his work in the Broadway show Black and Blue, he also appeared in the Gregory Hines film Tap in 1989. In 2002, Briggs received an honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts in American Dance by Oklahoma City University in 2002, honoring him as one of the nine doctorates of Tap Dance.

Dr. Bunny Briggs in Black and Blue

10/9/15 O&A NYC Shall We Dance Friday: Jose Limon- The Moor’s Pavane

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The Moor’s Pavane in a Studio-filmed performance of Jose Limon’s landmark 1949 ballet featuring Jose Limon, Betty Jones, Lucas Hoving, and Ruth Currier. 

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12/31/21 O&A NYC Shall We Dance Friday (Repost): Banda (excerpt)- Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade

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Geoffrey Holder’s Banda dance debuted in the 1954 Truman Capote/Harold Arlen musical House Of Flowers. Holder the Baron of The Cemetery (based on the Haitian Loa of Death Baron Samedi) and received both a performer and choreographer credit in the program. The Broadway musical takes place somewhere in the West Indies during Mardi Gras weekend. Continue reading

9/18/15 O&A NYC Shall We Dance Friday: Maurice Béjart- La Sacre du printemps (1970)

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Le Sacre du printemps (1959) is a milestone in the history of dance, and  choreographer Maurice Béjart approached the work with great courage. His version full of new meanings, physicality and sensuality became a universally recognized success.  “Human love, in its physical appearance, symbolizes the act by which God creates the cosmos, and the joy it brings. Let this ballet be bare of all picturesque artifice, let it be the hymn to the union between man and woman at its deepest level, between heaven and earth, the dance of life and death, let it be as eternal as spring!” – Maurice Bejart Continue reading

9/11/15 O&A NYC Shall We Dance Friday: ABADDON

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ABADDON a poem of love and destruction. Inspired by relationships that test boundaries and go beyond the acceptable; relationships that reduce, erode and abuse until the spirit is consumed. Abaddon is a place of suffering and purification. Continue reading

9/4/15 O&A NYC Shall We Dance Friday: Storyboard P- Soldier

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Soldier is a collaboration between filmmaker Cinque Northern and Brooklyn born, street dance battle champion Storyboard P. The freestyle dance is set to Sade’s Soldier Of Love and shot in the Mojave desert. On Wednesday July 15 the New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies), honored Storyboard P with the Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award.

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8/7/15 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Michael Jackson – Smooth Criminal

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Smooth Criminal is the seventh single from Michael Jackson’s 1987 Bad album. Jackson originally wanted to make the music video in the western genre, but he later decided after watching “The Third Man” with Director Colin Chilvers to change it to a 1930s gangster style. Jeffrey Daniel of the soul music group Shalamar co-choreographed the Smooth Criminal video with Jackson and Vincent Paterson, who was a back-up dancer in Beat It and Thriller.

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The dance sequence of the video in the 1930s style lounge (and Jackson’s white suit and fedora) pays tribute to the Fred Astaire musical comedy film The Band Wagon. Jackson and some of the dancers around him perform a seemingly impossible forward lean. For the video, this was done using harness cables. To accomplish this maneuver for stage performances, though, Jackson co-patented a hitching mechanism which was built into the floor of the stage and the performer’s shoes.

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Michael Jackson – Smooth Criminal

7/31/15 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Beat Street Roxy Battle

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Beat Street (1984) is a  film featuring New York City hip hop culture of the early 1980s; breakdancing, DJing, and graffiti were front and center. Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture.  Many of the internal dance sequences were filmed at the Roxy, a popular nightclub/disco located in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Continue reading

7/24/15 0&A Shall We Dance Friday: Bessie Schönberg- How to Look at Dance

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Bessie Schönberg (1906-1997) a distinguished and beloved educator in the dance arts,  speaks to a class of interns at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the summer of 1989. She discusses the art and technique of how one can watch dance as an audience member. Schönberg offers insight into how one can prepare oneself to view new dance, find an entry point or “handle-bar” into the content, and how to build an appetite for the multitude of dance forms. Continue reading