It all began with a book nearly 40-years ago. Jazz Dance by Marshall and Jean Stearns explores what they considered to be one of America's great gifts to the world, what they called "American Vernacular Dance." They traced the jitterbug and tap dancing in particular as an expression of what the body hears and feels when listening to jazz. Jazz, of course, owes everything to African rhythms and improvisation. Since I was taking jazz dance and tap classes at that time, I was intrigued with the Stearns' contention that tap dancing was "America's only true indigenous art form." They did this by connecting the dots between poor African Americans and newly arrived Irish immigrants rubbing shoulders together in Harlem and New York City at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Basically African Americans added jazz rhythms to the Irish jig. To prove their point, they interviewed over 200 people from "back in the day" who actually were there when dance and music was transforming itself into something that "swings." Many of these pioneers of vernacular dance had already died before the interviews began around the early to mid-sixties but enough were still around to fill the book with the most amazing stories. It was these stories that inspired me to write Once Upon A Time In Harlem: A Jitterbug Romance as a screenplay and then, 30-years later, a play. And then, in the last 5-years, a "radio"/reading version of the play. But it all began nearly 40-years ago with the very same book you see in the picture, one of the few things in the world I actually cherish.
DC Copeland
You can follow this series by clicking the "Harlem Dramaturgy Project" in the Labels section below.
Jaz Dorsey
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