Thirteen years ago: “It’s not art”

The first time I saw hiphop in a “high art” venue was thirteen years ago at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, where I was an intern. It was the opening night of Rennie Harris’ Facing Mekka. I had finished my rounds checking that the publicity posters had been hung correctly, and was now lounging outside the Ted Shawn Theatre.

A photographer from the local paper began talking to me. A middle-aged white dude with a ponytail and lean frame, he was known for hanging around female interns. Since I sometimes found his musings on life and art interesting, I humored him. The conversation turned to the upcoming performance. I was excited—hiphop was cool and I couldn’t wait to see a whole two hours of it, I told him.

“But it’s not art.” he countered.

I clicked my tongue in annoyance, “Why? What makes ballet better than hiphop?”

“Ballet’s about form and beauty. That’s art.”

I excused myself and slipped into the theatre. The next two hours were an electrifying journey for the soul, through a blend of live music, hiphop- and African-dance-infused movement, and beatboxing. But the best part of the show was the after party for the patrons, because it was a real party. Social decorum was thrown to the winds. The dancers formed a circle and busted out their moves in the center. They even whisked members of the elderly white audience into a moment of giddy spontaneity.

“That’s culture at work!” I thought. “No Art-or-Not-Art. Just people being true to themselves and each other in the moment.”

Two years ago: A high art crowd doesn’t know how to react

I had a flashback to this moment when I went to see Reggie Gray and Peter Sellars’ first production of FLEXN at the Park Avenue Armory, in 2015. The show was completely different from Facing Mekka, but no less riveting. While Mekka had evoked universal themes of struggle, oppression and liberation, FLEXN drilled deep into the Jamaican street culture of Brooklyn, the specific histories of hiphop and the personal stories of each dancer.

As the end of the performance approached, the energy of the dancers became ebullient. They formed a semi circle on stage, jumping and whooping as their peers spliced the stage in the center. I looked around the Drill Hall at the audience. We were all standing, elated, and clapping, but rooted to the ground, bound by decorum, brimming with repressed enthusiasm.

I smiled ruefully; “the street” had met “high art” in the Park Avenue Armory (or, as the NYT put it more delicately, In ‘Flexn’, street dance gets a grand stage) but the chasm between the two worlds couldn’t have been greater. We, the audience operated in a world of neat categories: performers onstage, audience offstage, connected by a show—not to be confused with a party, and the whole thing was a transaction between one group and the other. The dancers on the other hand, embodied a completely different perspective. They were performers and audience to us and to one another; the show naturally morphed into a party as tense energy turned celebratory; and the whole experience bound everyone together in one big community.

This kind of art wasn’t something you saw or experienced, it was something that you lived collectively.

Today: A dance that checks your privilege

Two years later, FLEXN Evolution has brought this notion into sharper relief. This time the performance opened with a panel of activists, researchers, public sector professionals and community leaders discussing mass incarceration. The conversation was informative, and neutral in tone—to begin with. Panelists mixed personal stories with facts and high level points of view to give the audience a range of perspectives on the subject matter.

At one point, director Peter Sellars, who was moderating, asked panelists for their thoughts on the admission made by former Nixon domestic policy chief John Erlichman to Harper’s writer Dan Baum that Nixon’s war on drugs had been a strategy to target black people and hippies. One of the panelists said that she thought it was good that people now finally know about this…buuuuuuut…and here she really went for it…it was an insult that it took the words of a white man to make people believe what entire communities of color had literally been saying for decades.

She looked intently at the audience as she proceeded to enumerate the many instances of voices of color being ignored, and she pointed at us repeatedly, saying, “but you won’t believe us until…,” “it takes a white man saying to make you believe…” “you have the arrogance to not believe…”

It was sobering, humbling—and glorious. It kind of reminded me of martial arts class, where, every so often, someone drops in expecting to “have fun” only to have their ass kicked, and they emerge from the session with a whole new appreciation for what they had walked into.

When it comes to art, I’m used to experiences that range from thought-provoking to offensive to simply confusing. I knew that hiphop had deep cultural roots—from taking classes myself and my general interest in the music. But to be confronted with the passion, anger and pain of people right there in front of me—people who have had to learn to weaponize their intelligence and language in order to communicate and compete in our hyper intellectualized system—that was a visceral encounter that felt so unexpected and so right in the privileged environment of the Upper East Side. And it set the tone for the performance to come, where dancers literally spoke through their bodies, because that is their truest and most expressive language—marked with personal pain and joy, inscribed into the collective stories of their community throughout history.

The usual tools of critique—Is the concept strong? Is the choreography artful? Is the execution on point?—seemed so trivial all of a sudden. As did distinctions of etiquette around what should be art and what shouldn’t. While the lady on the panel was ripping into the audience, my friend overheard a lady behind her scoff with impatience, “Can we just get on with the dance?” No. We can’t.

Because this is also the dance. This conversation that you’re being forced to have. This expansion of your notion of what art is—beyond a consumable experience that confers cultural cachet at your dinner party conversations. This connection you’re being forced to make to actual real people and their experiences.

Dispense with the notion of artist and oeuvre, of creative genius and conceptual perfection. Leave that intellectual hubris, social expectation and ego behind. Bring your heart instead, the way it was when you were a child—open to all perspectives; ready to feel things, not just to critique. And let go of that safety net—we can’t be spectators without being performers. The only question is, what part will we choose to play?