Twerking, Moonwalking AI Robots–They’re Now Here

in Dance, Technology | October 18th, 2018

In a study released last year, Kat­ja Grace at Oxford’s Future of Human­i­ty Insti­tute “sur­veyed the world’s lead­ing researchers in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence by ask­ing them when they think intel­li­gent machines will bet­ter humans in a wide range of tasks.” After inter­view­ing 1,634 experts, they found that they “believe there is a 50% chance of AI out­per­form­ing humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automat­ing all human jobs in 120 years.” That includes every­thing from dri­ving trucks, run­ning cash reg­is­ters, to per­form­ing surgery, and writ­ing New York Times best­sellers. These sober­ing pre­dic­tions have prompt­ed aca­d­e­mics, like North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Joseph Aoun, to write books along the lines of Robot-Proof: High­er Edu­ca­tion in the Age of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence which asks the ques­tion, How can uni­ver­si­ties “edu­cate the next gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents to invent, to cre­ate, and to discover—filling needs that even the most sophis­ti­cat­ed robot can­not”? It’s a good ques­tion. But a chal­leng­ing one too. Because it assumes we under­stand what robots can, and can­not, do. Case in point, Boston Dynam­ics released a video this week of its Spot­Mi­ni robot danc­ing to Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk.” It can moon­walk. It can twerk. Did the dance depart­ments see that com­ing? Doubt it.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Robots of Your Dystopi­an Future Are Already Here: Two Chill­ing Videos Dri­ve It All Home

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

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Bauhaus Ballet: A Dance of Geometry

in Dance | August 16th, 2018

Dur­ing the past month, the Great Big Sto­ry has released a series of videos that revis­it the design aes­thet­ic of the Bauhaus move­ment. Their first video explored the rad­i­cal build­ings designed by Bauhaus archi­tects. A sec­ond focused on the lega­cy of min­i­mal­ist Bauhaus fur­ni­ture. And now a third takes as its sub­ject Oskar Schlem­mer’s 1922 “Tri­adic Ballet”–a bal­let famous for putting geom­e­try and struc­ture into dance. The video above shows the “Bay­erisches Junior Bal­let München as they pre­pare to bring Bauhaus cen­ter stage again.” You can watch a full recre­ation of the bal­let and learn much more about Schlem­mer’s exper­i­men­tal pro­duc­tion by read­ing this post from our archive.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let, First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922.

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandin­sky, Moholy-Nagy & More

32,000+ Bauhaus Art Objects Made Avail­able Online by Har­vard Muse­um Web­site

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

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Dancing in Movies: A Montage of Dance Moments from Almost 300 Feature Films

in Dance, Film | June 27th, 2018

Some­one went through a great deal of effort to stitch togeth­er a mon­tage of dance scenes from some 300 fea­ture films. Below find a list of films in order of their appear­ance, and with the appro­pri­ate time­stamp.

00:00:06 — Trop­ic Thun­der (2008)

00:09:17 — 10 Clover­field Lane (2016)

00:10:10 — Frank (2014)

00:11:02 — Dead­pool (2016)

00:12:02 — Girl­hood (2015)

00:13:10 — West Side Sto­ry (1961)

00:16:18 — Scott Pil­grim vs. the World (2010)

00:18:00 — Big (1988)

00:18:14 — Risky Busi­ness (1983)

00:19:05 — For­rest Gump (1994)

00:19:21 — 20th Cen­tu­ry Women (2016)

00:21:02 — God Help the Girl (2014)

00:22:07 — Begin Again (2013)

00:23:16 — The Rock­e­teer (1991)

00:25:13 — Dead Poets Soci­ety (1989)

00:27:21 — Brave­heart (1995)

00:28:22 — Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs (1937)

00:29:23 — Robin Hood (1973)

00:31:00 — Austin Pow­ers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

00:32:14 — Titan­ic (1997)

00:33:14 — Big Fish (2003)

00:35:07 — Go (1999)

00:36:14 — Fid­dler on the Roof (1971)

00:37:12 — Cit­i­zen Kane (1941)

00:38:12 — Life is Beau­ti­ful (1997)

00:40:01 — White Nights (1985)

00:42:08 — Swing Time (1936)

00:44:13 — Pee-wee’s Big Adven­ture (1985)

00:45:21 — Mer­maids (1990)

00:48:14 — Home Alone (1990)

00:49:18 — Mul­hol­land Dri­ve (2001)

00:50:22 — Boy (2010)

00:51:20 — Girl Asleep (2015)

00:52:08 — Despi­ca­ble Me (2010)

00:55:05 — Air­plane (1980)

00:57:08 — Car­rie (1976)

00:58:21 — Love, Rosie (2014)

00:59:21 — The Mask (1994)

01:00:14 — Dope (2015)

01:01:13 — Rock of Ages (2012)

01:02:21 — Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

01:04:14 — Mon­thy Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

01:04:19 — Kung Fu Hus­tle (2004)

01:05:12 — Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture (1989)

01:06:07 — (500) Days of Sum­mer (2009)

01:08:23 — Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)

01:10:03 — The Mup­pets (2011)

01:11:00 — Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

01:10:03 — The Mup­pets (2011)

01:14:00 — Love Actu­al­ly (2003)

01:16:05 — Mean Girls (2004)

01:19:01 — Austin Pow­ers in Gold­mem­ber (2002)

01:20:15 — Scar­face (1983)

01:22:05 — Grease (1978)

01:24:22 — It’s a Won­der­ful Life (1946)

01:26:13 — The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)

01:28:13 — Young Franken­stein (1974)

01:29:16 — Get Smart (2008)

01:31:07 — My Fair Lady (1964)

01:32:12 — An Edu­ca­tion (2009)

01:33:21- The Deer Hunter (1978)

01:35:06 — The Sit­ter (2011)

01:35:22 — Up in the Air (2009)

01:36:20 — Sil­ver Lin­ings Play­book (2012)

01:38:10 — This Is the End (2013)

01:39:13 — Hair­spray (2007)

01:40:07 — Dumb and Dumb­er (1994)

01:41:03 — The Way Way Back (2013)

01:42:01 — Moon­rise King­dom (2012)

01:43:05 — Blaz­ing Sad­dles (1974)

01:44:05 — Adven­tures in Babysit­ting (1987)

01:45:18 — Shrek 2 (2004)

01:47:18 — Flash­dance (1983)

01:48:14 — The Gold Rush (1925)

01:49:10 — Mag­ic Mike (2012)

01:50:20 — Viva Las Vegas (1964)

01:52:00 — Clerks II (2006)

01:53:10 — The Great Gats­by (2013)

01:54:08 — Eagle vs Shark (2007)

01:57:06 — What We Do in the Shad­ows (2014)

01:58:15 — The Cab­in in the Woods (2012)

01:59:17 — Rush Hour (1998)

02:01:17 — Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

02:02:17 — The Last Pic­ture Show (1971)

02:03:18 — Band of Out­siders (1964)

02:05:23 — Weird Sci­ence (1985)

02:07:15 — Reser­voir Dogs (1992)

02:09:10 — Bat­man (1989)

02:12:20 — Mom­my (2014)

02:14:00 — Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan (1985)

02:15:20 — Hot Shots! (1991)

02:16:14 — Borat (2006)

02:17:14 — Amer­i­can Beau­ty (1999)

02:18:18 — Moon­light (2016)

02:19:14 — Super­bad (2007)

02:20:15 — Gar­den State (2004)

02:21:15 — Roy­al Wed­ding (1951)

02:22:17 — The Big Lebows­ki (1998)

02:24:07 — My Week with Mar­i­lyn (2011)

02:25:13 — Mary Pop­pins (1964)

02:27:20 — Kick­box­er (1989)

02:29:07 — The Blues Broth­ers (1980)

02:30:21 — Bring it On (2000)

02:32:07 — Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

02:33:17 — Trainspot­ting (1996)

02:34:10 — Amer­i­can Gang­ster (2007)

02:34:21 — Don Jon (2013)

02:35:14 — Mor­ris from Amer­i­ca (2016)

02:36:08 — Hunt for the Wilder­peo­ple (2016)

02:36:08 — A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (2001)

02:39:06 — Striptease (1996)

02:40:10 — Don­nie Darko (2001)

02:41:04 — The Pink Pan­ther (1963)

02:41:20 — Mon­sters Uni­ver­si­ty (2013)

02:43:09 — Every­body Wants Some (2016)

02:44:18 — Clue­less (1995)

02:46:13 — The Imag­i­nar­i­um of Doc­tor Par­nas­sus (2009)

02:47:04 — All That Jazz (1979)

02:48:04 — The Princess Diaries (2001)

02:50:16 — Sing Street (2016)

02:52:12 — While We’re Young (2014)

02:54:06 — Once Bit­ten (1985)

02:55:15 — Lost Riv­er (2014)

02:56:10 — Ruby Sparks (2012)

02:58:03 — Sat­ur­day Night Fever (1977)

02:59:05 — Boo­gie Nights (1997)

03:00:15 — The Reunion 2: The Funer­al (2014)

03:01:11 — Amer­i­can Hus­tle (2013)

03:02:20 — Ex Machi­na (2015)

03:04:10 — The Losers (2010)

03:06:00 — Lit­tle Miss Sun­shine (2006)

03:06:20 — The Best Man Hol­i­day (2013)

03:07:10 — Step Up Rev­o­lu­tion (2012)

03:08:19 — Shaun of the Dead (2004)

03:10:07 — Bil­ly Elliot (2000)

03:11:22 — Fun­ny Face (1957)

03:14:09 — King of New York (1990)

03:15:10 — Mis­tress Amer­i­ca (2015)

03:16:13 — The Perks of Being a Wall­flower (2012)

03:17:15 — Save the Last Dance (2001)

03:18:14 — Elf (2003)

03:19:03 — The Edge of Sev­en­teen (2016)

03:19:16 — Lit­tle Sis­ter (2016)

03:21:00 — The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show (1975)

03:22:04 — Moon (2009)

03:23:12 — The Boon­dock Saints (1999)

03:26:03 — Mon­sters Uni­ver­si­ty (2013)

03:27:08 — Let’s Be Cops (2014)

03:29:09 — The World’s End (2013)

03:31:04 — Fun Size (2012)

03:32:10 — Spi­der-Man 3 (2007)

03:34:14 — To Die For (1995)

03:35:16 — The Break­fast Club (1985)

03:37:11 — The Goonies (1985)

03:38:11 — The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

03:39:15 — Blue Valen­tine (2010)

03:41:01 — Napoleon Dyna­mite (2004)

03:42:22 — Pop­star: Nev­er Stop Nev­er Stop­ping (2016)

03:43:16 — 13 Going On 30 (2004)

03:44:04 — Wed­ding Crash­ers (2005)

03:44:15 — Pitch Per­fect (2012)

03:45:07 — Wayne’s World (1992)

03:45:21 — Milk (2008)

03:46:11 — Some­thing Bor­rowed (2011)

03:47:17 — School of Rock (2003)

03:48:16 — Hitch (2005)

03:49:19 — The Kings of Sum­mer (2013)

03:50:17 — Bling Ring (2013)

03:52:10 — Neigh­bors (2014)

03:53:04 — Ani­mal House (1978)

03:54:07 — A League of Their Own (1992)

03:55:19 — Hot Rod (2007)

03:57:11 — Zoolan­der (2001)

03:58:17 — Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes (1953)

03:59:17 — The Great Dic­ta­tor (1940)

04:01:23 — Charlie’s Angels (2000)

04:03:03 — Romeo + Juli­et (1996)

04:04:05 — Kill Your Dar­lings (2013)

04:05:02 — Amadeus (1984)

04:06:00 — Days of Heav­en (1978)

04:10:07 — Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

04:12:15 — The Lob­ster (2015)

04:14:01 — House of Fly­ing Dag­gers (2004)

04:15:13 — Big Night (1996)

04:17:23 — Band of Rob­bers (2015)

04:19:06 — Almost Famous (2000)

04:21:03 — Rain Man (1988)

04:22:15 — Brook­lyn (2015)

04:23:10 — The Imi­ta­tion Game (2014)

04:24:09 — Moulin Rouge! (2001)

04:27:13 — Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire (2008)

04:29:12 — The God­fa­ther (1972)

04:30:11 — The Sound of Music (1965)

04:32:01 — Dirty Danc­ing (1987)

04:34:08 — Focus (2015)

04:35:10 — The Dark Knight Ris­es (2012)

04:36:08 — Zom­bieland (2009)

04:37:07 — Beau­ty and the Beast (1991)

04:40:23 — The Addams Fam­i­ly (1991)

04:44:06 — Beetle­juice (1988)

04:47:02 — Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind (2004)

04:49:12 — Like Crazy (2011)

04:50:09 — End of Watch (2012)

04:51:14 — Pret­ty in Pink (1986)

04:53:03 — House Par­ty (1990)

04:54:05 — Along Came Pol­ly (2004)

04:55:23 — Some Like it Hot (1959)

04:56:23 — Real­i­ty Bites (1994)

04:59:01 — Wet Hot Amer­i­can Sum­mer (2001)

05:01:10 — Obvi­ous Child (2014)

05:02:14 — The Man from U.N.C.L.E (2015)

05:04:14 — Lost in Trans­la­tion (2003)

05:06:03 — Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

05:06:18 — A Clock­work Orange (1974)

05:08:14 — Har­ry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire (2005)

05:09:16 — Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983)

05:10:18 — Pen­guins of Mada­gas­car (2014)

05:11:19 — Euro­pean Vaca­tion (1985)

05:13:02 — The Wiz­ard of Oz (1939)

05:15:04 — The Inbe­tween­ers Movie (2011)

05:16:12 — Three Ami­gos (1986)

05:18:00 — The 40 Year Old Vir­gin (2005)

05:18:23 — A Night At The Rox­bury (1998)

05:20:01 — Com­ing To Amer­i­ca (1988)

05:20:21 — Cin­derel­la (2015)

05:21:17 — About Time (2013)

05:23:16 — Ground­hog Day (1993)

05:25:03 — Chef (2014)

05:26:07 — Some­where (2010)

05:28:08 — Office Space (1999)

05:30:03 — Shall We Dance (2004)

05:31:04 — The Artist (2011)

05:31:18 — The Red Shoes (1948)

05:33:21 — Strict­ly Ball­room (1992)

05:36:07 — The Turn­ing Point (1977)

05:37:05 — Do the Right Thing (1989)

05:38:03 — Sin­gin’ In The Rain (1952)

05:39:09 — Chica­go (2002)

05:41:09 — Foot­loose (1984)

05:43:17 — When Har­ry Met Sal­ly… (1989)

05:45:02 — The Pro­duc­ers (1967)

05:46:05 — The Full Mon­ty (1997)

05:47:20 — Back to the Future Part III (1990)

05:49:00 — Dances with Wolves (1990)

05:50:07 — Hook (1991)

05:50:22 — Short Cir­cuit (1986)

05:51:13 — Pulp Fic­tion (1994)

05:53:08 — Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

05:53:22 — Dazed and Con­fused (1993)

05:54:20 — From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

05:55:16 — My Gold­en Days (2015)

05:56:12 — Mid­night in Paris (2013)

05:58:21 — The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

05:59:12 — The Intouch­ables (2011)

06:00:10 — Les Mis­érables (2012)

06:01:08 — A Roy­al Affair (2012)

06:02:11 — King Kong (2005)

06:03:17 — Hap­py Feet (2006)

06:04:20 — Tan­gled (2010)

06:06:01 — Tarzan (1999)

06:07:01 — Top Hat (1935)

06:08:01 — Hail, Cae­sar (2016)

06:09:05 — Cen­ter Stage (2000)

06:10:03 — Amer­i­can Pie (1999)

06:11:10 — A Hard Days Night (1964)

06:12:01 — 45 Years (2015)

06:12:15 — La Dolce Vita (1960)

06:13:10 — O Broth­er, Where Art Thou? (2000)

06:14:00 — West Side Sto­ry (1961)

06:14:20 — Straight Out­ta Comp­ton (2015)

06:15:12 — La La Land (2016)

06:16:12 — Her (2013)

06:17:08 — Being John Malkovich (1999)

06:18:03 — Flash­dance (1983)

06:19:01 — Bar­ton Fink (1991)

06:19:22 — The Artist (2011)

06:24:09 — Casablan­ca (1942)

06:26:13 — Sun­set Boule­vard (1950)

06:27:15 — Black Book (2006)

06:28:08 — Edward Scis­sorhands (1990)

06:29:17 — Labyrinth (1986)

06:31:18 — Short Term 12 (2013)

06:33:18 — When Marnie Was There (2014)

06:36:18 — Before Sun­rise (1995)

06:37:15 — Scent of a Woman (1992)

06:39:14 — Sab­ri­na (1954)

06:40:20 — Loli­ta (1962)

06:41:23 — Schindler’s List (1993)

06:42:14 — Gangs of New York (2002)

06:43:16 — Black Swan (2010)

06:44:23 — Pride and Prej­u­dice (2005)

06:46:15 — Sweeney Todd: The Demon Bar­ber of Fleet Street (2007)

06:48:06 — Up (2009)

06:49:23 — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

06:51:05 — Out of Africa (1985)

06:52:22 — Jack­ie (2016)

06:54:15 — Rush­more (1998)

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Igor Stravinsky Remembers the “Riotous” Premiere of His Rite of Spring in 1913: “They Were Very Shocked. They Were Naive and Stupid People.”

in Dance, Music | April 25th, 2018

It can be a lit­tle hard to take the word “riot” seri­ous­ly when applied to a con­tentious bal­let per­for­mance, giv­en how reg­u­lar­ly we now see police with machine guns, shields, and tanks rolling down city streets to over­pow­er protest­ing cit­i­zens. But that is the word that has come down to us for the fra­cas that greet­ed the debut of Serge Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913. The idea of a riot seems all the more incon­gru­ous, and fun­ny, when con­sid­ered in the light of Jean Cocteau’s descrip­tion of the crowd:

The smart audi­ence in tails and tulle, dia­monds and ospreys, was inter­spersed with the suits and ban­deaux of the aes­thet­ic crowd. The lat­ter would applaud nov­el­ty sim­ply to show their con­tempt for the peo­ple in the box­es… Innu­mer­able shades of snob­bery, super-snob­bery and invert­ed snob­bery were rep­re­sent­ed.

This Parisian smart set came togeth­er on that evening of May 29th expect­ing “some­thing poten­tial­ly out­ra­geous,” writes The Tele­graph’s clas­si­cal crit­ic Ivan Hewett. Diaghilev’s Bal­let Russ­es had pre­vi­ous­ly “entranced and shocked Paris.”

Stravin­sky was acquir­ing a rep­u­ta­tion as a musi­cal provo­ca­teur, hav­ing built his score for 1910’s The Fire­bird around the dis­so­nant “Devil’s Inter­val.” Nonethe­less, as the Rock­et­boom video below, “The Riot of Spring,” explains, audi­ences packed into the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées had no prepa­ra­tion for what they would see, and hear, when the cur­tain arose.

And what was that? A “high, almost stran­gled bas­soon melody,” Hewett writes, “soon draped with flut­ter­ing, twit­ter­ing wood­wind sounds” set to “pul­sat­ing rhythms.” Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Vaslav Nijinsky’s dancers “seemed pulled down to earth. Their strange, jerky move­ments and awk­ward pos­es defied every canon of grace­ful­ness.” The audi­ence react­ed imme­di­ate­ly, shout­ing and attack­ing one anoth­er: “canes were bran­dished like men­ac­ing imple­ments of com­bat all over the the­ater.” Stravin­sky him­self remem­bers the the­ater­go­ers reac­tions with dis­dain in a short inter­view excerpt at the top.

“The storm broke,” he says, once the cur­tain opened on a group of “knock-kneed… Loli­tas jump­ing up and down.” The audi­ence “came for Scheherazade or Cleopa­tra, and they saw Le Sacre du Print­emps. They were very shocked. They were very naïve and stu­pid peo­ple.” Did Stravin­sky real­ly not antic­i­pate the degree of unrest his weird, dis­so­nant bal­let might pro­voke? It seems not. He hoped it would be a big­ger hit than his wide­ly-praised Petrush­ka of three years ear­li­er. “From all indi­ca­tions,” he had writ­ten to set design­er Nicholas Roerich, “I can see that this piece is bound to ‘emerge’ in a way that rarely hap­pens.” This proved true, but not at all in the way he meant it.

For his part, writes Hewett, Diaghilev “was hop­ing for some­thing more than an emer­gence. He want­ed a scan­dal.” James Wol­cott, in his account of the evening, Wild in the Seats, argues that the Russ­ian impre­sario had “a genius for pub­lic­i­ty that wouldn’t be matched until the advent of Andy Warhol and the pop cult of celebri­ty.” He knew he need­ed to rat­tle the “jad­ed ele­gants,” who “weren’t going to be stim­u­lat­ed by the same melt­ing, yearn­ing pan­tomime in pointe shoes.” The Rite of Spring pre­miere remains the most infa­mous scan­dal in the his­to­ry of bal­let to this day.

But while the sophis­ti­cates bat­tled it out in the aisles, scream­ing over the orches­tra, pulling down each other’s top hats, it’s said, and chal­leng­ing each oth­er to duels, a few spec­ta­tors, Cocteau includ­ed, sat entranced by the per­for­mance. The work, he lat­er wrote, “is, and will remain, a mas­ter­piece: a sym­pho­ny impreg­nat­ed with wild pathos, with earth in the throes of birth, nois­es of farm and camp, lit­tle melodies that come to us out of the depths of the cen­turies, the pant­i­ng of cat­tle, pro­found con­vul­sions of nature, pre­his­toric geor­gics.”

See the open­ing move­ments per­formed above by the Jof­frey Bal­let in 1987, and imag­ine your­self in the midst of Paris’s high­est soci­ety con­vuls­ing in a riotous out­cry. What was so upset­ting? “Per­haps the riot was a sign of dis­qui­et,” Hewett spec­u­lates, “a feel­ing that that the world had lost its moor­ings, and that bar­barism was about to be let loose in the streets.” Accord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es, some dis­turbed spec­ta­tors even called in the police. You can learn much more about this fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry at the free Har­vard edX course, “Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: Mod­ernism, Bal­let, and Riots.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion

Stravinsky’s “Ille­gal” Arrange­ment of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” (1944)

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Pre-Flight Safety Demonstration Gets Performed as a Modern Dance: A Creative Video from a Taiwanese Airline

in Comedy, Dance, Life, Travel | March 23rd, 2018

Tai­wanese air­line EVA Air’s pre-flight safe­ty video is a gen­uine odd­i­ty in a field lit­tered with cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tions.

Ten years ago, air­lines were straight­for­ward about com­ply­ing with the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, and oth­er gov­ern­ing bod­ies’ require­ments.  These instruc­tions were seri­ous busi­ness. Chil­dren and oth­er first time trav­el­ers paid strict atten­tion to infor­ma­tion about tray tables, exits, and inflat­able life vests that jad­ed fre­quent fly­ers ignored, con­fi­dent that most take offs and land­ings tend to go accord­ing to plan, and the over­whelm­ing num­ber of planes tend stay in the air for the dura­tion of one’s flight.

What about the ones that don’t though? There are times when a too-cool-for-school busi­ness trav­el­er seat­ed next to an emer­gency exit could spell dis­as­ter for every­one onboard.

Vir­gin America’s 2007 ani­mat­ed safe­ty video, below, was the first to recap­ture pas­sen­gers’ atten­tion, with a blasé nar­ra­tive style that poked fun at the stan­dard tropes:

For the .0001% of you who have nev­er oper­at­ed a seat­belt before, it works like this…

The cocky tone was dialed down for more crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion, like how to assist the child in the seat next to you when the yel­low oxy­gen masks drop from the over­head com­part­ment. (Imag­ine the may­hem if indie ani­ma­tor Bill Plymp­ton had been in the pilot’s seat for this one…)

The irrev­er­ent approach was a hit. The FAA took note, encour­ag­ing cre­ativ­i­ty in a 2010 Advi­so­ry Cir­cu­lar:

Every air­line pas­sen­ger should be moti­vat­ed to focus on the safe­ty infor­ma­tion in the pas­sen­ger brief­ing; how­ev­er, moti­vat­ing peo­ple, even when their own per­son­al safe­ty is involved, is not easy. One way to increase pas­sen­ger moti­va­tion is to make the safe­ty infor­ma­tion brief­in­gs and cards as inter­est­ing and attrac­tive as pos­si­ble.

For a while EVA Air, an inno­va­tor whose fleet includes sev­er­al Hel­lo Kit­ty Jets, played it safe by stick­ing to crowd pleas­ing schtick. Its 2012 CGI safe­ty demo video, below, must’ve played par­tic­u­lar­ly well with the Hel­lo Kit­ty demo­graph­ic.

…looks a bit 2012, no?

A few months ago, EVA took things in a direc­tion few indus­try pro­fes­sion­als could’ve pre­dict­ed: mod­ern dance, per­formed with utmost sin­cer­i­ty.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bulareyaung Pagarla­va, a mem­ber of Taiwan’s indige­nous Pai­wan com­mu­ni­ty, and a small crew of dancers spent three months trans­lat­ing the famil­iar direc­tives into a vocab­u­lary of sym­bol­ic ges­tures. See the results at the top of the post.

You’ll find none of the stock char­ac­ters who pop­u­late oth­er air­lines’ videos here—no sneaky smok­ers, no con­cerned moms, no sleepy busi­ness­peo­ple. There’s bare­ly a sug­ges­tion of a cab­in.

Unfet­tered by seats or over­head bins, the bright­ly clad, bare­foot dancers leap and roll as they inter­act with 3D pro­jec­tions, behav­ior that would cer­tain­ly sum­mon a flight atten­dant if per­formed on an actu­al plane.

Does it work?

The answer may depend on whether or not the plane on which you’re trav­el­ing takes a sud­den nose dive.

In “No Jok­ing,” an essay about air­port secu­ri­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa pro­fes­sor Mark B. Salter writes that it is “dif­fi­cult to moti­vate pas­sen­gers to con­tem­plate their own mor­tal­i­ty.” The fash­ion for jok­i­ness in safe­ty videos “nat­u­ral­izes areas of anx­i­ety,” a men­tal trick of which Freud was well aware.

What then are we to make of the EVA Air dancer at the 4:35 minute mark, who appears to be falling back­ward through the night sky?

Would you show a jet’s worth of trav­el­ers the mod­ern dance equiv­a­lent of Air­plane 1975, Fear­less, or Snakes on a Plane before they taxi down the run­way?

Mer­ci­ful­ly, the nar­ra­tor steps in to remind pas­sen­gers that smok­ing is pro­hib­it­ed, before the dig­i­tal­ly pro­ject­ed dark waters can swal­low the writhing soloist up.

There’s also some ques­tion as to whether the video ade­quate­ly address­es the ques­tion of tray table oper­a­tion.

Read­ers, what do you think? Does this new video make you feel secure about tak­ing flight?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

NASA Puts 400+ His­toric Exper­i­men­tal Flight Videos on YouTube

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Scenes from the “Pink Floyd Ballet:” When the Experimental Rock Band Collaborated with Ballet Choreographer Roland Petit (1972)

in Dance, Music | February 12th, 2018

We all know that rock opera isn’t actu­al­ly opera. It bor­rows some of the clas­si­cal form’s affects—theatrical bom­bast and loud cos­tum­ing, which seem a nat­ur­al fit—but it doesn’t attempt the extreme for­mal rig­or. Rock and roll is loose, intu­itive, expres­sion­is­tic, best played by or to libidi­nous kids or kids-at-heart; opera is tight­ly con­trolled and per­formed by trained vocal gym­nasts to audi­ences of sophis­ti­cates. Both of these forms excel at emo­tive sto­ry­telling, but beyond that, with some rare excep­tions, their sim­i­lar­i­ties are most­ly cos­met­ic.

Now imag­ine not rock opera, but a rock bal­let. What could ath­let­ic Euro­pean clas­si­cal dance con­tribute to songs about sex and drugs? What could elec­tric gui­tars, drums, and key­boards do for pirou­ettes, arabesques, or grand jetés? Part of the prob­lem with such a mashup comes—as not­ed above—from the intrin­sic for­mal dif­fer­ences between the two. Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour put it well when he not­ed in 1973 that his band found bal­let “too restrict­ing for us. I mean, I can’t play and count bars at the same time.”

Yes, there was once a Pink Floyd bal­let, or, well, almost. For rea­sons that may or may not be obvi­ous, the attempt was not pop­u­lar, and it has not gone down in either rock or bal­let his­to­ry as a mem­o­rable event. But it was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment, per­haps both more com­pelling and more inco­her­ent than one might think. An unusu­al col­lab­o­ra­tion between the prog-rock super­stars and French chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Roland Petit, the show first began to take shape in 1970 over a series of lunch­es and din­ner and drinks—as a high-con­cept adap­ta­tion of Proust.

But the com­po­si­tion did not come eas­i­ly. For one thing, the band couldn’t get through the source mate­r­i­al. “David did the worst,” remem­bers Nick Mason, “he only read the first 18 pages.” Roger Waters report­ed that he fin­ished “the sec­ond vol­ume of Swann’s Way and when I got to the end of it I thought, ‘Fuck this, I’m not read­ing any­more. I can’t han­dle it.’ It just went too slow­ly for me.” A com­mon com­plaint from attempt­ed read­ers of Proust. Petit then float­ed the idea of adapt­ing A Thou­sand and One Ara­bi­an Nights, then Franken­stein. At one point, Roman Polan­s­ki and Rudolph Nureyev were attached as direc­tor and star. There was talk of a film.

All of these schemes were aban­doned, includ­ing the plan for orig­i­nal music. “Nureyev, Polan­s­ki, and the 108-piece orches­tra,” writes Nicholas Schaffn­er, “were con­spic­u­ous in their absence.” In Petit’s even­tu­al piece, per­formed in Mar­seilles and Paris in 1972–73, the band “game­ly appeared… to pro­vide live ren­di­tions of ‘Care­ful with That Axe Eugene’ and three new­er works in which the Syd-less Floyd had at last dis­cov­ered its rai­son d’être: ‘Echoes,’ ‘One of These Days,’ and ‘Obscured by Clouds,’” among oth­er exist­ing songs. The whole endeav­or was con­sis­tent with the band’s oth­er extra-cur­ric­u­lar for­ays, into film and musique con­crete for exam­ple, but the rote recy­cling of mate­r­i­al was not.

The bal­let, notes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “wasn’t shot live, but an in stu­dio ver­sion was pro­duced in 1977.” (You can see a clip from that rather slick arti­fact at the top of the post.) The oth­er videos you see here come from rehearsals for the live 1973 shows (the clip sec­ond from top fea­tures inter­views with Petit and a shy, French-speak­ing Gilmour). It’s an odd affair: male dancers who all vague­ly resem­ble Bruce Lee—and pull off some Lee-like punch­es; inex­plic­a­ble syn­chro­nized line dances; dancers form­ing pairs to the har­row­ing screams of “Care­ful with That Axe, Eugene”; and a very con­tem­po­rary 70s feel over­all mark these per­for­mances as the kind of thing like­ly to feel deeply unsat­is­fy­ing to con­nois­seurs of either Pink Floyd or the bal­let.

Who, exact­ly, one won­ders, was the audi­ence for this? Maybe you’ll get some sense of the appeal in the brief inter­views and com­men­tary from the French jour­nal­ists in this rehearsal footage. Or per­haps a pro­gram from one of the Mar­seille per­for­mances sheds more light on the inten­tions behind this pro­duc­tion. Petit did sup­pos­ed­ly say, “It all began in the late ‘60s. One day my daugh­ter… gave me an album by Pink Floyd and said, ‘Dad, you have to make a bal­let with this music.’” After some ini­tial skep­ti­cism, “when I heard the music,” he remem­bers, “I agreed with my daugh­ter.” Per­haps he sim­ply couldn’t refuse her a request.

Those who did attend these shows may have been delight­ed, con­fused, bored, enraged, or some com­bi­na­tion of any of these emo­tions and more besides. As for the band’s strug­gles, Gilmour admits, “we had to have some­one sit­ting on stage with us with a piece of paper telling us what bar we were play­ing.” (Before you make a joke about how rock musi­cians can’t count, bear in mind most clas­si­cal play­ers can’t impro­vise.) At the end, how­ev­er, audi­ences wouldn’t have been left want­i­ng. “The bal­let cli­maxed,” Schaffn­er writes, “with a typ­i­cal­ly Floy­di­an flour­ish: ten cans of oil explod­ing like fire­balls from the front of the stage.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Russian Dancers Appear to Float Magically Across the Stage: A Mesmerizing Introduction to The Berezka Ensemble

in Dance | December 29th, 2017

As the Rock­ettes are to legs, Russia’s Berez­ka Ensem­ble, above, is to the seem­ing absence of them.

There are cer­tain sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two troops. Both are com­posed exclu­sive­ly of young women in peak phys­i­cal con­di­tion. The chore­og­ra­phy and cos­tum­ing daz­zle by way of uni­for­mi­ty. So many girls, all doing the exact same thing at the exact same time!

(On a per­son­al note, no one expects the Rock­ettes to out-fem­i­nist Bar­bie, but they could do a bet­ter job at diver­si­fy­ing their annu­al Christ­mas Spec­tac­u­lar cast’s racial make up—unlike the city in which it takes place, that kick line’s mighty white.)

The Berez­ka Ensem­ble, aka the Lit­tle Birch Tree Chore­o­graph­ic group’s whole­some­ness is more in keep­ing with the Wal­dorf School. Their cos­tumes are maid­en­ly folk art affairs—much bet­ter suit­ed to twirling birch branch­es than their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts’ snug sequins…

But on to the sig­na­ture moves…

To mas­ter their famed float­ing step, the Berez­ka Ensemble’s dancers’ sub­mit to a train­ing reg­i­men every bit as gru­el­ing as the one the Rock­ettes under­go in pur­suit of their syn­chro­nized eye-high kicks.

The float­ing step was invent­ed in the 40’s by com­pa­ny founder Nadezh­da Nadezh­d­i­na, and enjoys a mys­ti­cal rep­u­ta­tion, despite var­i­ous how-to videos float­ing around online.

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries abound. What’s under­neath those hooped hem­lines? Roller skates?

Motor­ized heel­ies?

A hid­den track?

Calves of steel, as it turns out. A rehearsal video reveals many, many minc­ing steps, tak­en en demi-pointe.

But what real­ly sells the fric­tion­less illu­sion is the dancers’ placid above-waist facades, which one YouTube com­menter apt­ly com­pared to ducks glid­ing about on a pond, their feet pad­dling furi­ous­ly just below the water’s sur­face.

A recent LED-enhanced per­for­mance, below, shines some lit­er­al light on the fan­cy foot­work.

via Nerdist/Twist­ed­Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922

Watch a Step-by-Step Break­down of La La Land‘s Incred­i­bly Com­plex, Off Ramp Open­ing Num­ber

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Josephine Baker Went From Homeless Street Performer to International Superstar, French Resistance Fighter & Civil Rights Hero

in Dance, Film, History, Jazz, Music, Politics | December 7th, 2017

There has maybe nev­er been a bet­ter time to crit­i­cal­ly exam­ine the grant­i­ng of spe­cial priv­i­leges to peo­ple for their tal­ent, per­son­al­i­ty, or wealth. Yet, for all the harm wrought by fame, there have always been celebri­ties who use the pow­er for good. The twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is full of such fig­ures, men and women of con­science like Muhamad Ali, Nina Simone, and Paul Robeson—extraordinary peo­ple who lived extra­or­di­nary lives. Yet no celebri­ty activist, past or present, has lived a life as extra­or­di­nary as Josephine Baker’s.

Born Fre­da Josephine McDon­ald in 1906 to par­ents who worked as enter­tain­ers in St. Louis, Baker’s ear­ly years were marked by extreme pover­ty. “By the time young Fre­da was a teenag­er,” writes Joanne Grif­fith at the BBC, “she was liv­ing on the streets and sur­viv­ing on food scraps from bins.” Like every rags-to-rich­es sto­ry, Baker’s turns on a chance dis­cov­ery. While per­form­ing on the streets at 15, she attract­ed the atten­tion of a tour­ing St. Louis vaude­ville com­pa­ny, and soon found enor­mous suc­cess in New York, in the cho­rus lines of a string of Broad­way hits.

Bak­er became pro­fes­sion­al­ly known, her adopt­ed son Jean-Claude Bak­er writes in his biog­ra­phy, as “the high­est-paid cho­rus girl in vaude­ville.” A great achieve­ment in and of itself, but then she was dis­cov­ered again at age 19 by a Parisian recruiter who offered her a lucra­tive spot in a French all-black revue. “Bak­er head­ed to France and nev­er looked back,” par­lay­ing her near­ly-nude danse sauvage into inter­na­tion­al fame and for­tune. Top­less, or near­ly so, and wear­ing a skirt made from fake bananas, Bak­er used stereo­types to her advantage—by giv­ing audi­ences what they want­ed, she achieved what few oth­er black women of the time ever could: per­son­al auton­o­my and inde­pen­dent wealth, which she con­sis­tent­ly used to aid and empow­er oth­ers.

Through­out the 20s, she remained an arche­typ­al sym­bol of jazz-age art and enter­tain­ment for her Folies Bergère per­for­mances (see her dance the Charleston and make com­ic faces in 1926 in the looped video above). In 1934, Bak­er made her sec­ond film Zouzou (top), and became the first black woman to star in a major motion pic­ture. But her sly per­for­mance of a very Euro­pean idea of African-ness did not go over well in the U.S., and the coun­try she had left to escape racial ani­mus bared its teeth in hos­tile recep­tions and nasty reviews of her star Broad­way per­for­mance in the 1936 Ziegfeld Fol­lies (a crit­ic at Time referred to her as a “Negro wench”). Bak­er turned away from Amer­i­ca and became a French cit­i­zen in 1937.

Amer­i­can racism had no effect on Baker’s sta­tus as an inter­na­tion­al superstar—for a time per­haps the most famous woman of her age and “one of the most pop­u­lar and high­est-paid per­form­ers in Europe.” She inspired mod­ern artists like Picas­so, Hem­ing­way, E.E. Cum­mings, and Alexan­der Calder (who sculpt­ed her in wire). When the war broke out, she has­tened to work for the Red Cross, enter­tain­ing troops in Africa and the Mid­dle East and tour­ing Europe and South Amer­i­ca. Dur­ing this time, she also worked as a spy for the French Resis­tance, trans­mit­ting mes­sages writ­ten in invis­i­ble ink on her sheet music.

Her mas­sive celebri­ty turned out to be the per­fect cov­er, and she often “relayed infor­ma­tion,” the Spy Muse­um writes, “that she gleaned from con­ver­sa­tions she over­heard between Ger­man offi­cers attend­ing her per­for­mances.” She became a lieu­tenant in the Free French Air Force and for her efforts was award­ed the Croix de Guerre and the Medal of the Resis­tance by Charles De Gaulle and laud­ed by George S. Pat­ton. Nonethe­less, many in her home coun­try con­tin­ued to treat her with con­tempt. When she returned to the U.S. in 1951, she enter­tained huge crowds, and dealt with seg­re­ga­tion “head –on,” writes Grif­fith, refus­ing “to per­form in venues that would not allow a racial­ly mixed audi­ence, even in the deeply divid­ed South.” She became the first per­son to deseg­re­gate the Vegas casi­nos.

But she was also “refused admis­sion to a num­ber of hotels and restau­rants.” In 1951, when employ­ees at New York’s Stork Club refused to serve her, she charged the own­er with dis­crim­i­na­tion. The Stork club inci­dent won her the life­long admi­ra­tion and friend­ship of Grace Kel­ly, but the gov­ern­ment decid­ed to revoke her right to per­form in the U.S., and she end­ed up on an FBI watch list as a sus­pect­ed communist—a pejo­ra­tive label applied, as you can see from this declas­si­fied 1960 FBI report, with extreme prej­u­dice and the pre­sump­tion that fight­ing racism was by default “un-Amer­i­can.” Bak­er returned to Europe, where she remained a super­star (see her per­form a med­ley above in 1955).

She also began to assem­ble her infa­mous “Rain­bow Tribe,” twelve chil­dren adopt­ed from all over the world and raised in a 15th-cen­tu­ry chateau in the South of France, an exper­i­ment to prove that racial har­mo­ny was pos­si­ble. She charged tourists mon­ey to watch the chil­dren sing and play, a “lit­tle-known chap­ter in Baker’s life” that is also “an uncom­fort­able one,” Rebec­ca Onion notes at Slate. Her estate func­tioned as a “theme park,” writes schol­ar Matthew Pratt Guterl, a “Dis­ney­land-in-the-Dor­dogne, with its cas­tle in the cen­ter, its mas­sive swim­ming pool built in the shape of a “J” for its own­er, its bath­rooms dec­o­rat­ed like an Arpège per­fume bot­tle, its hotels, its per­for­mances, and its pageantry.” These trap­pings, along with a menagerie of exot­ic pets, make us think of mod­ern celebri­ty pageantry.

But for all its strange excess­es, Guturl main­tains, her “idio­syn­crat­ic project was in lock­step with the main­stream Civ­il Rights Move­ment.” She wouldn’t return to the States until 1963, with the help of Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy, and when she did, it was as a guest of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. and the orga­niz­ers of the March on Wash­ing­ton, where, in her Free French Air Force uni­form, she became the only woman to address the crowd. The visu­al recount­ing of that moment above comes from a new 600-page graph­ic biog­ra­phy that fol­lows Bak­er’s “tra­jec­to­ry from child ser­vant in St. Louis,” PRI writes, “to her days as a vaude­ville per­former, a major star in France, and lat­er, a mem­ber of the French Resis­tance and an Amer­i­can civ­il rights activist.”

In her speech, she direct­ly con­front­ed the gov­ern­ment who had turned her into an ene­my:

They thought they could smear me, and the best way to do that was to call me a com­mu­nist.  And you know, too, what that meant.  Those were dread­ed words in those days, and I want to tell you also that I was hound­ed by the gov­ern­ment agen­cies in Amer­i­ca, and there was nev­er one ounce of proof that I was a com­mu­nist.  But they were mad.  They were mad because I told the truth.  And the truth was that all I want­ed was a cup of cof­fee.  But I want­ed that cup of cof­fee where I want­ed to drink it, and I had the mon­ey to pay for it, so why shouldn’t I have it where I want­ed it?

Bak­er made no apolo­gies for her wealth and fame, but she also took every oppor­tu­ni­ty, even if mis­guid­ed at times, to use her social and finan­cial cap­i­tal to bet­ter the lives of oth­ers. Her plain-speak­ing demands opened doors not only for per­form­ers, but for ordi­nary peo­ple who could look to her as an exam­ple of courage and grace under pres­sure into the 1970s. She con­tin­ued to per­form until her death in 1975. Just below, you can see rehearsal footage and inter­views from her final per­for­mance, a sold-out ret­ro­spec­tive.

The open­ing night audi­ence includ­ed Sophia Lau­ren, Mick Jag­ger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, and Liza Minel­li. Four days after the show closed, Bak­er was found dead in her bed at age 68, sur­round­ed by rave reviews of her per­for­mance. Her own assess­ment of her five-decade career was dis­tinct­ly mod­est. Ear­li­er that year, Bak­er told Ebony mag­a­zine, “I have nev­er real­ly been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood so much, that I have put every­thing I have into them, and I have been blessed.” We might not agree with her crit­i­cal self-eval­u­a­tion, but her life bears out the strength and authen­tic­i­ty of her con­vic­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

James Bald­win Bests William F. Buck­ley in 1965 Debate at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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