They were dancing in the halls.
The foxtrot, lindy hop, salsa, hip-hop, hustle, waltz, tango, and voguing are on display starting last week at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) with an exhibition that celebrates over 200 years of social dance in NYC.
Straus Media got a preview of Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor, which highlights the dance floor as a vital space for creativity, connection, and cultural rebellion.
Says Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, the Ronay A. Menschel director and president of MCNY: “Urban Stomp is not just the history of movement; it’s the resilience, creativity, and expressiveness that define New York City.”
The exhibit is the brain child of Derrick León Washington, PhD, the Institute of Jazz Studies’ Berger–Carter–Berger Fellow who came up with the idea in 2018. It’s about “the connections between African Americans, Latinos, Caribbean, and Jewish people; the connection between Mambo and Swing, but also the connections between those cultures and geography. I wanted to have a plethora of dances that included different types of people.”
The co-curator added, “This unprecedented exhibition celebrates the enduring spirit of interconnected communities that continues to resonate on and off the dance floor.” He went on to describe the space as lively “because the dances of New York City are lively and fun and joyous, and they bring up different types of questions about ourselves and identity.”
Sarah Henry, chief curator and deputy director of MCNY and co-curator of Urban Stomp, stated that dancing was once “one of the main threads of social life for the elite classes, but it was also happening in bars and taverns. The things that we think of as elite dancing now were actually available to working-class people. They may not have been able to go to the fanciest balls, but they were going to labor union events and doing the same dances that were at the Vanderbilt balls.”
Aside from historical photos, films, fashion, instruments, memorabilia, and the Frankie Manning quilt made from Lindy Hop-related T-shirts, there are over 20 interactive digital tutorials that offer opportunities to learn new moves (dancing in the exhibit is encouraged) and engage directly with the material on view.
“We have these tutorials to show how it’s done,” says Henry, “but the tutorials are in conversation with 35 films, some of which have never been shown before in public.”
You haven’t really seen NYC until you’ve seen it through the historical eye of MCNY, which houses a 750,000-object collection and hosts two permanent exhibitions, two immersive films, and four rotating exhibitions in its Fifth Avenue location, between 103rd and 104th streets.
Its current exhibit takes visitors on a journey of how the aforementioned dance trends became both popular and controversial in their time, prompting New York’s notorious Cabaret Law. Enacted in 1926 and repealed in 2017, the law prohibited dancing in bars and restaurants that didn’t have a cabaret license.
The exhibition also explores globally influenced genres such as cumbia/cumbia sonidera, bhangra, Jewish/Yiddish dances, Native/Indigenous American dances, and dabke—all of which have taken on new meanings when “remixed” in present-day New York.
You will also discover the lasting influence of a range of leading figures who advanced dance cultures, such as ballroom dancers Vernon and Irene Castle; Celia Cruz, known as the Queen of Salsa, and Big Daddy Kane, and groups like the Dynamic Rockers, who pioneered breakdancing and revolutionized social dance culture on the city’s dance floors—and streets.
The exhibition’s grand finale is a full-size dance floor where visitors can select from a variety of music and dance genres for their very own solo or group dance parties.
Washington summed up the exhibit by saying: “Urban Stomp captures the essence of New York’s diverse communities and their histories through dance. This exhibition illuminates how the dance floor, much like the city itself, is a place where cultures collide, and creativity thrives.”
Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of three novels, most recently The Last Single Woman in New York City.
“This unprecedented exhibition celebrates the enduring spirit of interconnected communities that continues to resonate on and off the dance floor.” — Derrick León Washington, PhD