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      in Television

      Cryptocurrency Seeks the Spotlight, With Spike Lee’s Help

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      The filmmaker’s commercial for a crypto company is one of many recent marketing efforts to make digital cash palatable for newbies.Before Spike Lee accepted cryptocurrency, he turned down Crocs.Years ago, the filmmaker rejected an offer to buy into the Colorado company that makes perforated foam clogs, a decision that caused him to miss out when its stock soared on the strength of the footwear fad.“I wish I would’ve given some money back then,” Mr. Lee said in a recent interview. “Anytime something is new, you’re going to have people who are going to be skeptical. With some of the best ideas, people thought the inventors were crazy.”Now he has taken a leap into another cultural craze, having agreed to direct and star in a television commercial for Coin Cloud, a company that makes kiosks for buying and selling Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Although cryptocurrency is not widely used for transactions, an increasing number of merchants now accept it as payment.The commercial, which he shot last month, is one of several recent marketing efforts meant to broaden the audience for a form of currency that can intimidate people accustomed to cash and credit cards.Mr. Lee, outfitted nattily in a straw hat and gold-tipped cane while filming part of the commercial on Wall Street, led a diverse cast that included his daughter Satchel, the “Pose” actress Mj Rodriguez and the drag queen Shangela. Other shoot locations included Fort Greene Park and the Chillin’ Bar and Grill in Washington Heights, where breakfast patrons craned to catch a glimpse of the director as he filmed a Coin Cloud machine on the sidewalk.“Old money is not going to pick us up; it pushes us down,” Mr. Lee says in the commercial, which portrays the cryptocurrency system as a more accessible and equitable alternative to traditional, discriminatory financial institutions.“The digital rebellion is here,” he says.Cryptocurrency has also been known to intimidate investors, with its extreme volatility and the overwhelming number of virtual alternatives, known as coins. The marketing of this relatively new money has so far been limited mostly to ads on trade websites and targeted pushes on social media, where aficionados swap meme-fueled in-jokes about coin values rocketing to the moon.The industry is increasingly betting that celebrities can help demystify cryptocurrency for the uninitiated.The actor Alec Baldwin offered crisp definitions of cryptocurrency in a series of online ads for the crypto trading platform eToro, and the National Football League star Tom Brady signed on as a brand ambassador for FTX, a crypto exchange that also has a deal to sponsor Major League Baseball.Alec Baldwin is advertising for the cryptocurrency trading platform eToro.eToroThe actor Neil Patrick Harris recently appeared in a TV commercial for the digital currency kiosk operator CoinFlip. “Now anyone, anywhere, can turn cash into crypto!” he declares.EToro and Coinbase, another exchange, collectively spent $22.8 million on advertising last year, nearly double the $12.4 million they shelled out in 2019, according to the research firm Kantar. In recent months, Coinbase hired the Martin Agency, the advertising company behind GEICO and DoorDash.As Madison Avenue fields more inquiries from cryptocurrency clients, agency executives are feeling pressure to better communicate the investment risks, rather than romanticize the industry.“I get very nervous because I start looking at the way that some of the platforms are specifically targeting younger investors,” said Alex Hesz, the chief strategy officer of the advertising giant DDB Worldwide. In the face of frenzied cryptocurrency trading, ad agencies should push for moderation and diversification, he said. “Maximizing is what’s being encouraged here — the idea that this is an amazing asset, and as much as you want to put in, come on and jump on in, the Bitcoin’s lovely,” Mr. Hesz said. “We would never feel comfortable for an alcohol client, or a high-salt or high-sugar or high-fat client, to encourage that level of unequivocal behavior.”Some celebrity endorsements of cryptocurrencies have run into trouble. In 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission cautioned that some famous people were hyping the virtual currency sales known as initial coin offerings without disclosing that they had been paid to promote them. The commission has since settled charges against the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., the music producer DJ Khaled and the actor Steven Seagal.Social media influencers and e-sports stars have also been linked to shady cryptocurrency schemes, accused of pumping up coins just before their value crashes.Coin Cloud’s chief marketing officer, Amondo Redmond, said he hoped Mr. Lee’s stature would help elevate the industry by delivering something “more than just cool creative, but that is really at the forefront of digital currency becoming mainstream.”“It’s more than just adding a celebrity face,” he said.Mr. Lee, who won an Oscar in 2019 in the best adapted screenplay category for “BlacKkKlansman,” has worked on ads for Capital One, Uber and, most famously, Nike. In the 1980s and 1990s, he directed and starred in commercials for Air Jordans, playing his cinematic alter ego Mars Blackmon opposite Michael Jordan.“That was lightning in a bottle,” Mr. Lee said from a flight bound for the Cannes Film Festival, where he is the first Black person to lead the festival jury.He declined to say how much he had been paid for the Coin Cloud commercial, but noted that “if anyone’s known my body of work over the last four decades, you kind of know about the way I see the world, and when they approached me, it fit in line.”As the coronavirus pandemic continues to highlight financial disadvantages for people of color, Mr. Lee hopes to promote cryptocurrency as neutral to race, gender, age and other identifying characteristics.But he was no expert before filming began, and had to take “a crash course” on crypto. He insisted that the commercial include a line urging viewers to do their own research on virtual money.Mr. Lee said he now planned to invest in virtual coins. He said he would not, however, go anywhere near the digital ownership certificates known as nonfungible tokens.“NFTs, I don’t understand that,” he said, laughing. “I’m old school, so sometimes my children have to turn on the TV — all those remotes and stuff.” More

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      in Theater

      In ‘What to Send Up,’ I See You, Black American Theater

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      Our critic reflects on the significance of Aleshea Harris’s play, at BAM Fisher, for Black audiences.We didn’t know what to do about this piece.Whether I, a Black critic, should review Aleshea Harris’s breathtaking “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” even though my former colleague Ben Brantley, a white critic, already reviewed and raved about the show’s initial run in 2018. Whether I should be in conversation with a white critic or another Black critic.This is the piece I came up with: I’m reporting on a moment in time when I, a Black critic and a Black woman in America, felt the safest and most embraced by my Blackness in a theater.On a gloomy Friday evening, I went to BAM Fisher for the play, being presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Playwrights Horizons in association with the Movement Theater Company. I headed to the downstairs lobby, which featured portraits of Black men and women killed by the police. The room was full of Black people.If you can’t imagine the comfort of being with people who look like you in a space where art is being made, it’s something like sipping from a steaming cup in the dead of winter: the warmth is precious, immediate and shocking all at once.Harris, a veritable poet of a playwright who also wrote “Is God Is,” describes the play as “a space in the theater that is unrepentantly for and about Black people” — “a space for affirming, and reflecting.” She calls it “an anger spittoon” and “a dance party.” It’s true that “What to Send Up” feels less like a play than it does a series of cathartic experiences — which isn’t to say it isn’t beautiful theater, because it is still very much that.Early on in the show, directed by Whitney White, in a kind of intimate workshop, one performer (Kalyne Coleman, who is stunning as both a performer and the host) asks the audience members, who are all standing in a large semicircle, to step forward if they’d ever witnessed a race-based act of police brutality or if they’d ever been a victim of a racially motivated act of police brutality. Most people stepped forward after the former. About a dozen people, of the 50 or so in attendance, stepped forward in response to the latter, including a 30-something Black couple.Then a series of skits charts all the horrific ways Black people are stereotyped and generally misrepresented in art and in real life. There are biting parodies of troubling Black tropes in entertainment, like the supplicant servant figures in “Driving Miss Daisy” and “The Help.” And there are surreal monologues (one woman recounts how she snatched the mouth off a white man and how it flopped like a fish) alongside stepping, choral songs and spoken word.This was a show that validated my fear and sorrow as a Black citizen of this country and yet still alerted me to the privilege of having had a sheltered suburban upbringing. I thought about the first time someone directly called me the N-word, casually slinging it to the side of my face while I was walking through Midtown Manhattan one weeknight. I thought of all the times I’ve felt uncomfortable as a Black person in a space — in my career, in academia, in social settings. I thought about my growing discomfort around police officers, especially in the last several years.It’s rare for a play to allow me access to both that validation and that awareness of my privilege — because so rarely is Blackness shown onstage and so pointedly aimed toward a Black audience with all the nuances and variations that come within the experiences of their lives.Denise Manning, left, and Kalyne Coleman in “What to Send Up When It Goes Down.”Donna WardAt one point in the show, there is a symbolic Black death, tender though devastating, followed by an extended moment of silence. At another point, we were invited to write messages to Black Americans — they would join the scores of postcards with messages from other audience members that adorn the walls of the theater. Later we were asked to let out a collective, soul-cleansing scream — something I, an introvert, would usually pass on. But the mighty wall of sound led by Black voices — a great sound of exaltation and frustration and defiance all at once — invited me in, and my own voice, unsteady and hesitant, joined. It was like stretching a muscle I never realized existed; the feeling was overwhelming in its depth and release.But, I wondered, can any such space truly and wholly be for a Black audience, especially when there are white audience members there, too? Some part of me was quietly policing the white people in the theater — how they responded to certain scenes and questions, if and when they laughed at certain jokes, if they seemed to hold themselves accountable, if they were taking up too much space.As a critic and a reporter, part of what I do is read the room — how and why audiences react to the happenings onstage, and what that says about the work. But here, I didn’t want to care. In the show’s final minutes, non-Black audience members were invited to leave the theater and gather in the lobby. When I recounted this to a friend afterward, she asked what the white audiences saw, if anything, but I don’t know and — I know this is shameful to admit — I don’t care.I am concerned only with how Harris’s play made me and the other Black people in that room feel. I noted how the couple from earlier clutched each other through most of the show. At some point, the woman left and returned wet-eyed with a handful of tissues. Her partner lovingly rubbed her back.I also ended the show in tears, which I hadn’t expected — but among Black performers and audience members, I felt newly seen and safe. I had a fresh moment of realization, considering my duty as a Black critic. And as a Black poet, I had a moment of inspiration: I want more art like this.Affirmations, exclamations of joy, moments of commemoration: I’ll skip the particulars of those last few holy minutes that were exclusive to the Black audience. I want to honor and extend the loving, communal Black space Harris creates in an art form that has so few of them. And I want to keep it for myself — and for that couple and for the Black woman who, earlier in the show, had said she wished for a future version of this country where she could feel more “human.”I took a slow tour of the theater after the show, and read the messages others had left. “When you breathe, the universe sings,” one notecard read. Any other day in any other place in America, I’d probably find that sentiment too hokey. When have I ever heard singing when inhaling the air of this supposedly great free nation?But at BAM Fisher on that Friday night, I believed in a song of community, of strength and beauty and Black life despite whatever funereal tune is forced upon the lives of Black Americans. Of course I believe in theater for everyone, but I also believe in theater for Black people, and Black people alone.Leaving the venue, I thought of what a pleasure and privilege it was to receive theater gift-wrapped especially for me. And what a pleasure and privilege it is for me to laud it. But the greater pleasure? To tell you something special happened among the Black people in a theater with a qualifier: This play, non-Black theater lover, is not for or about you, and that’s perfectly fine.What to Send Up When It All Goes DownThrough July 11 at BAM Fisher, Brooklyn; bam.org More

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      in Music

      H.E.R. Still Finds Inspiration in Prince and ‘Martin’

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      The Grammy- and Oscar-winning performer talks about her new album, the moment she knew she wanted to be a rock star and why R&B isn’t dead.H.E.R. doesn’t want her music to be boxed in.“When I was creating it, I wasn’t really aiming for anything,” the singer-songwriter-instrumentalist said of “Back of My Mind,” her new 21-track album. “But when I started sequencing it and putting it together, I realized that a lot of the songs that I created were different moods of R&B.”The album was her playground, with references to early projects as well as those she hadn’t yet put out; featured vocals by Ty Dolla Sign, Cordae, Lil Baby and Chris Brown; reverb-y Dave Grohl-esque drums and trap beats; and “a bunch of really dope women working with me behind the scenes,” she said. “And all of those sounds turned into a celebration of all the things that R&B could be.”It has been a heady few months, even for H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson), who as a child prodigy practiced acceptance speeches. In February, she performed “America the Beautiful” at the Super Bowl kickoff show before winning, in March, a song of the year Grammy for “I Can’t Breathe” and, in April, a best original song Oscar for “Fight for You.” She was only 23. Now comes the three-part “Prime Day Show” on Amazon, set in a reimagined Dunbar Hotel in Los Angeles, which was a hub of Black culture in the 1930s and ’40s. And in August, she’ll take the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, while squeezing in work on a reggae EP that she hopes to release later this year.As H.E.R.’s star rises, so has her awareness as a role model.“Now I have this thing that I have to take care of and cherish, this ability to inspire and encourage women who are trying to figure out who they want to become, or who don’t want to fit into social norms,” she said.“I think anybody should want to think outside the box and be who they are, truly,” she added. “That’s what my album is about. And that’s the message that I carry with me in everything that I do.”In a call from Brooklyn, where she was rehearsing before heading to Los Angeles (“I live everywhere,” she said), H.E.R. spoke about a few of her own inspirations. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Fender Stratocaster Black and White GuitarThe first guitar my dad bought me was like a mini one for kids, and I learned to play the blues pentatonic scale. I want to say I was seven years old. I’ve been a Fender fan since then, and we had been having conversations about making my own guitar ever since I performed at the 2019 Grammys, and they created an acrylic Strat for me that was clear. I decided to make it chrome, and it also matches the holographic chrome design that I like to put on my nails sometimes. I designed it and picked all the effects and noiseless pickups. And I became the first Black woman to do a collaboration with Fender.2. Her Signature EyeglassesMost of the time people don’t recognize me [without my glasses on]. I’m like the female reverse Clark Kent. My favorite pair are these black frames that I actually designed in collaboration with DIFF eyewear, and they’re clear, and they’re blue-light glasses so they protect from you looking at screens.I’ve always loved glasses, but I started to be more intentional about wearing them when I started doing shows in 2017 after I dropped my first project, “Volume 1.” And I thought, let’s obscure the lights and I’ll wear glasses — because my music is the window to my soul, and not my eyes.3. “Rave Un2 the Year 2000”That’s a Prince concert DVD that I watched growing up. It was on every single weekend in my house, and it inspired me a lot. The moment with him and Lenny Kravitz performing — they did “American Woman” and “Fly Away” together — I was just so, like, “Man, I want to be a rock star.”4. Her Mom’s Filipino DishesLumpia is like a roll. There’s meat and vegetables in it, and it’s very delicious. It’s a long process to make but it’s what I grew up eating in my Filipino household. Halo-halo means “mix-mix” in Tagalog. I grew up eating it every day after school. There’s jellies and shaved ice and evaporated milk and ice cream and jackfruit and sweet beans and all kinds of stuff. My mom made it, and she taught me how to make it.5. And Her Dad’s Fried ChickenI don’t eat other people’s fried chicken. He grew up in Arkansas, and he brought Southern cooking into our house in the Bay Area in California.6. Prince’s “Purple Rain”I got to watch the movie when I was a kid, and my dad kind of skipped over the bad parts. It’s iconic — Prince absolutely killed that whole movie. I’ve played a lot of songs, but “Purple Rain” is one of those songs I definitely studied and covered. I wish, I wish [I would have met Prince]. I did get to see him live, though.7. Apollo TheaterI performed at the Apollo when I was 9 years old. I performed “Freeway of Love” by Aretha Franklin, and it was my first time in New York City, and my family came. They actually threw a little concert in our hometown so that we could afford to stay in New York for days. And then fast forward to early this year. I had the opportunity to go to D’Angelo’s Verzuz that he did on Instagram Live, and he sang “Best Part” with me.It’s just such a legendary place. Freshly coming from California, for me it just seemed like a world away. And so to be able to go there and perform — and then perform again with one of my favorite artists and a legend, D’Angelo — it just made the place even more special.8. Golden State WarriorsI used to love going to Warriors games when I was a kid. When I was 10 or 11, I sang the national anthem at a Warriors and Lakers game. And I got to see Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes. They were all on the Warriors at that time of the “We Believe” era. I haven’t been to a Warriors game in a really long time. But I was at a Nets game the other day, and it was fun. Go-go Nets.9. “Martin,” starring Martin LawrenceIt’s one of those late-night shows for when you can’t sleep. If I’m having a bad day and that comes on, like that, I forget. [Martin plays a D.J. and talk-show host], and it’s about his relationship with his girlfriend’s best friend. And he also plays the Sheneneh character and then he plays a pimp, and it’s hilarious. I still watch it. It’s timeless.10. Lights On FestivalIt’s something that I started in 2019, and obviously I couldn’t do in 2020, but it was a huge success and I didn’t expect it — 14,000 people at the Concord Pavilion [in Concord, Calif.], and the whole lineup was R&B artists.That proved to me that R&B is still alive, and that people love it and they need it. So I’m bringing my festival back in September. We’re going to keep the music going. More

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      in Movies

      Taylour Paige on ‘Zola,’ Grace and Being Kinder to Herself

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      For the stripper tale, the actress was mindful of the real Zola’s voice: “We’re in service of the bigger truth, the way we as Black women go through the world.”By her own estimate, Taylour Paige has about 48 voices inside her, at the ready for any situation.“I got an auntie voice, my educated, white-school voice, my high school,” she begins on a video call from Bulgaria, where she’s shooting “The Toxic Avenger.” Before she continues, one of those voices stops to clarify her statement. “When I say ‘white-educated,’ I’m not saying that being white is educated. I’m saying I went to a very white college. I was around a lot of white people, so that was a voice.” Then there was the voice observing her white friends doing wild things “where I’m like, ‘Oh, hell no. You white people are crazy.’”Code-switching — or “assimilating and survival,” as the actress described it — came in handy throughout her portrayal of the title character in “Zola,” the director Janicza Bravo’s new dramedy. In the film, inspired by the real-life Zola’s viral tweet thread, Paige plays a stripper who quickly vibes with Stefani, a white stripper (Riley Keough) with cornrows and a blaccent.“I think Zola was like, ‘OK cool, I got a new friend,’” Paige said. “‘She’s fun. We both hustle.’”But when Stefani whisks Zola to Florida to earn extra money dancing, things slip dangerously out of the latter’s control: there’s a sex-work scheme, an unhinged pimp (Colman Domingo) and other shady dealings. Zola navigates these increasingly chaotic circumstances while sharing her inner dialogue about how disturbing this all is.“I think, ultimately, the tragedy in this film is there’s a betrayal,” the actress said, referring to how Zola’s so-called friend has set her up.Paige, 30, is now known for her acting (her film credits include “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) but growing up in Inglewood, Calif., she was a dancer under the tutelage of Debbie Allen, and later worked as a Los Angeles Laker Girl. She looks back on those years as a self-conscious young woman grappling with “generational self-loathing” with more compassion now. “Because I’ve given myself grace, I have a different availability to the roles that I always wanted. Before I was auditioning for my personality and auditioning for a role. So, everybody was lying.”Paige talked about “Zola” and how it helped her tap into her true identity. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Paige with Riley Keough in “Zola.” The real Zola wasn’t “some ghetto buffoon that just went on Twitter,” Paige said. “She was very strategic.”Anna Kooris/A24Paige, center, appeared opposite Viola Davis and Dusan Brown in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”David Lee/NetflixSince last year, you’ve appeared in several movies — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Boogie” and now “Zola.” How does it feel to be a bona fide movie star?I’m still this human being trying to figure it out day by day. I’m trying to live my truth in my storytelling and in my life, my spirituality. There’s no stop and start to what I feel like I’m trying to learn as a human.When I hear “breakthrough,” it is like, “OK, but what’s expected of me? What’s expected of Black women?” I just want to be a bridge for what happens when you stay focused and patient and kind and tell the truth.Where does your spirituality come from?I’ve always been a seeker and a philosopher and a deep thinker. Like, “What am I doing here?” Since I was 5, I was very much thinking about death and my existence. My mom had me at almost 40, so it’s a completely different generation and very much fear-based thought. My own insecurities were projected onto me from my mom’s own self-loathing. I just wish I was kinder to myself sooner and I was able to distinguish which voice was mine. Seeing the way my mom asserted herself and lived [affected] me in a good way and a bad way. Because I thought, “Time is ticking, and I have to figure this out.” I’ve changed that fear to “Time is eternal, but what are you going to do with it?”Did playing Zola help you realize anything about how you previously moved around the world in your own body as a dancer?I’ve been dancing since I was really little. I loved it. But I got to an age where there’s pressure and I was tired. I wanted to stop. But I had a scholarship. My mom wouldn’t let me. Your butt all of a sudden is growing and you’re going through puberty, and you need to be super skinny like everybody else.Dance, as much as it was my escape from my home, would start to be something I resented. It started to feel like something I was doing for my mom or because some people thought I was good. I still was involved with Debbie Allen, but I stopped a little bit. With “Zola,” it’s like a return home to the innate ability of shaking that ass. It’s not so technical, so overthought. It’s like a Black girl getting down in her bedroom, but at a club. How do you get back to that without it needing to be perfect? I wanted to undo all that for her and for myself.Paige said she had “Laugh” tattooed on her arm. “When you’re laughing, you’re like, ‘I’m still alive, I’m still here.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDid you have any reservations about how your body would be seen on the screen?I was of course really nervous and scared. Zola is such a force and so comfortable and confident in her body, and I’ve been self-conscious but I have been ready to be like, “Enough with the self-hatred. I’m never going to be this age again. My body works, my heart beats without assistance, I got 10 fingers, 10 toes. I’m just over it.” So I use that.That’s how Zola moved through the world. We’ve talked about how she’s been scared. But she does it anyway because she’s a Black woman and the bills got to be paid. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Also, Janicza was super protective from the jump. Like, “We’re not going to see your boobs.” I was like, “Hey, if it’s the right storytelling.” We show murders and violence on TV. I don’t know what the big hoorah is around boobs and our natural bodies.It does fit into the film’s voyeurism. Zola engages viewers with pithy commentary as her shocking experience unfolds. What was it like telling this kind of story while inside of it?I knew that this movie existed as hyperbolic, that this was Janicza’s interpretation. I don’t mean “interpretation” in a condescending way. But when we are processing and observing something that happened to us, there’s multiple truths. It’s Zola’s interpretation of what happened to her, Janicza’s interpretation from Zola’s brilliant writing. You living through it is different than when you’ve had time to process it and put it on Twitter. So, it’s multiple things happening at once when you’re watching it.Janicza was super clear that I’m the straight man. She treated this like a play or a comedy: there’s a straight man, and there’s a buffoon. Riley is like the minstrel in blackface. I’m observing it, so we don’t need two buffoons for us to be able to take in this type of atmosphere and react to it. You’re watching it through my eyes. So, a lot of my acting in the movie, my dialogue, is in my head.Paige said the director Janicza Bravo was protective when it came to nudity. But the actress was willing to take a chance if it was right for the story: “I don’t know what the big hoorah is around boobs and our natural bodies.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesI imagine it puts some pressure on you to convey the multiple layers of the story in a way that is tongue-in-cheek yet critical at the same time.It was like, “Am I doing enough?” But I get that I’m serving Zola. I’m serving Black women. White women, Black women — it’s satirical, psychological. It’s the systems in place. It’s racism. It’s on a white body. But on a Black body, you don’t really believe her. Even when she’s being gentle and tender, you’re going to question if she’s telling the truth. We’re in service of the bigger truth, the way we as Black women go through the world and the [stuff] that’s put on us. That’s why I thought it was so brilliant, because it was protective of Zola’s voice. Zola isn’t some ghetto buffoon that just went on Twitter. She was very strategic and knew exactly what she was doing and saying.“Zola” is also funny at times. Black women often use humor to protect ourselves, process things. Because of your own experiences, was it easy for you to embrace the comedic moments?I find humor in the most mundane things. Most things, even when they’re bad, are pretty funny. Like, “Wow, life is outrageous. This is ghetto.” I have “Laugh” tattooed on my arm because, man, laugh often. When you’re laughing, you’re like, “I’m still alive, I’m still here.” More

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      in Music

      ‘It Taunts the Eye’: Footwork’s Fast Moves Loom Over Chicago

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      Projected onto the Merchandise Mart, “Footnotes” honors a style that’s become popular around the world but isn’t always given recognition in its hometown.Footwork, the Chicago-born music-and-dance form, is famous for its speed. D.J.s deliver a tense, polyrhythmic mix of stuttering samples at the jacked-up rate of 160 beats per minute, and dancers meet the challenge with an onslaught of swivels, kicks and scissoring steps even more bewilderingly quick and intricate than the music.This summer, that speed is finding a match in size. From Tuesday through Sept. 16, “Footnotes,” a short footwork film, is being projected across the 2.5-acre facade of the Merchandise Mart, a behemoth of a building covering two blocks of downtown Chicago. That’s a screen the size of about two football fields. Each night, the incredibly fast dance grows incredibly large.It’s a boost in visibility for a style, developed by Black youth, that hasn’t always been welcome in the city’s center — a style that has become popular around the world but isn’t always given recognition and respect in its hometown.“It’s about damn time,” said the footwork dancer Jamal Oliver, better known as Litebulb. “Footwork has been part of Chicago for 30 years.”Litebulb, in “In the Wurkz,” a touring show by the Era Footwork Crew.Wills GlasspiegelLitebulb, 31, who dances in the film and helped produce it, said that while appearing on the side of a building is exciting, “what’s more fulfilling is giving that opportunity to kids who would never get that chance.” Paying it forward is part of the mission of the Era Footwork Crew, a collective Litebulb helped found in 2014, and of its offshoot nonprofit organization, Open the Circle.In footwork parlance, “opening the circle” means making a space for dancing when the floor is too packed. Open the Circle seeks to do something similar in the field of social justice, not just making spaces for dancing and dancers but also spreading knowledge through education and funneling resources like grant money into the communities that created footwork.“When most people create these kinds of organizations, they’ve already made a fortune and now they want to give back,” Litebulb said. “But we’re doing it from the grass roots.”By design, the work of the Era and Open the Circle blurs in footwork projects, including public “dance downs,” a summer camp (Circle Up), videos, rap singles, a touring show (“In the Wurkz”) and a feature-length documentary on the way (“Body of the City”). The collectives extend footwork into the world of art galleries, universities and music festivals without losing touch with where it came from.Wills Glasspiegel, working on “Footnotes.”Jason PinkneyBrandon Calhoun, adjusting the camera, with DJ Spinn on the MPC drum machine.Jason Pinkney“Footnotes” is an extension of these efforts, both an advertisement and an upshot. “We’ve been doing a lot of work with the City of Chicago,” said Wills Glasspiegel, the documentary filmmaker and scholar who made the film with the Era dancer and animator Brandon Calhoun. “The city has recognized us as a good partner.” (Glasspiegel and Litebulb are both founders of the Era and executive directors of Open the Circle.)In this case, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events reached out about its “Year of Chicago Music” project and a partnership with Art on theMart, which has been projecting public art on the building since 2018.Glasspiegel jumped at the chance. “Footwork is emblematic of our city,” he said, “so we tried to make the film as Chicago as possible, expressing the city as we Chicagoans experience it.” The filmmakers brought in musicians with deep local roots: Angel Bat Dawid; Amal Hubert of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble; and the Chicago Bucket Boys, who, Glasspiegel said, “are the sound of Chicago’s streets.” Elisha Chandler, a dancer with “In the Wurkz,” sings.But if the film’s musicians connect footwork to the city, its method of composition connects the musicians to footwork. To create the soundtrack, the Bucket Boys improvised at 160 beats per minute, then the others laid down improvisations in response, riffing on the blues song “Sweet Home, Chicago.” DJ Spinn, a seminal figure in the genre, took all those pieces and treated them as samples, turning them into footwork.Using the music as a map, Glasspiegel edited together footage of the musicians with footage of dancers. The contribution of Calhoun, also known as Chief Manny, was crucial, too: transforming some of that footage into animation. It makes the dancing more legible.Angel Bat Dawid in a scene from “Footnotes.”Wills Glasspiegel and Brandon K. CalhounThat’s particularly important for “Footnotes,” since the Merchandise Mart presents a challenging surface for projection — the facade is perforated with hundreds of windows that may or may not be lighted. But the animation is useful in conveying footwork more generally. “Footwork moves so fast, it taunts the eye,” Glasspiegel said. Calhoun — with his dancer’s inside knowledge — clarifies its phrasing and shape.At one point in the film, an animated DJ Spinn taps an MPC, the sampling device that is the main instrument of footwork music, and an animated dancer bounces on the keys. This image is important, Glasspiegel said, because it’s a metaphor. “That’s a driving theme for us — that footwork is both music and dance — which people might not know if they don’t know the history.”Footwork developed in the late 1980s and early ’90s in dance clubs, community centers and roller-rink discos that played house music. Another important site was the Bud Billiken parade, one of the largest African American parades in the country and one of the oldest, happening every summer since 1929. In these places, foundational footwork moves, like the Holy Ghost (a slack-limbed shaking) and the Erk n Jerk (a sequence of seesawing, sideways kicks), emerged before footwork got its name.Some of the top dance crews of those days — Main Attraction, House-O-Matics, U-Phi-U — included dancers who became D.J.s, most importantly RP Boo and DJ Rashad. And it was these dancers-turned-D.J.s who created the footwork sound, increasing the tempo and stripping things down to ratchet up the tension (or throw off rival dancers) in dance battles — intense, improvisational face-offs that became the core of footwork culture in the early 2000s. Overlapping rhythms gave dancers more options, and competition pushed innovation.As had happened before with hip-hop — when M.C.s, who made money for the music industry, eclipsed b-boys, who didn’t — the music spread without the dance, especially abroad. “People didn’t really see the dance until DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn brought dancers on tour with them in 2010,” Litebulb said.Elisha Chandler, center, a dancer with “In the Wurkz,” who sings in the “Footnotes” film.Wills GlasspiegelLitebulb was one of those dancers, discovering rapturous fans in Europe but finding less recognition back home. “Too often dancers are viewed as background or bodies, not artists,” he said. “It’s important to have the balance, celebrating what the DJs are doing and what the dancers are doing.”“Footnotes” does that, but it also shows other ways that the Era and Open the Circle have been influencing the footwork scene. When footwork moved from clubs, parades and dance groups into more insular battles, women got pushed out. The Era and Open the Circle have been inviting them back in.“In battling culture, women were expected to stand on the side and look cute,” said Diamond Hardiman, a 27-year-old dancer who appears in the film. “You couldn’t get in the circle.”Women of her generation began battling one another. “It was empowering, seeing what we could do with each other to make ourselves better and letting the guys know that us women can do the same thing that y’all doing.”Diamond Hardiman: “In battling culture, women were expected to stand on the side and look cute. You couldn’t get in the circle.”Jason PinkneyWomen like Hardiman made space for themselves, but Open the Circle has also helped by reconnecting footwork with the youth dance groups in which it began. These groups are filled with girls and often run by women. (Women in the family of Shkunna Stewart, who directs the group Bringing Out Talent, have been running groups for four generations.)Members of such groups are the core population of Open the Circle’s summer camps on the South and East Sides of Chicago, camps where women like Hardiman teach. Some of these children appear in “Footnotes.” A girl called Ladybug leaps like a grasshopper, a dozen stories tall.The goal of the camps is broader than correcting the gender imbalance, though. “In our community, footwork is kind of viewed as nostalgia, but if we can get the kids, then footwork can live on,” Litebulb said. “It will be a whole new evolution than what we thought it was.”And it’s about more than perpetuating a style. As some of the camp T-shirts attest, “Footwork saves lives.”“It really did save my life,” Hardiman said, echoing the sentiment of other Era members. “I grew up seeing the stuff I wasn’t supposed to see at a young age, but footwork showed me I didn’t have to do those things.”“I don’t want my child to go through what I had to go through,” she added.That aspiration can be felt in the film as well. “The big kicker for me is showing the kids anything’s possible,” Litebulb said. “Look at yourself on the side of a building now. Who would have thought?” More

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      in Theater

      Review: Martha Washington, Hilariously Haunted by Her Slaves

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      James Ijames’s amusingly cynical and eclectic new play, “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” is at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival through July 30.On an evening train back from the Hudson Valley last weekend, I overheard two drunken friends — one white, one Indian American — having a loud, expletive-ridden debate two rows behind me.History was irrelevant, the white friend was saying. Between Cold Spring and Yonkers, they argued about police brutality, institutional racism and citizenship, but they kept circling back to the topic of reparations. “If my grandfather was a serial killer, why do I have to pay for his crimes?” he asked. He said history was being used against him. The past is the past — so why should he suffer?That this experience followed a performance of James Ijames’s stunning new play, “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” directed by Taylor Reynolds at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, was an event of stage-worthy irony. The theater gods certainly have a sense of humor.And so does Ijames (“Fat Ham,” “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever”), though his is laced with a brutal sense of cynicism. I say that as a compliment: What else could be more appropriate to the obscene joke that is this country’s treatment of its Black residents? In “Miz Martha Washington,” George Washington is dead and his wife, Martha (played by Nance Williamson), seems about ready to follow him to the grave. Ann Dandridge (a sharp Britney Simpson) — her slave and also her half sister, who is unfortunately tangled up in Martha’s line of ancestry — tends to the former first lady while raising her own son, William (a perfectly jejune Tyler Fauntleroy).Martha is weak and feverish, talking nonsense and having hallucinations while Ann and the rest of her slaves — the Washingtons held hundreds, historically — continue to cook her food, clean her floors, chop her wood and polish her silverware, as they’ve done her whole life. But now they’re antsy and less accommodating: In his will, Washington offered the slaves freedom upon his wife’s death.In a series of hallucinations, her slaves appear as lawyers, prosecutors and historical figures who try to show her how accountable she is in a system of oppression. Her fever dreams include chats with Abigail Adams, Betsy Ross and Thomas Jefferson, all of them Black; a game show hosted by a Black King George and Queen Charlotte; and a “People’s Court”-style trial. She should just do the right thing and free her slaves while she’s still alive, but it’s hard to be ethical when you’re accustomed to a certain lifestyle.“Miz Martha Washington” bears the signature of Ijames’s clever wit: He writes the slaves as more than docile stereotypes; these slaves have personality to spare, and they joke and sing with a threatening jocularity. You know how baring one’s teeth can be a sign of joy or hostility? Ijames does.Two female slaves, Doll (Cyndii Johnson) and Priscilla (Claudia Logan), act as twin jesters in the play, clowning and gossiping at Martha’s expense — as when Priscilla acts out what she hopes will be Martha’s “death rattle,” a hilariously odd sound that falls somewhere between a groan and a screech. They don’t talk purely in the expected dialect of stage slaves, but in an anachronistic mix of that with modern Black American vernacular.All of the elements of the production have a bit of this playful mash-up approach (which recalls the style of other great Black playwrights like George C. Wolfe, Adrienne Kennedy and Suzan-Lori Parks). In terms of plot, the play recalls, of all things, “A Christmas Carol,” as Martha is haunted by her wrongs. But “Miz Martha Washington” is never as procedural as that; scenes set in the real world are broken up by dance interludes with disco lights and by surreal fantasies like a reverse auction in which the slaves, posed as owners, examine and bid on Martha.Even the costumes, by Hahnji Jang, are sportively eclectic, with clashing patterns and colors — along with additional anachronistic details, like hoop earrings and sneakers. Under Reynolds’s puckish direction, the tone, too, whips from exaggerated sitcom-style humor (hammy facial reactions, quick comedic beats) to poetic surrealism (a young slave boy’s prophetic monologue) to tragedy (accounts of abuse, sexual assault).Cyndii Johnson, foreground center, plays a slave who also serves as a kind of jester, joking and gossiping at Martha’s expense.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhen the slaves sing and dance and drum around poor, sick Martha’s bed, it looks like a dark sacrificial ritual or an exorcism of America’s evils. And when one slave laughs, and the sound is joined by an offstage chorus of laughter from other slaves, the thunder is spirited at first but then quickly becomes unnerving. As Ijames notes in his script, “Laughter is a weapon.”And yet Martha isn’t a meek, quivering pupil to the slaves’ lessons on the debts America owes to its Black people; Williamson pivots from pleas to commands, fear to rage, declaring herself America’s mother, a woman who “did right” by her slaves, and refusing to be spooked into more righteous behavior.Behind the simple staging of Martha’s bed on a sandy patch of ground, an opening in the tent on the beautiful lawn of the Boscobel House and Gardens, in Garrison, N.Y., revealed a backdrop of mountains and a hazy blue sky. This view, which dimmed over time into the buzzing, uninterrupted darkness of the evening, for me recalled the ways our American mythos is tied to grand landscapes — “amber waves” and “purple mountain majesties” for white explorers and white landowners. All fitting for a show confronting questions about freedom, inheritance and birthright. (“Miz Martha Washington” is part of the festival’s 34th and final season before it moves to a new location.)I couldn’t help but imagine how much greater the show would be on a big Broadway stage with all the fixings, so to speak. After all, Ijames’s revisionism works, in many ways, as the inverse to “Hamilton.” “Hamilton” uses its Black and brown actors to reclaim history as a story of hope for immigrants, minorities, the disenfranchised. It’s a rebranding of the American dream. “Miz Martha Washington” uses its Black actors to expose the blights of the American dream and the hypocrisies of our historical narratives.And so the hilarious Brandon St. Clair is the obliging slave Davy as well as a very Black — and priceless — George Washington, resurrected from the dead. And another slave, Sucky Boy (Ralph Adriel Johnson), appears as a humorously tactless Black Thomas Jefferson.Does the play have a happy, inspirational ending? Well, let me just say that despite Ijames’s antic fabrications, he is ultimately tethered to the tragedy that is America. And we all know how that story goes.On the train after the show, the conversation between the two friends seemed to stretch on forever. When the white friend got off, after saying he had enjoyed the “discourse,” a fresh silence took over. Infuriated by the ignorant, racist statements I had been hearing, I walked over and spoke to the Indian American man, a lawyer named Ash.“You’re totally right on everything,” I said. “I’m not sure you should bother.” He gave me a fist bump and said that he still wanted to try.About halfway through the play, Priscilla says to Doll, “Hard work openin’ folks’ eyes,” to which Doll responds, “Huh … you can say that again.”But are we all accountable for our fellow citizens who are, if not explicitly racist, at least complicit in the systems and institutions that degrade and oppress? Does Ijames consider his work educational, a corrective? I would wager not. History has taught us that even our most high-minded foundational ideals — “all men are created equal” — can be interpreted to a single group’s advantage or be a basis of manipulation. You can’t teach a person humanity if it’s a lesson they don’t want to learn.In the fairy tale version of our country’s racial politics, we all learn about justice and skip happily toward the future. I, for one, am done with fairy tales as history — and patient explanations. Give me the harder truth of Ijames’s fantastical version any day.The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha WashingtonThrough July 30 at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Garrison, N.Y.; 845-265-9575, hvshakespeare.org. More

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      in Music

      ‘Summer of Soul’ Review: In 1969 Harlem, a Music Festival Stuns

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      Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in a documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival from Questlove.There’s no shortage of system shocks in “Summer of Soul.” This is a concert movie that basically opens with a 19-year-old, pre-imperial-era Stevie Wonder getting behind a drum kit and whomping away — sitting, standing, kicking, possessed. It’s a movie that nears its end with Nina Simone doing “Backlash Blues” in a boxing match with the keys of her piano, her hair indistinguishable from the conical art piece affixed to her head.The movie’s got Sly and the Family Stone and B.B. King and Ray Barretto and Gladys Knight & the Pips, in top, electric form. But no jolt compares to what happens in the middle of this thing, which is simply — though far from merely — footage from the 1969 edition of the Harlem Cultural Festival, footage that Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove, has rescued and assembled into nearly two-hours of outrageous poignancy. It’s all been cooking before this midway moment. But it’s once you’re there, engulfed in it, that you trust Thompson’s strategy.Sometimes these archival-footage documentaries don’t know what they’ve got. The footage has been found, but the movie’s been lost. Too much cutting away from the good stuff, too much talking over images that can speak just fine for themselves, never knowing — in concert films — how to use a crowd. The haphazard discovery blots out all the delight. Not here. Here, the discovery becomes the delight. Nothing feels haphazard.After the energetic asides about Mayor John Lindsay’s earnest support of the festival and Maxwell House’s sponsorship; after an exuberant montage of the outfits and stage patter of the festival’s charismatic and, it must be said, dashing mastermind, Tony Lawrence; after a poignant, illuminating passage on the overlooked, much fretted over quintet the Fifth Dimension, Thompson plunks us down in the middle of a meaty gospel passage.The Edwin Hawkins Singers kick it off with their rendition of “Oh Happy Day,” which at the time was a massive hit. Then the Staple Singers — Pops and his daughters Cleotha, Yvonne and Mavis — come on and dress “Help Me Jesus” in rockabilly robes. Not far behind is the pulpit dervish Clara Walker, whose exhortative way with a tune doubles as furnace and fan.Now, these performances took place over six summer Sundays. So I don’t know what any particular day’s official, chronological lineup was, but Thompson and his editor, Joshua L. Pearson, have done some mighty hefty truncation. Minutes after Walker and her Gospel Redeemers, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson appears, looking as beatifically beatnik as he’d ever get. Backing him is the Breadbasket Orchestra and Choir, and he begins to tell the many Harlemites densely packed before him that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last words were to the Breadbasket’s leader, Ben Branch. King told him that he wanted him to play the gospel pillar “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” And here now to grant that wish is Mahalia Jackson, who many a time sang it at King’s request.Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson, performing at the festival, which took place over six summer Sundays.Searchlight PicturesIt’s important to note, that during this passage, Mavis Staples and Reverend Jackson have also been narrating the scene from the present. Speaking today, using her front-porch husk, Staples remembers that Mahalia Jackson, her idol, leaned over and asked for her accompaniment. Mavis Staples was around 30; Mahalia Jackson was in her late 50s and wasn’t feeling well.Staples goes first, alone and a-blast. Jackson follows her with equal force and in defiance of whatever had been ailing her. Then together — Jackson refulgent in a fuchsia gown with a gold diamond emblazoned below her bosom; Staples in something short, lacy, belted and white — they embark on the single most astounding duet I’ve ever heard, seen or felt. They share the microphone. They pass it between them. Howling, moaning, wailing, hopping, but well within the song’s generous contours and, somehow, in control of themselves. My tears weren’t jerked as I watched. The ducts simply gave way, and the mask I wore at the theater where I sat was eventually covered in runny, viscous salt.They’re singing for the festival’s attendees. They’re mourning all of the death — of leaders, of followers, of troops and civilians. They are, if you’re willing to see it this way, lamenting what is obviously a generational transition from one phase of Black political expression to another, from resolve to anger, from the grandiloquence of Jackson’s pile of hair to Staples’s blunter Afro. They are singing this cherished classic of bereavement in order to mourn the present and the past. Listening to them now, in the summer of 2021, plumb earth and scrape sky, you weep, not only for the raw beauty of their voices but because it feels as if these two instruments of God were also mourning the future.I don’t remember how long this performance lasts. It doesn’t really even have an ending, per se. It just simply concludes, with each woman heading back to Reverend Jackson, into the band. But when it’s over you don’t know what to do — well, besides never forget it. It’s an extraordinary event not just of musical history. It’s a mind-blowing moment of American history. And for five decades, the footage of it apparently just sat in a basement, waiting for someone like Thompson to give it its due.The whole movie is dues-giving. It’s true that nothing matches the high of Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples. Yet nothing that surrounds them feels puny or like an afterthought. Thompson has an assortment of people watch footage from the festival — attendees who were kids and teenagers at the time, performers who were there, folks like Sheila E., who learned her craft from some of these artists. And I was almost as devastated by the sight of Marilyn McCoo’s putting her hands to her face as she watches her younger self with the rest of the Fifth Dimension, recounting how in-between they felt as Black artists who Black people didn’t always think were Black enough. Their sound was light and round and reliant upon strings and harmonies that were commercial for 1969 but not cool. In this film, among Simone and Max Roach and Hugh Masekela, the Fifth Dimension don’t at all seem like outsiders. They seem like family.Throughout this thing, Thompson is dropping explanatory information and montages that are crosscut with more information. A passage about the national climate of ’69, for instance, is mixed in with the Chambers Brothers’ festival performance. And you’re sitting there in awe at how the film hasn’t lost you. It’s got its own rhythm. The images, the music, the news, the reminiscences, the commentary often come at you at once. And with another director what you’d be left with is noise, with mess. This is certainly where Thompson’s being a bandleader — a band-leading drummer; a band-leading drummer who D.J.s — matters. The onslaught operates differently here. The chaos is an idea.On one hand, this is just cinema. On the other, there’s something about the way that the editing keeps time with the music, the way the talking is enhancing what’s onstage rather than upstaging it. In many of these passages, facts, gyration, jive and comedy are cut across one another yet in equilibrium. So, yeah: cinema, obviously. But also something that feels rarer: syncopation.This festival took place the same summer that Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. The movie deftly accounts for the dissonance between the two events. It’s the answer to the brief, shrewd passage in Damien Chazelle’s “First Man” that intercuts the landing with Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon.” These two movies would make a searing double feature of the same moment in American progress, on the ground and up in space. Of course, it’s hard not to leave this movie fully aware that, at that point, in 1969, with the country convulsed by war, racism and Richard Nixon, the power of those artists assembled in New York right then makes a firm case that Harlem was the moon.But the movie’s sense of politics isn’t so despondent. Thompson winds things down with Sly and the Family Stone doing “Higher.” That band was male and female, Black and white — weird, rubbery, ecstatic, yet tight, hailing from no appreciable tradition, inventing one instead. It’s been more than half a century, and I still don’t know where these cats came from. They simply seem sent from an American future that no one has to mourn.Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)Rated PG-13 (some cursing and lustiness, lots of spirit catching). Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More