NYAB Event - "Song and Dance (1926

"Song and Dance (1926 - 1992)" Exhibition

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

This event has ended.

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs presents a group exhibition, "Song and Dance", featuring vintage and later prints from 1926 to 1992 by photographers from around the world.

The primal acts of song and dance transcend age, race, sex, geography and social standing. From Paris' Moulin Rouge to the sweaty dancehalls of Mali, the famous and anonymous are linked by the desire to raise their voices and move their bodies to music. This exhibition celebrates all who allow their souls to soar and let loose.

Included are famous figures such as the choreographer and early proponent of modern dance, Mary Wigman seated on the floor performing her modern Hexentanz in a print from 1926; Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, Steve Allen and Imogene Coca concealed by their sheet music while practicing for the Steve Allen Show; and Sammy Davis Jr. ensconced in the darkness of an LA stage.

Portrayals of the anonymous are equally intriguing. An example from 1931 is Ilse Bing's photograph where she deftly shot the dizzying spin of a Cancan girl in a polka dot dress. In the 1940s, Lisette Model angled up at a performer belting out a tune in a Bowery bar and Wayne Miller photographed a man in boots and tails stomping to the beat at a Hoedown on Chicago's South side.

In the 1960s, dance and song became reflections of the political and social changes taking place in much of the world. This is exemplified in the vintage prints by Malick Sidibé of post-colonial Bamako youth boogying down and Jan Yoors' photograph of a crowd twisting to Dizzy Gillespie's tunes at a CORE fundraiser in Yoor's New York loft. The sexual revolution was also part of this movement. An early print from Susan Meiselas' "Carnival Strippers" gives clues to the seedy side of seductive dance while women in bathing suits at Jones Beach flaunt their power in Joseph Szabo's photograph.

The traditional and classical end of the dance spectrum has also been documented in a variety of ways. Issei Suda photographed a ritual Japanese dance where Kimono clad women in straw hats concealing their faces simultaneously bend together and apart. Zdeněk Tmej, better known for the photographs he took while working in a forced labor camp during the Second World War, also photographed the Czech Song and Dance troupe for over 30 years. In his vintage print, a dancer kicks her bright slippered foot straight off the stage towards the viewers below. Paul Himmel, who photographed for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar in the late 1940s through the 1960s caught two ballet dancers mid flight. Blurred, they resemble an explosion of fireworks. Elliott Erwitt presents a group of well-dressed proper young children learning the art of the Foxtrot, while Larry Fink shows a seasoned socialite firmly gripping his wife to his chest while he grins with glee at a Museum of Modern Art fundraiser. Bruce Davidson's East Harlem couple sways to the sounds from a jukebox while Yuichi Hibi's pair intimately embraces in a slow dance.

Finally, a woman, praising the Lord with eyes closed, offers hope to all in the cover image from Thomas Roma's "Come Sunday" series.

[Image: Lisette Model (1945)]