The time is right for dancing in the streets

Mary Beth Yakoubian leads a group of cloggers in a rehearsal for their post-Dance Parade performance at Washington Square Park this Saturday, between 4 and 8 p.m. The dancers are among 8,000 performers expected at the Dance Parade, the first-ever New York dance festival meant to both celebrate the many styles of dance in the city, and bring attention to what many feel is New York City’s outdated cabaret law.

By Sandra Larriva

On Saturday, more than 150 dance organizations and approximately 8,000 individual performers will join forces to parade from 32nd Street and Broadway all the way to Washington Square Park for the city’s first annual Dance Parade. The festival promises to show the world, and New York lawmakers, that dance is an expressive form of art and that it should be legal in more venues around the city.

The all-volunteer non-profit behind the festival, Dance Parade Inc., was created by Greg Miller six months ago. A dancer himself, Miller envisioned the all-day event as a way of celebrating the artistic expression and cultural diversity of dance. His core helpers include the inventor of “the first chip-based hand-held electronic computer,” a jazz and hip-hop dancer, an audio engineer and sound producer from Denmark, and the chief Administration officer for Tri-State Biodiesel, a provider of clean, renewable Biodiesel fuel in New York.

The parade is also an attempt to educate people about the city’s decades-old cabaret law. Enacted in 1926, the cabaret law aimed to prevent interracial mixing in Harlem jazz clubs. Today, it continues to forbid any type of dancing in places that do not hold a cabaret license. According to Metropolis in Motion, another well-known group advocacy for the city’s freedom to dance, amendments to the cabaret law have reduced the number of licensed dance-friendly venues from 12,000 in 1961 to 244 a year ago. According to Miller, this number drops by 15 every three months.

Metropolis in Motion, a parade participant, is made up of a group of activists who came together in 2006 with the purpose of legalizing dancing in the city. During the parade they will be hosting a traveling jail cell (disco ball included) that will inform people about the infamous law. Recently, the group assisted City Councilmember Alan Gerson in drafting a revision to the law that argues that a license should not be required for clubs holding fewer than 200 people. The idea is to draw attention to the law before the state’s highest appellate court rules on a decision made in February that fails to recognize dance as a form of expression.

On Saturday, professional and amateur dancers and musicians throughout the city, the state, and even the country will gather to show New York lawmakers how expressive dance can be.

The procession, which begins at 1 p.m., will include floats and performances on the street, with participants stopping every five minutes or so to dance. When the parade ends at 4 p.m., performances will continue in Madison Square Park and Washington Square Park until 8. Dance Parade Inc. estimates that 49 dance styles will be represented on Saturday. Even if no one is flying in from abroad to attend the event, the selection of participants is international in scope. Authentic dances from the Amazon, the Andes, and Afro-Peruvian communities, Cameroon, Panama, Greece and Scotland are only a fraction of the event’s intercontinental array.

Stepping Out Studios, a Chelsea-based dance school and an official sponsor of the parade, will be moving to the beats of salsa music this coming Saturday. Suzan Damsky, the studio’s co-director, sees the parade as “a great way for New York to showcase all the different forms and styles that exist” and wishes that the cabaret law “be changed for the positive.” The team at PMT Dance Studio, another Chelsea-based participant, will perform to a mix of contemporary music and salsa. Pavan Thimmaiah, PMT’s director, sees the parade as “a good marketing tool for the studio and the company” and was not aware of the event’s involvement with the cabaret law when deciding to join in.

Axe Brasil Entertainment, another New York-based dance group with an international flair, was asked by the Dance Parade’s organizers to perform in Madison Square Park as part of the post-parade show. Silvana Marquina, the group’s artistic director, and six other performers will dress in traditional Rio de Janeiro carnaval costumes and dance samba to the sound of live Brazilian music and percussion.

Marquina was born in Argentina and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. One of her motivations to move to the United States 10 years ago was to learn more about other dances. “What we do is a hard profession. To be able to interact with all of the people that study dance in New York is a great opportunity,” says Marquina, who has performed with Aretha Franklin, Wyclef Jean and Jennifer Lopez, among others. She is currently a choreographer at the music club SOB’s and a dance instructor at Djoniba Dance & Drum Center, another participant in the upcoming parade.

Marquina, like some of the other participants, chose to join the parade because of her passion for dance, not knowing that one of the organization’s aims is to legitimize dance as a communicative, social form of expression. Upon finding this out, however, she expressed that New York would be a “much happier city if they let artists express themselves … [and] reach the spirit of the people. It is very important that art be more free, given more space.” As a young dancer in Brazil, Marquina was used to performing in alternative spaces. Upon arriving in New York, she realized that “even getting a permit to dance was difficult.”

Chelsea’s Gotham Swing Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of West Coast Swing in the greater New York area, is also participating in the parade. In its early stages, the club was under the wing of former director John Festa, who began organizing weekly West Coast swing dances in New York City back in 1992. According to Amber Henrie, the organization’s vice-president and publicity chair, “the dance was moved to various locations because restaurants and bars [would close] and the cabaret law made it difficult for him to keep the dance going, but he somehow always did.”

One of the club’s main reasons for getting involved in the parade is the legalization of dancing. “The club has been affected by the cabaret law for years because it’s very expensive to find places to dance in. There are night clubs, but other than Swing 46 there is no club that focuses on swing the way Copacabana or LQ focuses on salsa,” says Henrie. By participating, the club hopes to bring more awareness to the social and performance arts. “Our purpose is to help continue West Coast Swing as an art form and do our best to let the general public know what it is,” commented Henrie.

West Coast Swing, also known as street swing, is a form of folk American swing dance derived from the Lindy Hop that began in California. This Saturday, about 40 to 60 people will perform the bounce-free dance while moving down Broadway and Fifth Avenue, eventually reaching Madison Square Park. A music cart will follow the dancers for the duration of the parade. A few other dance groups, such as Chelsea’s Dance Manhattan, the Pyrate Sisters and the Brooklyn Bombshells, will also add swing to their dance repertoire when they perform this Saturday.

Another type of American folk dance that will be represented in the parade is clogging. Mary Beth Yakoubian, a clogger since the mid-1980s and director of City Stompers, has been coaching a group of six for their upcoming post-parade performance at Washington Square Park. Her students will be dressed in black with lime-green bandanas, and will be dancing to “Money Musk,” a traditional bluegrass tune.

Yakoubian has been teaching clogging at Chelsea Studios on 26th Street for almost two years. She saw the opportunity for her students to participate in the parade as “a no-brainer, a fun thing to do at no charge.” While she admits that trying to change the cabaret law was not one of the reasons why she got involved, Yakoubian considers it a “silly law” that prohibits her clogging group from dancing at venues where they have been asked to perform.

Jacqueline Cohen, a New York clubgoer since age 13; Greta Tristram, a Chicago native and clog dancer for a year and a half; and Bob Hilliard, who began dancing with the gay and lesbian dance club Times Squares in the 1990s, are all students of Yakoubian’s. According to Cohen, people have a narrow idea of what dance is. She sees the parade as an opportunity to dance, but also for people to recognize how may dance styles exist and to share the conviction that “everybody is a dancer.” Regarding her views on the cabaret law, Cohen recalls a time when she was at a New York lounge and was asked to stop dancing because it was not allowed. “In Brazil and Africa people dance as part of their culture. In SOME PARTS OF New York City, if you dance and attract attention, the police will tell you to stop,” says Cohen.

This coming Saturday could be the first step toward a significant change in a law that dates back to the beginning of last century and affects every New Yorker and its millions of annual visitors. Says Suzan Damsky of Stepping Out Studios, “Considering that New York is the dance capital of the world, a dance parade is overdue.”

For information on the parade’s route, visit www.danceparade.org.