And now Barnum was without his Juba dancer. Williams was Bahamian-born, a strikingly handsome man when he wasn’t in cork. “What I’m realizing about her,” McDonald said, “is that I don’t have to go searching as far out, to find the roots of her character, as I thought I would. He had fought to open doors: Others would enjoy walking through them. “Shuffle” seemed at times to have one foot stuck in the mire of a murkier racial past, even as it strode boldly forward with the other. They called him Juba, that’s how good he was. For the last few months, he’d worked pretty much exclusively as a choreographer and would stay in that role for months to come as he conceived and staged a wildly ambitious revival of “Shuffle Along,” one of the most significant musicals of the 20th century. Still, Rudin was at the helm, part of another old story and history — Jewish producer, black talent, a zone of cultural interface that has exerted tremendous force in American culture and made beautiful things happen and always been messy and uneven. They wouldn’t be claiming power. But why worry about that?” She flickered the ashes from her cigarette with an air of nonchalance. It’s not the slouch of an old man, not stiff — or the diffident slouch of a young one, for that matter — it’s somehow part of his movement, closer maybe to how boxers crouch, but relaxed. It broke boundaries, no doubt, but mainly through its success, and by having great pop tunes. Some would dance; others would simply present themselves. Williams and Walker were so successful that they changed the profile of black entertainment in America, vastly for the better, but also in ways that pushed up against boundaries. Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (Original, Musical, Broadway) opened in New York City Apr 28, 2016 and played through Jul 24, 2016. Now the act is almost irreparable, but they do say that if you quickly pick up the pieces of the broken glass and look in them three times over your left shoulder, the spell is somewhat broken and no ill luck can happen. In 1900, they did “Sons of Ham,” a sort of variety-farce, full of “oddities hard to describe.” It boasted a “carload of special scenery and electrical effects,” as well as “a chorus of handsome colored girls, 30 in number.” Besides that, it featured “a company of picked talent,” among whom was one Aida Overton. Also here, in the corner opposite where I sat, stood Daryl Waters, who worked on the music for both “Jelly’s Last Jam” and “Noise/Funk.” And starring in this show — although she wasn’t there that day, except as an energy — was Audra McDonald, the powerhouse actress-singer and Winner of Six Tony Awards, a phrase that has begun to trail her name like a title. . “Shuffle Along” is often called the first successful all-black musical. But that, I suppose, is when it becomes good to know Savion Glover. I watched her rehearse the piece at the beginning of this year. Movie night at the Obamas’, curated by Mitch McConnell. It never hurts to know Scott Rudin, either. SHUFFLE ALONG has a new book and is directed by George C. Wolfe, choreographed by Savion Glover, and stars six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, Tony ⦠He was better. And yet, that Rudin’s machinations helped to make it possible, to assemble all that talent and power in the service of resurrecting a crucial piece of African-American history, reminded me of an uncomfortable fact, namely that Rudin was caught two years ago in the Sony email hack making racist jokes. Lottie Gee liked to tell people that she was from Kentucky — and it’s true, she grew up in a house in Newport, Ky. — but Newport is a satellite town to Cincinnati, and that’s what she was in reality, a Cincinnati girl (like Mamie Smith, who grew up an all-but-literal stone’s throw across the Ohio River from Gee and would probably have known her as a girl). Meanwhile, no matter what you did, some seams were liable to show. He is surrounded by fifteen helpful harmonists. They resolve their differences in a rousing, humorous 20-minute fight scene. As the comedy musical unfolds, a do-gooder named Harry Walton steps and and removes both men from the scene, claiming the love interest in the process. A newspaper’s depiction of Juba performing at Vauxhall Gardens in London in 1848. The new Broadway musical Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed ends its run July 24 after 38 previews and 100 regular performances.. The report concludes menacingly: “These young men are likely to wake up with a start some morning.”. The blacks-in-blackface tradition, which lasted more than a century in this country, strikes most people, on first hearing of its existence, as deeply bizarre, and it was. That’s the world of “variety” shows, mixed shows made up of several brief acts, that dominated the American entertainment world during roughly the half-century that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries, from, say, 1880 to 1930. Williams went on after Walker’s death to a whole third phase in his career, starring in the Ziegfeld Follies. A strange story, but this is a strange country. All we know about him is that he was a brilliant dancer — an artist, not just an athlete — and that he was the first black entertainer to perform before large crowds of whites in a context that transcended the informal. The show kicked off a renaissance of interest in a form that Glover himself describes as “almost lost,” birthing a generation of what he called, with no modesty but no inaccuracy either, “Noise/Funk babies.” The show had paid a deep and very explicit homage to the black American cultural past and to Glover’s own teachers in the tap field, both the mentors he’d known in life, like Gregory Hines, and the ancestors, the inventors and innovators, people like Bill (Bojangles) Robinson or Ulysses (Slow Kid) Thompson, a spellbinding dancer who performed in the original “Shuffle.” He got his nickname from his ability to perform wild dance moves in completely credible-looking slow motion, which audiences had just become familiar with through the movies. “They weren’t savvy that way. The launching point, as the title suggests is Shuffle Along, the 1921 tuner by Aubrey Lyles and F.E. Patting Juba was seen as a black thing, even if there were Irish and Scottish tinges, so Diamond performed it that way. His beautiful partner for the walk laughs delightedly at him. Nor an arbitrary one in the context of Wolfe’s career. Those were what made the show go: syncopation, fire, artistry. There was an inescapable sense that they’d be letting down more than themselves if they failed. Only a caption tells us which is him. So, Barnum had this Irish kid, John Diamond, doing Juba dancing in his shows. They could not, that is, appear as themselves. One of the first times the word “tap,” as a technical term of dance, showed its head was in an advertisement for a match, where we are told a judge will be present to “count the taps.”. Or the Sixty-Third Street Music Hall, as it was more properly called. A small donation would help us keep this accessible to all. He’d end up with a vaudeville show. She was in Baltimore with a show called “Harlem Vanities.” An anonymous (tragically anonymous) reporter with the local Afro-American caught up with her and did the best article ever written about her, one of just a couple that bring you close. It was dark and gray and pounding rain that day, as hard as I had ever seen it rain in New York. African American History: Research Guides & Websites, Global African History: Research Guides & Websites, African Americans and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Alma Stephenson Dever Page on Afro-britons, With Pride: Uplifting LGBTQ History On Blackpast, Preserving Martin Luther King County’s African American History, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Envoys, Diplomatic Ministers, & Ambassadors, African American Newspapers, Magazines, and Journals. She lived into her 80s, remaining much loved and respected in the arts community of Los Angeles, where she died in 1973. This happened most often when Glover would spot a mistake or something in his own choreography that he didn’t like and clap his hands to make everything quiet. George C. Wolfe watching a “Shuffle Along” rehearsal this month. This footage was more than rare — it was a peek through a keyhole many had assumed was forever blocked. It was when she understood that the diva, as a type, operates principally out of fear, that Gee’s behavior opened up to her somewhat. Shuffle Along opened at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., in late March, 1921 for two weeks. Everybody knows it’s terrible.” Because it was racist? The Source. I was tempted to read his death, at least as it related to “Shuffle Along,” as a tragedy. They couldn’t be saved with historical buttressing, or even historical reimagining. It is perhaps fortunate that there are dead intervals between the songs of “Shuffle Along.” Because some of the music is as insidious and heady as absinthe. 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