2014 Moments

Well, it looks like I'm a monthly blogger!  I normally do not do New Years resolutions, but I do hope to post more regularly on both of my blogs, so here is my December posting and the last one of 2014 (there are only 5!).  The best to you all in 2015, and beyond.

Last night I saw "Selma", a fine film that reminded me of the time of the 1960s and resonates (as has been mentioned a lot now) so much with what is happening right now.  I watched some interviews with the star of the film, David Oyelowo, who talked about the need for love to connect us all, something he felt strongly as he worked on "channelling" MLK for the film.  It reflects what I have been thinking a lot about these days in terms of connecting with the true nature of things, whether it be people, plants, animals, things, thoughts.  Connecting, listening and healing.  Embrace the moments.  Not easy, but worthwhile work, which I continue to learn how to do.  Here are some moments from last year that were powerful for me.

Sitting at the memorial in Newark for Amiri Baraka, seeing an Honor Guard escort his casket in.  Watching the streaming memorial for Ruby Dee with Wynton Marsallis wailing his horn, New Orleans style.  Remembering seeing Maya Angelou waiting at Newark Penn Station years ago.  Shock about Robin Williams.  Sadness and shock about musician and former colleague Chris White.  Goodbye to Carl of NY Tap Extravaganza and the union, Big 6, that my dad also belonged to.  Goodbye to Bunny, who can now really dance for the Lord, with Duke.  "You know how to whistle, don't you Steve?  You just put your lips together and blow."  "On The Good Ship Lollipop."  Judy has her buddy now to put on shows.  He couldn't breathe, he was just walking down the stairs, his hands were up, they were just sitting in the car, they were just shopping in the mall or in school or....

Final, final grades in at Bloomfield College, with pride in my students' work and the beginning of my own new semesters.  Learning and sharing the funny and physical with some great talents in South Paris, Maine, organized by a dear old friend.  Creative conversations with good friends of all ages.  Finding out more of my family tree, with more to come. A September day in my house, sharing food and good times with the worlds of people in my life.  Dinners and visits here with more of  "my people".  Warm holiday times with extended family in Orient and Laurelton.  Negotiating my evolving relationship with the "home place" that is in my soul....New York City.  Toured the Old Black NYC of lower Manhattan.  Taking in the beauty of sky, water, nature, and pace of where I live, near the Raritan Bay.  Kayak Joy.  Blueberry picking.  A new old kitchen cabinet unit for my garage...and my djembe is fixed.  Snapping more pictures with my eye than with my camera.  Trying to create pictures with my words.  

MuDan Banquet Hall, Lunar Banquet.

Tap dancing at a Chinese Lunar Banquet.  Working again with Roscoe, to get him moving with Miss Marie.  Knocked out by Savion and "Om". Knocked out again, as Toshi led "Deep Are The Roots", with Nona killin' it!  Thrilled in my seat, as the open rehearsal of NY Phil playing Bolero and Aaron Copland got into my bones.  Digging George talk about Funkadelic and his book on LiveStream.  Cheered with others, led by Carmen, while in front of The Majestic, as lights dimmed on Broadway for Geoffrey.  Listened as Deborah and Dudley talked about dance and Alvin.  Enjoying my friends sing and dance.  Enthralled and elated in my heart, watching rare footage of Bert Williams at MOMA.  Joined MOMA.  Then saw Matisse and odd 3-D Godard.  Inspired by "Boyhood" and Netflixed Linklater's other films.  

Noticing each day, I look more and more like my father.

Bert Williams

I went to the movies last Saturday.

At the foundation of my skills as a performer is the art of mime.  I grew up seeing people on TV like, Sid Caesar, Dick Van Dyke, Joan Davis, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball and others who were all adept at communicating very well with their bodies.  The only clown I ever liked was Emmet Kelly, whose famous act in the circus was trying to sweep a spotlight away that was the arena floor.  He transfixed me was a kid, I couldn't take my eyes off of him as he silently did his task.  Those were the seeds planted in me to eventually study and become a mime in the early 1970's.  Even though I wound up seeing Marcel Marceau and liked what he did, I had no interest in going to France to study because I felt more influenced by American vaudeville.  In fact, the mime group I helped form did all kinds of vaudeville like stuff and often thought we were one of the noisiest mime groups around.  Yes, we talked if we deemed it necessary.  At the time, there was the beginning of these terms "New Mime" and "New Vaudeville" and a lot of young folks were doing performing under that banner, but I did not know of many black performers doing it.  The only other black mimes I knew of were Billy Banner and Judith Jackson and later met Alde Lewis, through Pepsi Bethel, when I think Alde was doing some mime.  I definitely was not aware of any historical black performers of mime or pantomime (still not sure how different those terms are) until I found out about Bert Williams.

I had been doing a lot of research about early black performers and knew a bit about Bert Williams and his partner of many years, George Walker.  These were men who were part of an era of black theater artists at the transition into the 20th century who were doing a lot to affect the American stage.  People like Black Patti, Bob Cole, Will Marion Cook, J. Rosamond Johnson, James Reese Europe and more, who came out of minstrelsy and the blackface tradition began by white male performers. But when I found out more about Williams and particularly of his work with the Ziegfeld Follies after George Walkers death, I learned of his great skills in pantomime.  Putting on a mask, whether it be clown makeup, white face mime or the blackface intrigued me in terms of what it could do for a person creatively.  One doesn't necessarily hide behind a mask when performing, but rather is in a way liberated behind the mask to thrust a hidden part of his or her personality or observations of human behavior onto the stage.  My understanding is that Bert Willilams, a lightskinned man from The Bahamas, originally did not perform in blackface, but put it on one day to experiment and found that it unleased his comic skills. The character he developed, as he called it, was an everyday man who always had things going wrong for him.  He became the first black star to be part of the Ziegfeld Follies, where he once played the father of white entertainer, Eddie Cantor, who late wrote that Williams was the best teacher he ever had in comedy.  As a child, Buster Keaton even imitated him.  Here was a role model for me and I read what I could about him and even did a thesis on him and Stepin Fetchit for my MA degree.  

The only footage of Bert Williams that I was aware of was a 1916 short film he did called "A Natural Born Gambler" which I bought (16mm print for $400 in the days before YouTube) and studied. In it was his famous poker routine which he had done on stage and has been done over years by various performers, myself included, as an homage to him.  The film was one of what I think was to be more, but no more were done other than one called "Fish", apparently because of concerns whether many films with a black star would go over in certain parts of the country.  So, I just watched "Gambler" when I could to study him, thinking it was all there was available to see him in action.  In recent years a bunch of his singing was made available on CD and that was great.  But then I read a few weeks ago that the Museum of Modern Art had in its possession some rare footage of him and other black performers from a film called, "Lime Kiln Club Field Day" that was started in 1913 and was going to show it to the public!  I flipped out. That was huge to me.  Particularly at this point in time as I've been reflecting on my own history in media and performing.  In recent weeks I've been to events celebrating achievements by black performers in the past 30 to 50 years and seen some of these people who ooze with history and survival.  I had to see this material at MOMA.

First of all, even if you missed the screening, which was Saturday, November 8th, you can see the free exhibit about Bert Williams and the found footage at MOMA until March 1915....I urge you to go and in it you will see some of the footage.  It's hard to describe the effect it had on me as I watched it.  It was material from a film that was not completed but contained a large predominately black cast and was shot in a studio in The Bronx and on location in New Jersey.  It is believed that most of the cast were appearing in a stage show at the time, I think "Darktown Follies" was its name.  The people who did the restoration also went to great lengths to identify some of the more prominent performers in the film and they even had a lip reader translating what some of the improvised dialogue was, remember this is a silent film.  Of the many things that struck me was a reaffirmation of how good and funny a silent film can be, the packed house was cracking up and the best humor was in the nuances of facial expression and body attitude, not in over the top slapstick.  It was refreshing to see black folks just being people, dressed up and living their lives.  There was evidence of vernacular

Bert Williams in a scene from "Lime Kiln Club Field Day"

dance seen that was very familiar to me and a breadth of a whole world in images that evoked in me memories of stories my parents told me of growing up in the early 20th century (they being born in 1905 and 1906).  Even with this, there were divides in who got to do what in the film.  The female love interest was light skinned and her suitors, other than Bert in makeup, were not too dark with apparent "good hair".  The darker skinned women and men were more often exaggerated in their roles and movements and you could see some cast members were in blackface and some were not.  But overall I was sitting there spellbound.  I was feeling all kinds of stuff of connection to a tradition culturally and performance wise and to the art of film.  My one wish was that there could have been a lot of really young people watching this to let them see some history.  What got me the most was at the end.  The curtains closed on the screen and then the piano accompanist, Donald Sosin who did a great job, stood up and raised his hands toward the curtained screen to lead the audience in enthusiastic applause that lasted for while.  Here, finally was a full house giving Bert Williams his due as a film star, 100 years after the fact.  One of the hosts of the evening said it is believed the film wasn't finished because "Birth of A Nation" had come out and created such a reaction that the filmmakers felt people weren't ready to see a film populated with a range of black characters who are not all stereotyped.  But one wonders what would have happened if Williams could have had the film opportunities that Chaplin had.   As much as I love Charlie Chaplin, Bert Williams would have given him a run for his money!

The MOMA exhibit is called, 100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History.  Click on the exhibit title for information and go and see it....now!

Below is Bert Williams in "A Natural Gambler" with the famous poker routine at the end.

If you want to know more about him and the other people I mentioned in this post......Look It Up!

Look up

On East 14th Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues, is Palladium Hall which is a residence for students of New York University.  It got its name from The Palladium, a concert hall (and later a nightclub) located on the same spot that functioned from the 1960s to the 1980s and was torn down in 1997 to make way for the NYU building.  But before it was The Palladium, it was the Academy of Music, a movie theater that opened in 1927.  It was built across the street from where an opera house also called the Academy of Music existed, from 1854 to 1926.  That opera house also presented theater, fairs, exhibitions and many other types of events, eventually winding up offering vaudeville.

I remember that almost until it was demolished, that second Academy of Music had an old faded billboard on its side that advertised vaudeville shows.  It read something like "3 Shows A Day -  25 cents".  It fascinated me to see this little bit of history every time I looked up at it in the 70s and 80s.  That billboard stayed there for awhile even when the Academy transformed into The Palladium and then was covered with an ad for the Palladium, if I remember correctly.  Anyway, as someone always interested in "Old New York", I have always liked looking up at old billboards.  But in recent years there are fewer and fewer of those and the technology for billboard making has quite changed.  They are no longer painted, but computer generated to be put on large "canvasses" to be hung or made as huge electronic LED panels with ever changing information.

To sort of record and hold on to an old tradition,  I started a mini project for myself 5 years ago in which I just started taking pictures (from street level) of old billboards that I noticed in and around the New York City/New Jersey area.  I want to find as many as possible while they last and one advantage of all the buildings being torn down to make way for these new monstrosities going up (too opinionated?) is that often the side of an old building remaining will reveal a billboard that has been hidden.  Below is a small sampling of what I have found.  Can you recognize or guess the locations?  Only one is fairly obvious.

All text and photographs: © 2014 Hank Smith.  All rights reserved.  

No use without written permission.

Ferragosto...returning

For nearly 30 years I have resided in New Jersey, but I tell people I will never be a "Jersey Boy" because deep in my heart I am a New York City Kid, and even deeper....I'm a Bronx Guy.

Photo:  Hank Smith

I grew up in that borough, living in three different neighborhoods.  My first home was actually on Home St. in the Morrisania area, also known as the South Bronx.  My second was on E. 187th St., in
the Fordham section, and the third move was to Bronxwood Ave. at Gun Hill Road.  Mom, dad and I just kept going further up north.  I have memories of all those locations, but the strongest are from those years at 187th St. (1955 to 1962), when I was between the ages of 9 and 16 .  Those are crucial years of development, the transition from childhood into pre-adulthood, a time when I really started to shape my sensibilities and world view.  It was also an interesting time in history, with the civil rights movement getting into full swing, classic TV shows airing, and some great music for us young people being turned out.  A time just before the big cultural revolution of "The 60's" was about to hit, and before the darkness of war and assassinations affected us.  I returned to that neighborhood a few Sundays ago for the first time in a few years, to attend the Ferragosto festival.

Our home on E. 187th St. was between Park Ave. and Third Ave., in a neighborhood populated mainly by working class Irish and Italian Americans.  Our previous neighborhood (Home St.) was also working class, but predominately African American.  We were one of the few Black families in our new neighborhood, living on the border of what is considered the Belmont section,  which is east across 3rd Ave.  Up a few blocks is Arthur Ave. and where it intersects with E. 187th St. is basically the nexus of the Little Italy section of The Bronx that is sometimes, as I remember, euphemistically referred to as "Arthur Ave."  If I went west of where I lived, and a bit north, I entered the area of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse which had the big stores, movie theaters and places of note, including; Alexander's Department Store, Loews Paradise, RKO Fordham, Woolworth's, and Poe's Cottage (as in Edgar Alan Poe).  The Grand Concourse at this time was middle class and had a large Jewish population.  I spent more of my time going to the Fordham area than the Arthur Ave. area, but I did spend time at Arthur Ave.  One thing I remember were the places there that had live chickens.  But the big thing was, and I'm gonna sound like an old fogey, but in my day we MADE the things we

played with and the major DIY project was making a scooter.  You need skates (the kind that attach to shoes), an 2x4 piece of wood, bottle caps, 2 strips of light wood, and.....a good crate.  Getting the right sized crate for your height was crucial because it would be attached to the 2x4 to be the front of the scooter (see photo).  On the top of the crate you attached the two strips at an angle to be handles, on the front of the crate went the bottle caps in your own design, and on the bottom front and back of the 2x4, trimmed down for the right length, would be the two parts of the broken up up roller skates, which had to be ball bearing to really be effective.  So, going to the markets/stores in and around Arthur Ave. was the place to get the crates.  I was usually lucky to right the right one because I was tall for my age.

One of the reasons I have strong memories of this time and neighborhood is that this is when I really became aware of race and culture.  Even though we were one of the few black families there, I had lots of friends and we basically all got along well, in fact my best friend was Michael Vecchio who lived on E. 186th St.  Boy, did his mom cook!  But I did once hear a kid call out to me and my mom "Hey, blackie", thinking he was calling a cat and then realizing what he meant.  I did get beat up once at recess in JHS for no "apparent" reason, but I knew why.  I was reluctant to approach any girls I liked because interracial dating wasn't completely supported then and my dad used to cut my hair because he didn't think anyone in the neighborhood could cut "our" hair.  But for some reason that never really got to me, probably because we still maintained connections to our old neighborhood.  I still went to church there, visited friends there, went to parties there....and girls!  So, I was not lacking in the social world.  The schools I went to had kids who were Jewish, Italian, Irish and some Puerto Rican.  I got exposed to some of those cultures when befriending those kids and I think it broadened my base of how I saw the world.  I was interested in it all, even had a Pen Pal from Scandinavia.  My adult travels to Japan, Ireland, Mexico, Canada, Sweden, Denmark and across the states most likely were fueled by those childhood years.  I also got very interested in electronics and making things at home.  The local Lafayette store was a popular destination for me.  So, needless to say, this area represents a richness to me.  I returned.

After getting off the Metro North train at Fordham Road, I decided to walk through some of the streets that I trod years ago.  First, I crossed Webster Ave. and walked up Fordham Road for a bit trying to remember some of the stores long gone on that street.  "Where would Cousin's Record store, the Army Navy store or the Valentine theater have been?", I wondered.  I went along Marion Ave., going south toward 187th St., approaching my old elementary school, which had been PS 85.  Once at the school, I went down the hill of 187th St., the very hill I fell down on at age 11, cutting my lip badly requiring stitches.  Crossing Webster Ave., I went west toward my old house.  All along the way I saw the changes, bodegas replacing candy stores and grocery stores of my day, many churches more frequently than not being Spanish, apartment buildings having gates covering what I remember as open courtyards leading into main entrances, and buildings standing in what were empty lots where I and my friends played.  But the Carvel ice cream stand I remembered on Webster Ave. was still there, exactly as I remembered it! 

I got to the house we had called home, stopped and stood for awhile, just looking at it and the top floor windows where we lived.....then headed up 187th St. to the festival.  Ferragosto is a Italian tradition that recognizes the end of the harvest season with a celebration that includes music and

food.  I was hungry and once I hit Arthur Ave., I got an eggplant hero at Tino's Deli, then a small pasta dish at a stand in the festival before heading into the Arthur Ave. Market, a wonderful place full of food and also cigars, which are made from scratch in a spot right when you enter!  The street got progressively more crowded with smells you could die from, emanating from all the stands.  A

The 70's Project and dancing.  Photo: Hank Smith

Commedia Dell 'Arte group roamed the street, interacting with the crows and I just people watched a lot.  The high point for me was the music.  On main stage was an ongoing line up of different groups and individuals, but two groups I really liked.  The 70's Project was a group that not only played music of the Disco era, but also of 50's and 60's, and when they did "The Wanderer", I went right back in time.  The time warp continued with Steve Lippia and his 10 piece Orchestra.  He was one of

Steve Lippia and Orchestra.  Photo: Hank Smith

those singers who does a Sinatra like thing, which I don't normally like (you can't duplicate the kid
from Hoboken) but this guy was good.  He managed to be himself and not "copy" Sinatra, but the band he had was what made it great.  This group was swinging and had the crowd up dancing.  Again....memories through music.  When it was time to head back to Metro North, I got a cannoli at Egidio Pastry Shop and decided to walk by the building that was JHS 45, where I went to school and was also the alma mater of Dion and the Belmonts.  It is a different school now, but around the corner was the same White Castle hamburger joint that we often got our lunches from during school....over 50 years ago.

The former Paul Hoffman JHS 45.  Photo: Hank Smith

It was a memorable day, but as I got on the train I realized I had a Jones for something else.  I got off the train at 125th St. and got a slice of German Chocolate Cake and a slice of Lemon Coconut Cake to take home.  The great thing about NYC, you cannot be culturally deprived!

Celebration of an artist and a time

When I grew up, I loved hearing stories told to me by my parents about the shows, music and performing artists they enjoyed during the 1930's and 40's.  I also heard similar tales from tap dance veterans I came to know in my adulthood.  They all talked about Ellington, Ella, Armstrong, Basie, Bojangles, Calloway, Harlem venues and more, saying that those were good times.  I would think, "Wish I could take a time machine back for one day to experience some of this".  But these days I'm realizing that I lived through, and got involved in, some good times myself back in the 1960's and 70's.  There was an avalanche of dance, music, theater, performance and art that was pretty damn good and in many ways shaped who I am today.  I was reminded of this last Saturday at an event held at St. Peters Church in New York City.

  

Fred Benjamin was a dancer/choreographer who passed away last December at the age of 69 and the event at St. Peters was a celebration of his life.  Fred came to New York City from Massachusetts in the early 1960's to pursue a career in dance and wound up studying and/or working with Talley Beatty, Claude Thompson, June Taylor, Jamie Rodgers and Michael Bennett, among others.  In 1968, while performing in the all black cast version of "Hello Dolly", starring Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway (a great show that I saw), he started the Fred Benjamin Dance Company, which stayed in existence until 2006.  He also choreographed commissioned works for many dance companies, choreographed for theatre and taught around the world.

I did not know him very well, but met him when his company did one of their first performances in a small midtown space called The Cubiculo, where I often ran lights for the shows there.  After that, I saw him at Clark Center, a dance space where he taught and I took classes with Pepsi Bethel, Thelma Hill, Charles "Cookie" Cook and others.  This was in the 1970's, when dance was exploding all over the place in NYC in performances and classes.  You could see and study just about any type of dance form, and not spend much for it!  Also, exciting things were happening in theater, experimental performance and the art world.  Not to mention the introduction of relatively inexpensive video equipment that sparked public access TV, video art, and video documentation.  In the midst of all of this, Fred was one of the many creative people doing their thing and gaining a major following.

Saturday night, many people who remember that time showed up for his special night.  As I mingled among people and said hello, I would hear around me more than once a variation of, "Oh my God!  I can't believe it's you!".  The cliche that it often takes a funeral or memorial to bring people "out of the woodwork" to show up is really true.  I could feel the energy and flow of memories around the reception room as people socialized before the actual tribute began.  It was nice to see the vibrancy in all of us Baby Boomer and Beyond folks appreciating each other.  There was a lot of history in that room.

The Master of Ceremony was Bruce Hawkins, who had worked with Fred.  He set a tone for an evening of true celebration and remembrance....and a whole bunch of humor.  Many people spoke, sharing stories about Fred (who, like all of us, was not perfect) and the people he worked with and affected.  One of the things I particularly liked as the part of the evening called, "Fred and Black Choreographers" which mentioned most of the other black choreographers who were active at that time...and there were so many!  The audience included some heavy weights too, like Loretta Abbott, Michelle Murray and Ty Stephens.  I  learned so much that night and Mercedes Ellington said at one point that many of the younger generation of performers in shows like "The Lion King" and others with predominately black casts need to know some of this history and know of the people like Fred who paved the way for them to be on Broadway. 

As I sat toward the back, listening to the speakers, looking at the attendees, hearing the music in the dance clips shown and enjoying the "call and response" between the podium and the audience (this WAS in a church!) I felt full with memories, but also full of the Now.  Here we were to remember, but also I believe to get a charged boost to do whatever we need to do to continue our creative and personal lives.  A night like last Saturday was about more than Fred, it was to acknowledge what some many of us are trying to do.  So, THiS also a good time, because we can make it so, and we will carry on and pass on what we have to offer.  It is needed.