Hi, I'm Anqoinette Crosby and welcome to Artico, art in your community.

And speaking of community, we are doing our part to social distance because of COVID-19, so that's why I'm coming to you from my home.

I want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy all the great stories and talented people we have in store for you, up next on Artico.

♪♪ ♪♪ ANQOINETTE: We see it as a popular tourist destination, but did you know Alexandria's scenic waterfront was one of the largest slave trading points in the country?

This shameful history is the inspiration for a new public art project.

It's called "Rot, Knits, Labors, Legacies".

This exhibit is part of old town Alexandria's Sight See Public Arts series.

We spoke with the creator of this captivating installation to find out more.

The name of the art installation is "Rot, Knits, Labors, Legacies".

And I felt it pretty much summarized both the sculptural work as well as the ground work.

Rot is sort of rending and forming things through sort of resistance.

Knits is simultaneously representing the ground plane, which looks as quilted, you know, the African American quilting tradition.

But also to knit is to man-knit bones together.

Labor, of course, is both labor of work and the enslaved.

And then, legacies is at both the story of the enslaved and free black community as sort of the history of Alexandria is all one legacy, they're not separate.

The silhouettes are facing to the water both of a formal reason, it opens out to the expanse of water, but also represents, you know, resistance and resilience as well as kind of freedom.

Each of the silhouettes feature a different prominent industry throughout the history of Alexandria.

And also with the involvement with the enslaved and freed black communities.

And so, for the railroad, for instance is a kind of very crucial and important element during the Civil War for supplying troops behind enemy lines.

A lot of freed slaves worked on the railroad.

The fishing and ship figured heavily as well with -- within the African American and black community, and so, it just relates to these sort of synchronous histories.

I wanted to have sort of two parts, installation between the scepters and then the ground plane, so that they're situated within the quilt, almost like blocks, you know, the various quilt blocks.

And within that tradition a lot of times the quilt blocks told a particular story, was coded in a particular way to reference either history or some other narrative.

The quilted block pattern also features a series of stencils that refer both to Alexandria's history, as well as to its black community.

The materials used to create these silhouettes are three-quarters inch aluminum water jet cuts.

And the bases are eighth inch aluminum around them, and aluminum frame, and they're powder coated with three different materials, sorry, three different colors.

I was inspired to create this art installation through a series of both visits to the sites, as well as several meetings with individuals from Alexandria's historic community, as well as visiting the Franklin and Armfield House and learning more about the fact that this was pretty much the major site of domestic slave trade within the country.

I'm hoping that the public, first, just enjoys the sculptures.

Whatever I do, whether there's a particular narrative behind it, I like to create artwork that I find pleasing to the eye, you know, formally, aesthetically.

Then hopefully they, you know, learn more or kind of, you know, learn a little more about, you know, Alexandria's history.

ANQOINETTE: The Spanish ballroom at Glen Echo Park is a great place to swing by.

It's a beautifully restored 1933 Art Deco building and is listed on the Historic National Register.

So, if you like to Lindy Hop, Shag, or Charleston, there's arguably no better place to do it.

Glen Echo started hosting some swing dances at the very beginning of the big band era, all the greats played here.

Dances with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Glen Miller Orchestra.

The Glen Echo Ballroom, the structure as we see it now dates back to 1933.

Originally the ballroom was treated like another ride at the amusement park.

So, people would pay a dime and they would come in and dance.

And then they would clear the floor and you would -- if you wanted to dance again, you would pay another dime.

As far as I know, it's hosted social dances since the very beginning, since it was first built.

♪ I got that class and I got that style ♪ ♪♪ Swing dancing is any dance that is danced to swing music, which is kind of silly, but as we see it, swing is the music, it's the umbrella term for the style of music.

And there's a large family of dances that you dance to swing dancing, which include Charleston, Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Hand Dance, Carolina Shag.

Many, many different dances if you're into that category.

TOM: Turn your partner, box step, box step.

Open close.

WOMAN 1: My partner Tom likes to say swing is to dancing as jazz is to music.

You start with your basics structure and then you improvise and you interpret, and it's one of the things about it that's so nice is it's very personalized.

♪♪ TOM: There's three basic rhythm patterns, there's three count, six count, and Charleston, and all the swing dances evolved from the Charleston in the 1920's.

And by the time the 1920's comes around it's a very upright kind of "Great Gatsby-ish" era, kind of Charleston, from there it evolves into a more running and kicking style as the music changed.

The Charleston was very popular in the 1920's as the flapper era, and of course the Depression.

But 1927 is really year that it takes off.

In Harlem, during the Harlem renaissance, a guy named Shorty George Snowden was the best dancer in Harlem with his partner Big B.

And Shorty George was 5'2", Big B was 6'2".

And they were at the Savoy Ballroom, which was an amazing ballroom in Harlem.

It was considered the home of happy feet.

And everyone would go there to dance, and Shorty George was the best dancer.

And as this music was changing, his style of Charleston changed, and everybody would look at Short George and say, Shorty George, what is that cool thing you're doing?

And everybody wanted to do this dance called the Lindy Hop.

♪♪ TOM: Later on other people started to emulate his style and started to vary his style.

Early 1930's a young man by the name of Frankie Manning, who's pretty well known in this swing dance world was in a competition with Shorty George and did the first arial, so-called an air step.

And he flipped his parter over his back, and everybody went crazy.

That took the dance off in another direction, made it much more theatrical and it just spread like wildfire.

Everybody wanted to do it, not just the black kids in Harlem, but also the white kids who saw this.

WOMAN 1: As World War II came along, as GI's went overseas, they took the dance with them and spread it all over the world.

You can go to, you know, Singapore, called Swingapore.

You can go to Germany right now and rock that swing, they call it.

Seoul South Korea has 23 clubs that do nothing but swing dancing.

So, it's all over the world.

First time dancers who come to Glen Echo, we have a one-hour beginner lesson.

Our beginner lesson starts by presuming no prior knowledge.

We start with the basic rhythm, we go through a few moves, and if you don't have a partner, that's not a problem, we rotate partners.

WOMAN 1: So, people who are absolute novices and have never stepped on the dance floor before, all learn enough to have a fun evening dancing.

♪♪ TOM: You get to meet all these new people.

In the days before the internet this is how people would meet.

And we've had over 400 couples get married out of our dance classes.

Usually get about 3 or 400 people.

When we have a named band that comes in, we've had Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Cherry Poppin' Daddies, we had to capacity, the room holds 800.

♪♪ I've been coming here for almost 40 years now.

This is like stepping back in time, and there's no other place like this.

Ballrooms are not built like this.

There's no great floors built like this anymore.

People are surprised that there's no heat or air conditioning in the room, but it was a -- it's authentic.

WOMAN 1: One of the really wonderful things about coming to a swing dance at the Spanish Ballroom is you are going to see people of all ages, of all walks of life, of all levels of experience.

And nicely it's one of the activities in life where you're kind of valued for your age, because elder dancers tend to have a little more experience and are in demand because they know how to dance, they know how to do the dance.

We'll see families coming with their, you know, 10 to 11-year-old kids.

It's a great place for high schools students, because it's one of the few places that's not based on drinking and smoking or things like that.

It's not a bar or a pick up bar or anything like that.

So, it's a very safe, very friendly place where people are, again, of all ages can come and feel comfortable.

ANQOINETTE: Now, from swing dancing to music that swings.

The Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival showcases established and emerging jazz artists.

It follows the grand tradition of its forerunner, the East Coast Jazz Festival, which started in 1992.

Every year thousands of jazz-loving fans come to Rockville for this exciting winter gathering.

♪♪ The Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival is a festival that is produced by the Jazz Academy of Music.

And we feature jazz acts of -- national jazz acts, and we have musicians playing from the area, and we feature high school and middle school kids as well.

So, it is a jazz education festival.

We've been at it 11 years, so we're at the Rockville Hilton and we take over the whole hotel.

♪ Maybe one more song ♪ ♪ just to right the wrong ♪ ♪ Then that's it ♪ ♪ I quit ♪ MAN 1: We've had Bradford Marcelus, we've had ellis Marcelus.

We've had Roy Haynes, we've had Chrisitan McBride.

Pretty much the who's who - pretty much the who's who in jazz.

♪ Know you're out of site ♪ ♪ Gotta shapely figure, mama ♪ MAN 1: We have world class vendors, like when I said we take over the whole hotel.

So, you're gonna see some merchandise that you won't see anywhere else.

The Jazz Academy of Music, we have programming for -- for school-aged kids all year long.

Our famed Jam Cam.

♪♪ And it runs for three weeks.

And we teach kids all the fundamentals of jazz.

And we bring in people from all over to play for the kids and coach them.

And I play and I coach.

I'm a saxophone player and I'm an educator as well.

Every year we say we're going to keep it the same size, but every year it gets bigger and bigger.

And you can look us up on the web at www.MidAtlanticJazzFestival.org, or JazzAcademy.org.

♪♪ ♪ Every day, baby ♪ ♪ Every day I got the blues ♪ ♪♪ ANQOINETTE: The National Geographic Museum has a must-see exhibit.

It celebrates the extraordinary life and work of Dr. Jane Goodall.

It's filled with 3D exploitation, a holographic experience and so much more.

Goodall is best known for her ground-breaking study of chimps in Tanzania.

KATHRYN: Jane Goodall is one of the most, well-recognized and famous, and accomplished scientists in the world.

She's also the most famous National Geographic explorer in the world as well.

And her history here at National Geographic goes back to 1960.

That was 60 years ago, this year and we felt like it was a great time to celebrate the life and legacy of such an important figure in our history.

The title of the exhibition is "Becoming Jane: The Evolution of Dr. Jane Goodall", and really is an experience that takes your thorough her life, starting with her childhood in England, her very first journey to Africa, the expedition from the 1960s when she arrived in Gombe, and started doing her very famous work and adventure that she had very early in her career, and then ends with an overview of the last 30 years or more of Jane's life that's really been devoted to advocacy, and to education.

So in this exhibit we'll see registered projection, you will see a hologram-like projection of Jane by campfire telling stories of her memories in her early days in Gombe.

And we have an incredible, immersive 3D theatre where you'll put on 3D glasses and you'll go into the forest in Gombe with Jane, and relive some of her memories about her favorite places.

We also have a section in the show that's and interactive called "Chat" so chimpanzees have a very special way of communicating with each other, and we're giving visitors to the exhibit an opportunity to speak like a chimpanzee.

At the beginning of course she'll try to collect the chimpanzees, and followed, try to follow them and record their behaviors, and how they're feeding, and how they use the habitat, and slowly it's just the discovering and getting insights into the lives of chimpanzees, and she realized how incredibly similar to us they are, and hope that people will be able to see how Jane evolved over the years from a dream to coming to Africa and studying wild chimpanzees, to the beauty, first of all of Gombe, exploring this amazing reality, and using technology to almost feel like you're in Gombe.

I've been working in Gombe for 20 years and it has been a wonderful to so quickly to step in and almost be there, and there are moments, like this that they will be able to experience and connect to Jane and connect to Gombe, connect to this beautiful place, this incredible story.

♪♪ ANQOINETTE: The String Queens are changing the face of classical music.

They're teachers by day, performers by night.

Three local artists making a splash on the national scene, with their debut album.

[string music] Kendall Isadore, I play the violin.

[string music] Èlise Sharp, I play cello.

[string music] Dawn Johnson, I play the viola.

[string music] I'm originally from Houston, Texas, and I attended Howard University, the study of biology, with a minor of chemistry, and I started playing when I was eight.

I am a native Washingtonian, very proud of that.

I graduated from DC Youth Orchestra and I went all the way until I was a senior in high school, and then went on to do music education at Howard, and it's just been a love affair since.

I was born and raised in Liberty City, Miami, Florida, and from New Roads School of the Arts, I went to Juilliard School.

The way we met was Dawn had a gig for a trio, and she asked me to be her cellist, and she asked Kendall to be her violinist, and after that performance together, there were conversations afterwards, and we decided you know what, let's have a day that we meet, because I think we have something special.

We wrote down a list of songs that we'd be interested in playing, both classical and beyond, and then decide on a name, and then The String Queens took center stage.

We thought about who we are, and we thought about the bold statement of The String Queens and said, you know what, that's it.

Yep, Royalty, and it represents, even who we want our students to desire to be, and feel that they are, even today.

DAWN: Absolutely.

KENDALL: We joke together all the time during rehearsal and on stage when we are talking to our audiences about how our students call themselves, you know string princesses, and string kings, or princes, because we want them to walk in this life, not just in our orchestra classrooms, but literally walk each day in their lives.

The String Queens seems to also fit our individual personalities, the collective personality of the group.

[string music] A lot of our repertoire consists of jazz, and pop, and r&b, classical music as well.

We pretty much play everything under the sun, because one our tag lines as The String Queens is music that inspires people to love, to hope, to feel, to imagine, and so we don't want to limit ourselves, or our sound, or the type of music a lot of our fans are exposed to, particularly our students, in particularly people who might not necessarily ever have the opportunity to step into a concert hall to see three African American women performing on instruments at Carnegie Hall, or the Kennedy Center for that matter.

KENDALL: We've had a great response to be honest with you.

DAWN: Yes we have.

KENDALL: To be honest, we've played at Carnegie Hall, and we've also played at The Anthem, here in D.C., and I mean we've also, we continue to play weddings, we continue to play on benefit concerts, and I think it's confirmation that we know we're doing the right things because of that response.

Some people say when they hear us, even though it's only 3 people, they say it sounds like there are 4 people or 6 people, or 10 people at times, because we do try to insert those nuances, we do take pride in our arrangements, because I know when I'm thinking of ideas, church and gospel is in my head constantly, and hymns and things like that.

We all come from three very different musical backgrounds.

Like Kendall was saying, that church, that gospel inspiration that's where she came up musically.

Me, I'm more, you know classic based, you know coming and spending my entire life playing classical concertos, and learning classical repertoire.

And Èlise has had experience performing every type of music.

I grew in the home of my grandfather, he was one of the first African American conductors on Broadway, and so I had that Broadway influence as well, that jazz influence as well, and I think when you put all of these different experiences together, that's what helps create our arrangements, that's what helps create our unique sound that we have.

[string music] My mom is African American, and my dad is west Indian, but there is some Latin thing going on in my head.

Yeah, yeah.

And every time, there's just this latin base line comes from inside of me, but I'm also Motown.

My mom, you would swear she was a Supreme and Diana Ross doesn't know it, but we can't do it alone.

that's why it takes all three.

Right.

We've worked with so many wonderful artists throughout the course of our careers, and we're continuing to do so, which is a blessing, but not long before Aretha Franklin passed away, Èlise and I had the wonderful opportunity of performing with her at the BET Honors, which was a life-changing experience that we'll remember forever.

Èlise won't ever mention this, but she was actually on tour with Whitney Houston at one point.

We had the opportunity to perform with, you know Demi Lovato, Jennifer Hudson, Common, Andra Day, Arianna Grande, Miley Cyrus, with these songs and messages of just hope for our young people, and with that opportunity Kendall also did many of the arrangements that we performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people right here in Washigton, D.C. KENDALL: We teach middle school orchestra to fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at three different middle schools, public schools in D.C., so we're teaching literally what you hear us present to the world, we are teaching in our very own classrooms.

[string music] The way we juggle all of this, is our own, just personal commitment to it.

Teaching or playing, that's just not an option.

We are going to perform, and we are going to teach, and so our mind is made up and we are set on it, and it becomes a balance.

One, two, three.

[string music] So we just released our first album a couple of months ago, and we are so very much so riding the wave of whatever it feels like to get your first album out there, and so far for us it's been wonderful.

DAWN: And the response to the album has been so wonderful.

People are actually supporting the album in beautiful ways by purchasing it, whether it be on iTunes or Spotify, or Amazon, or any of these digital outlets.

KENDALL: In 2020, we are going to release another, I would say couple of albums, so we'll be jumping back into the studio next month or so, to prepare for our next album.

DAWN: We're living during such turbulent times, politically right now, and not just in our country, but around the world.

ÈLISE: Yes.

DAWN: And we hear so frequently how much of a healing force music is for so many people.

And I believe we want to be at the forefront of that, of that movement, just healing people around the world through this wonderful, immense power of music that knows no color, it knows no race, it knows no, you know it has no boundaries.

It's endless, and it's a universal language, and we want to do everything within our power to bring that message to the world.

[string music] [applause and cheers] Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Anqoinette Crosby, and until next time I want everyone to stay healthy, stay safe, and always remember to follow your art.