♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Manzari: ♪ Take me ♪ ♪ Where the drums will awake me ♪ [ Drums beating ] [ Drumming stops ] ♪ Take me ♪ ♪ Where they begin the beguine ♪ [ Drums beating ] [ Drumming stops, fingers snapping ] Davis: ♪ I'm with you once more ♪ ♪ Under the skies ♪ ♪ And down by the shore an orchestra's playing ♪ Baldwin: By the time you were 30... ...you have been through a certain kind of mill.

Davis: ♪ And even the palms ♪ ♪ Seem to be swaying ♪ Morrison: The grandeur of life is that attempt.

It's not about that solution.

Being as fearless as one can and behaving as beautifully as one can.

Baldwin: I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history and neither did I. Davis: ♪ ...is past all endeavor ♪ ♪ Except when the tune... ♪ ♪ Clutches my heart ♪ ♪ And here we are ♪ [ Echoing ] ♪ When ♪ Baldwin: You always told me it takes time.

It's taken my father's time, my mother's time.

my uncles' time, my brothers' and my sisters' time, my nieces' and my nephews' time How much time do you want for your progress?

I always lead with I'm a Black and Puerto Rican woman.

I grew up in the Bronx.

I was born in the Bronx.

I also grew up in Puerto Rico.

And all of those things really influence how I show up in the world and clearly how I show up as an artist and the things that are important to me.

I want to introduce folks to the people who really -- who get the work -- who get the work and who see it beyond entertainment.

I'm Sherrilyn Ifill.

I'm a civil rights lawyer and activist.

I'm a law professor.

For ten years, I led the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

I'm now teaching at Harvard Law School.

And in 2024, I will be moving to Howard Law School, where I will be starting a center called the 14th Amendment Center on Law and Democracy.

I think about Gregory Hines a lot because he -- Oh!

[ Laughing ] I know you love him.

Yes.

Let's take a moment for that.

I literally feel like that's the, -- You know, I mean, there are all these huge celebrity, you know, deaths that happen.

I still haven't gotten over it.

We lost a giant in him.

He was a great advocate for the art form.

Yeah.

You know, and I think that his love of young people, too -- When we think about, like, future -- Like, he was so clear about his investment in young folks.

But also so connected to the past.

He was like that through line.

What I love about artists is when you all get excited about art.

[ Mid-tempo introduction plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music continues, group singing in Spanish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ What do you think the the role of the artist is in responding to or contributing to... to progress or current social events, current events?

Artists, I think, have the unique ability to both reflect on the past and also help us imagine the future.

Even in my 14th Amendment work, you know, I am involving artists in that process, because if we're going to imagine a new democracy, which I think we must, it is not going to come only through law and policy.

The people who are best equipped to help us imagine what we have not yet seen are artists.

[ Down-tempo introduction plays ] ♪♪ Cippelletti: I think there is a need of a new example of musical and artistic instruction that is a model for artists in the future that understands their roles in the challenges of the 21st century.

♪♪ My mom is from France, and my dad is from Cuba, but I was born in Spain.

I would like to become a diplomat in order to use art as a mechanism, in order to build ties between countries and also help to promote peace through art.

♪♪ How do you stay the course regardless of the setbacks and the roadblocks and the systems that are designed to impede progress?

I think we're the first generation of people from marginalized groups, and particularly people of color, who have believed -- naively -- that we could see the world we wanted to see in our lifetime.

Our grandparents didn't think that.

Our great-grandparents didn't think that, and their parents didn't think that.

We forget that.

They didn't know either, you know, how far it would go.

And yet they kept their shoulder to the wheel, and they survived, and they raised us.

All of the things they did to put one foot in front of the other under tremendously difficult circumstances.

We are running a relay race.

So your job, even though you're not the finisher, is to run as fast as you can for your leg and then have the sight and the clarity and the connection with that next group coming to be able to press that baton firmly into their palm and trust that they're gonna run it too.

[ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Fingers snapping ] My name is Jared Alexander, and I am a tap dancer, creative, choreographer, and kind of dabble in anything and everything that has technology and art involved in it.

I am from a very small apple-orchard town named Clintondale, New York.

What I love about Clintondale is the time of the year when the leaves start to turn in the fall and the windy roads and just getting to drive and take the wind and crisp air of the season.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] As a kid, I would run through the apple orchards in my backyard.

And I think just the feeling of grass on my feet... [ Shoes tapping ] ...or the leaves' crunch... and texture.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music continues, drums beating ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music builds, continues ] I feel like I'm really into how things feel on my body and then the experience of wind and air on my body as well, which is why I love to turn or move or not stay in one spot.

It's a almost like a reference of home in my body.

♪♪ [ Mid-tempo hip-hop plays ] I'm Tony McPherson.

I'm a poet, break dancer, actor, content creator.

I'm from a plain so plain that it rhymes with itself.

Oklahoma.

I was break-dancing on the 4 train, and I would go between Harlem 125th down to Brooklyn Bridge- City Hall.

up and down, back and forth.

And that's how I made my living at the time.

♪♪ I would be practicing my moves, and then I would see if I can turn my movements into writing.

I let the movements inspire the writing.

[ Music ends ] Battle?

This is not a B-boy stance.

This is King Tut's sarcophagus.

I've dug up Michael Jackson's body and did the waltz with it.

You versus me?

No.

I will re-verse you -- to your embryonic state and then puppet your umbilical cord, because I am a beginner, I am a B-hyphen-ginner.

And these moves shall remain inadequate until these hands can rip the skull from out of my lips and hand-de-li-li-liver you perfection.

Brown body collapses like cardboard across the dance floor.

Sarcophagus unlocked.

Kkt!

Blades reveal.

Blades -- sst!

sst!

sst!

-- reveal these bones.

My Swiss Army skeleton.

Skull, flat-head screwdriver, finger bone -- switch -- shoulder -- switch -- blade -- switch -- rib cage, keys, chords, cage, keys, chords.

The B-boy spinal cord is key to Pandora's cardboard boombox.

Click and rewind -- switch -- [ Imitates tape rewinding ] Click, click, click, click, click, click!

Every -- Every little movement is an inverted apocalypse, creating many universes -- universes -- you?

Versus me?

I will re-verse you.

Click.

My every little movement is an inverted pop, a lock-alypse, creating me.

Ni-you...ni-verses.

I am a begin-ni-ni-ni-ner.

We B-boys built the last pyramid before Ra ever hatched from the sun or learned the name of his father!

The air that we breathe, it be fresher than birth.

This cardboard-colored skin is just my dance floor.

This dance floor is my box.

Pictures.

Body language.

Words.

Lyrics.

Womb.

Box.

Tool.

Box.

He has no bones.

I ha-ha-have no bones.

Just this skele-constellation of suns left to build ourselves up into stars.

I'm a black hole spitting hot fire.

I'm a black hole.

I'm a black hole in rewind, pouring out sunrise.

I am a normal human being.

And I've been afraid that you would look at me and not see your reflection.

But I'm starting to see we're the same.

Yeah.

You know what it's like to need to be perfect.

You know what it's like to practice your every little movement in front of the mirror, where everything is reversed.

[ Clicks tongue ] Yes, reversing the... We are trapped -- trapped -- trapped -- trapped -- trapped, and you are me, so how do we break -- break free when inside is the key?

Like vomiting out my own skeleton!

How do I escape me?!

Battle?

I'm just beginning.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] Edwina "Salt" Evelyn and Jewel "Pepper" Welch.

William Henry "Master Juba" Lane.

Cora LaRedd.

Jeni LeGons, the Marion Coles, Bill Robinson, Cookie Cook, Harold Cromer.

I have seen the way those progenitors -- Their stories were not documented at all.

That's right.

You know?

And so I feel like I'm taking responsibility, A, for my own history, but really just to rewrite those other voices back in.

That's vital for me, to imagine what it meant to be a Thurgood Marshall or a Pauli Murray or a Constance Baker Motley.

These are pioneering civil rights lawyers in 1940.

And the world that they were looking at and what could they imagine the world would be?

The saying of those names and the pulling out of that history, saying, "This is who my grandparents were," or saying, "This is who my parents are," or saying, "This is the neighborhood I come from," is a way of preserving a certain kind of historical integrity.

But I think there also is some secret sauce to it that allows us to draw on the power of these people who I think of as, you know, really extraordinary.

These were magical people.

My name is really Henry Carter Smith, but everybody knows me as Hank.

I'm originally from a borough of New York City called the Bronx.

The...Bronx.

Say it again.

The Bronx.

The Bronx.

That's right.

Okay.

We're going with it?

Okay.

Or, back in the day, da Bronx.

[ Laughs ] It was the Boogie-Down Bronx.

I'm going back.

The legacy of tap is kind of deep.

To be very specific, when I worked with you all for the show that you did at City Center, it was emotional for me.

It was emotional, the conversation we had before, just talking about the legacy.

Again, at this stage of the game, of being in it and being in a safe environment to do stuff, I'm feeling these different spirits coming through at the same time the talent that I'm being surrounded with makes me feel comfortable, at home, and kind of in place.

It's sort of...

Sometimes you have an experience where -- There are these tanks you can get in of water, and the temperature is such that when you're floating there, you can't tell the difference between the water and you.

And I've had moments where if I'm collaborating...

I feel blended with everybody.

It's like this one organism that's just, like, doing its thing.

And I have my part in it.

I'm doing something important.

But it's kind of like being in this organism that's moving, that's going to have impact on people.

So in some respects, it's like having -- It's a privilege, you know, to feel that I'm in it.

[ Down-tempo introduction plays ] My name is Raul Reyes.

I'm a bass player and composer.

I was born in Camaguey, Cuba.

I grew up listening to music because my mom would play songs for me when I was a little kid.

So I went to the conservatory to study classical music.

[ Music continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I moved to the States, and I found something called jazz.

And jazz became a new home for me.

Jazz allowed me to be free, allowed me to be myself, to tell my story.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music ends ] [ Up-tempo music plays ] We cannot separate dance -- and movement in particular -- from sound and from other aspects of cultural performance, because they were all part of a larger ritual.

So we think about elements like the talking drum or who was a talking drum speaking to.

Within a Yuroban culture, they may be speaking to and for the orishas, right?

But they're also directly speaking with those who are part of the ritual itself.

♪♪ So those who are dancing, those who are chanting, those who are clapping, those who are stomping their feet, these things are directly teleconnective.

♪♪ [ Music ends, shoes tapping ] [ Down-tempo introduction plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music slows, stops ] [ Music continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Casel: I'm always working with people that inspire me, people that are open and interested in play and collaboration.

♪♪ In this particular group of people, I have found that.

And the nice thing is to find it from all, like, sort of different intersections -- so, you know, tap dancers and movement artists and poets and, of course, musicians, who every time they play, I'm like, "That is, like, the soundtrack of my life."

[ Music builds, continues ] ♪♪ They come with color and texture and a sense of play and... and mastery.

That's really exciting to me.

♪♪ My name is Naomi Funaki.

I'm a tap-dance artist from Tokyo, Japan.

I moved to New York City in 2016.

I didn't speak any English.

I struggled so much to communicate with people.

I can communicate with rhythm, like when we jam, when we dance together, I feel like I hear something from them and I can respond to them with tap dance.

[ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music builds, continues ] ♪♪ [ Music ends ] The real question, Sherilyn, is this -- Did you ever want to be a tap dancer?

[ Both laugh ] No.

But you know what?

I am not an artist, but I am art-adjacent.

And I'm a multitasker, and to see the multitasking, that is real art making, you know?

You're pulling on spirit, body, mind.

You're telling a story.

My sister and I, we were huge theater kids, and I always loved that feeling of we were making something together.

So I've figured out now, at this stage of my life, how to satisfy what I think is a very important part of me, that love of art, with my love of justice and to try to knit together the conversation between those who practice the work of justice in a very intentional way, as either activists or civil rights lawyers, and those who do art and who are doing the same thing with these genius gifts, in a way that speaks to us quite differently and in a way that at this moment, I think, in our country and in our world, we are so des-- Yes, we need new laws, and we need people to abide by the rule of law, and we need new policies.

But oh, my goodness, we need artists to help us rise our spirits above the moment, to be able speak things that can't be provided in those other contexts.

In that way, we are now making something together.

Yeah.

Yes.

I hope so.

Oh, look!

See?

I'm art-adjacent.

No.

We really are.

♪♪ ♪ Till clouds came along to disperse ♪ ♪ The joys we had tasted ♪ ♪ And now when I hear people curse ♪ ♪ The chance that we wasted ♪ ♪ I know but too well what they mean ♪ Ha!

♪ So don't let them begin... ♪