Jason Moran 'Black Stars: Writing in the Dark'

For 75 cents in depression-era New York City, Harlem residents could escape to life on the mahogany dance floor of the Savoy Ballroom, which stretched across a city block between 140th Street and 141st Street. As dance researcher Barbara Engelbrecht wrote, “The Savoy was a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the “soul” of the neighborhood. It personified a community and an era, and became a monument to the music and dance of ‘swing.’” Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Webb, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker graced the Savoy’s bandstand, a distinctive metal clamshell, originally striped and later in the 1940s, elaborately wallpapered. Jazz composer and musician Jason Moran has ventured into works on paper and sculpture, bringing his grand ode to Harlem’s big band and swing dance glory, “STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1” to The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Previously seen at The Whitney, Moran’s golden clamshell stage reinvigorates the gray-scale photography of Harlem’s past with commanding physicality.

Jason Moran “Black Stars: Writing in the Dark” opens on Dec. 17 at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass.

STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1 by Jason Moran Photo courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress

STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1 by Jason Moran Photo courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York