The Spirit Moves

The Sprit Moves
The Sprit Moves
Directed by	Mura Dehn
Produced by	Mura Dehn
Edited by	Mura Dehn
Release date	1987
Running time	119 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English

The Spirit Moves: A History of Black Social Dance on Film, 1900-1986 is a documentary film by Mura Dehn chronicling the evolution of African American social dance throughout most of the 20th century. In its original form it consists of nearly six hours of rare archival footage shot over the course of thirty years. Since 1987 this complete version has only been available for viewing at a select few institutions (the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in New York City and the Smithsonian). In 2008 the first three parts of Dehn's work, totaling two hours, were remastered and released by Dancetime Publications.

Mura Dehn

Background

Dehn grew up in Russia and was trained as a ballet and modern dancer in the style of Isadora Duncan. She was exposed to jazz as a child but didn't think much of it until, at the age of 20, she saw Josephine Baker perform in Paris. She was thrilled with the vitality of the style: "Before, European couple dancing was very formal - too pleasing and too relaxed. But life was not like that. We needed something to energize us, to give us abandon. The Charleston gave us the spice of rhythm and syncopation." She began to incorporate it in her work and even put on a jazz concert in Vienna in 1925. In 1930, seeking the homeland of jazz, Dehn immigrated to the United States.

Motivation

Shortly after arriving in New York City, Dehn stumbled upon the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, an influential hotspot of African American social dance. The dancing she found there was unlike anything she had ever seen - all of the energy of jazz she had come to love in Europe, with a characteristically American ease of movement. After immersing herself in the scene, Dehn realized what a tremendous waste it would be if such exceptional dancing was not somehow preserved for future generations. This sense of purpose took her away from her own dancing and became her life's work. Looking back on the matter years later, Dehn mused that "I sacrificed my career to promote the tidal wave of black jazz, to film the greatest dancers of the Savoy …. My contribution is to have assembled and preserved these dances as presented by their greatest exponents."

Part 1: Jazz Dance from the Turn of the Century to 1950

When Dehn first began her undertaking in the early 1930's, she faced a dilemma. To properly frame the current state of African American social dance, she needed to record examples of styles from as early as the 1900's. As is true today, social dance progresses quickly and much had changed in the intervening decades. Unable to find the older styles performed in any of the modern venues, Dehn enlisted a group of talented dancers from the Savoy Ballroom to give demonstrations in a studio setting and fill in the gaps. The same format was also used to showcase the modern styles of dance of the 1930's and 1940's. The result is a clean, clear presentation of five decades worth of innovation in social dance that abstracts out everything but the movement of the dancers. Due to the technical limitations of film at the time, a separate soundtrack was added after recording the visuals; It features music of the same style as what was performed to by the dancers, but not necessarily the same songs.

Part 2: Savoy Ballroom of Harlem 1950's

Dehn's familiarity with the Savoy Ballroom gave her the perfect setting to observe and record social dancing in its natural environment. Correspondingly, Part 2 consists of footage of the general public enjoying themselves on the dance floor. By a coincidence that could only have been deliberate, Leon James and Al Minns (two of the best Lindy Hoppers of the era) are in the crowd. Included is a dazzling recording of an aerial Lindy contest in which one of the two dancers is always in the air, with the role frequently switching between the male and female.

Part 3: Postwar Era, 1950s-1980s

When the Savoy Ballroom closed its doors for the last time in 1958, Dehn choose to depart Harlem as she continued her work. As a result, Part 3 was filmed at Public School 28 in Brooklyn and the Palladium in Manhattan. In it Dehn witnesses a complete revolution in Lindy Hop, from it's fall out of popularity in the early 1960's to its revival in the mid 1980's.

Regarding the Name

Mura Dehn recalls:

The tile of my movie came unexpectedly. I was traveling through the South and looking and visiting big areas, obscure places where jazz was done for the blacks by themselves and for themselves. They would tell me, "Well, I do it when the spirit touches me. When the spirit leaves me, I leave." So, "the spirit moved me" were the words they used all the time. And I understood that the spirit was the moving essence of jazz.

References

External links

In a Jazz Way (watch online)