About the Project
The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music.
~Agnes de Mille
The History
Dance and music have always been a force for drawing people together, and so they are inscribed by the full content of human history and emotion. The Jazz Dance Era (here loosely defined as the time between the 1920’s and 50’s) was a pivotal time in American culture: modern warfare was changing the global landscape, women had earned the right to vote, radio and film were transforming media, jazz emerged as a new mode of expression and carried with it a complex of new cultural and racial relations. And so the story of everyday people who went out on Saturday nights to cling to each other and make a few rounds of a nightclub or ballroom is the story of so much more. It is this history that VJEB addresses and seeks to preserve: the people’s history of dance. Sadly it is slipping from reach as those with first-hand memories of these times grow older and leave us.
The Mission
This project is in many ways a grand experiment predicated on a simple and somewhat bold idea: that communities spanning the globe can come together through the power of technology to preserve the stories of their elders. As someone passionate about the dances and music of the Jazz Era, as well as the generation represented by them, I have decided to use my background in new media and oral history, along with the considerable resources available to me as a graduate student at the University of Washington to create a new means to collect and share the history of the Jazz Era. It is also unfortunate that in a time abounding with communications technology that many seniors have been left behind, and while this one project cannot ameliorate that “digital divide,” it proceeds with an eye towards valuing seniors’ voices on the web, and fostering intergenerational dialog.
How You Can Contribute
This repository will be open for public submissions from March 1, 2010, and afterward will be a permanent archive available on the web to scholars and the public alike. We do not have an indefinite amount of time to ask for these stories. In order to succeed this project must feel as urgent as it truly is. You can contribute by talking to a relative or friend who remembers music and dance in the jazz era, flipping through their photo albums, making them a priority. If you would like to contribute your time, talents, publicity or other resources to the project please e-mail kelly@jazzeravoices.org.
About the People
Kelly C. Porter is the creator and principle investigator for Voices of the Jazz Era Ballroom. Currently a recent master’s graduate in the University of Washington’s Museology Program, Kelly holds previous degrees in both anthropology and archaeology from Oberlin College. This project intersects with her thesis work: a body of design-based research which tests new ways to conduct oral history, maintain standards of excellence, and create relevant collaborative communities and collections in the 21st Century.
Academically Kelly’s interests and research cluster around acts of individual and collective human memory in art, text, landscape and society. Her work, which normally focuses on societies known largely by grace of archaeology, is finding a new nexus in the present confluence of technology and memory. This pursuit includes the respective phenomenologies of digital and paper-based reading, oral and written history; the mapping of memory over geographical space; information aesthetics, and the imprint of new digital, mobile and social technologies on the whole affair.
As a lover of jazz era dances, Kelly has had a decade-long career as a performer, teacher and avid social dancer. Inasmuch as her academic passions lead to hours of sitting and squinting at things, her love of dance provides the jumping, spinning, rhythmic antidote. This project emerges from a rare union of these two worlds.
For more information about Kelly or to inquire about hiring or working with her on your academic, dance-related, or other personal or professional project, please email her.
Bobby Bonsey is VJEB's project videographer. In Seattle he is a freelance photographer, film editor and dancer based in Seattle, WA. His dance career started in 2003 at 16 when he was introduced to break dancing. In the summer of 2007 he discovered Lindy Hop and has been swinging ever since. He also a choreographs and organizes for Seattle Flash Mobs. You can see his continuing creative work on http://www.bobbybonsey.com
Matt Menzer is a web designer and developer living and working in Seattle, WA. Fascinated by the potential of the internet to make knowledge and data available to anyone, Matt has cultivated a passion for the technology that connects people with information.
His background as a social jazz dancer and instructor, his interest in the history of Lindy Hop and jazz dance, and his knowledge of the national jazz dance community made Matt a perfect fit for Kelly's ambitious Voices of the Jazz Era Ballroom project. Working from the open-source academic platform Omeka, he designed and created the Voices of the Jazz Era Ballroom application.
For more information about Matt or to inquire about hiring or working with him on your academic, dance-related, or other personal or professional project, please email him.
Daniel Newsome is a developer and dancer living in Seattle Washington. Dan has built a number of upgrades for the Jazz Era Voices site, and provides its ongoing maintenance and support.
Dan enjoys working on community projects, and has one of his own at FreeSwingDanceLessons.Com, where you can see more of his work in both vintage dancing and website development.
Generous support and advising for this project has been provided by:
Ron Chew
A Community Scholar-in Residence and visiting lecturer at the University of Washington's Graduate Museology Program, after retiring from his nationally recognized tenure as Director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle. During his tenure at the museum, Chew built a reputation for combining cutting-edge programs and exhibits with a locally oriented emphasis on social justice. He has organized numerous exhibits that favor a people or story centered approach.
Chew has won numerous regional and national awards for his ability to meld cultural identity, civic participation and museum programs into a new tool in the fight for social justice including The Ford Foundation's 2004 Leadership for a Changing World award. The American Association of Museums recognized him as one of the 100 most influential museum innovators over the past 100 years.
Kris Morrissey, Ph.D
Prior to her appointment as Director Graduate Program of Museology at the University of Washington in 2007, Kris Morrissey was the Curator of Interpretation at the Michigan State University Museum and Director of the MSU Museum Studies Program. She is the editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues, A Journal of Reflective Discourse published by Left Coast Press, Inc. She has over 20 years experience working in museums and has taught university courses on a range of subjects, including informal learning, interpretation, new technologies, research and evaluation. Morrissey is interested in the ways museums engage, educate, listen to, and change individuals, families, communities and society. She is currently working on a national project to study ways knowledge is co-created online, the role of interaction in that creation, and the ways that shifting to a perspective of co-creating knowledge with the public affects an institution's practices and sense of identity.