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When the 92nd Street Y was a hub for Black innovation in dance
Last week I was permitted a moment of naches. My friend and classmate Rennie McDougall published his first book, Nonstop Bodies: How Dance Shaped New York City.
The book, a whirlwind tour of the 20th Century from Flo Ziegfeld’s chorus line and social dances at the Savoy Ballroom to the edge of the millennium coming off the AIDS crisis, began in our grad school class at NYU, when Rennie tracked down some of the last of the Lindy hoppers. (Rennie is from Melbourne, and first came to New York to join a dance company; he now insists he’s a former dancer.)
There’s a whole chapter on Jerome Robbins (né Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz) and there are cameos by artists like Anna Sokolow, but the most interesting Jewish character isn’t a person: It’s a building.
“I really wanted to locate some specific epicenters of dance in the city, and focusing on the 92nd Street Y really started with Alvin Ailey and ‘Revelations’ premiering there,” Rennie told me.
The more research he did — speaking to dancers and audience members who were at the 1960 debut of Ailey’s masterpiece, which stages a baptism but recalls for my colleague Olivia Haynie the rituals of Yom Kippur — the more he came to realize just how vibrant a hub for dance the Y was in the midcentury.
It was an unlikely candidate. Founded in 1874 as the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, little in its origins suggested that it would one day be an incubator for groundbreaking dance by women and Black artists, the latter of whom often drew on explicitly Christian traditions. But under the leadership of education director William Kolodney, the Y formed the Dance Center in 1935, launching with a symposium of modern dance featuring Martha Graham, Hanya Holm and Doris Humphrey, who would later serve as the center’s director.
By the postwar years, Jewish artists were crafting work there that explored identity. Sophie Maslow’s 1951 piece “The Village I Knew” evoked life in the shtetl, and, rare for the time, included two Black performers, Donald McKayle and Ronnie Aul.
In 1956, the Y did away with its audition system, Rennie writes, allowing dancers and choreographers to reserve the theater for a $100 deposit. Black dancers seized the opportunity.
Trinidadian choreographer Geoffrey Holder presented “Come Sunday” at the Y in 1958, a dance in which he appeared as a preacher leading his flock while Claudia McNeil singing spirituals. The same year, Louis Johnson debuted “Folk Impressions,” depicting a revival meeting. This, from an institution founded for white, male German Jewish professionals.
Was it the Jewish roots of the Y, created amid a culture of antisemitic exclusion, that made it accessible to Black artists?
“There was a huge sense of inclusivity to the space and the way that they were running it,” Rennie said, noting a major source of his, Naomi Jackson’s book Converging Movements, about dance and Jewish culture at the Y.
Black concert dance in America had a rich tradition before the Y’s open curation, but many of its luminaries debuted their most iconic work on the Kaufman Auditorium stage in the middle of the Civil Rights movement.
At the Y in 1958, Ailey premiered “Blues Suite,” perhaps his second most famous work after “Revelations,” marking the start of his legendary New York career.
Ailey’s company became multiracial in 1962, but Eleo Pomare, whose sympathies lay with the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, was also active at the Y. The characters in Pomare’s “Blues for the Jungle” included a prison inmate, a sex worker and a junkie, reflecting the people he regularly encountered in Harlem.
The Y hosted Pomare’s piece in 1966, a few years before the Met’s 1969 show Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America infamously excluded Black artists.
“The Black choreographers and dancers at the Y felt the power of their stories in this moment; they felt their shared ideas and cultural history resonated beyond their small collective at the theater and could speak to people all over the country,” Rennie writes. “Jazz, the blues, and the gospel of the Black church compelled them to seek a modern dance that moved with this musical inheritance, and the Y had given them a gathering point to build a performing community around these ideas.”
The Y of today walks the fine line of being both a Jewish institution and a pluralistic cultural center. It has been subject to recent boycott campaigns over its commitment to presenting speakers supportive of Israel and for disinviting artists who signed anti-Israel letters in the wake of Oct. 7. It feels stodgier and more particularistic than in the days when Ailey and his contemporaries were creating there.
While the dance center hosts festivals and offers classes in a variety of styles, the most regularly listed event seems to be Israeli folk dance lessons.
Still, the Y hasn’t forgotten its storied place in American dance. You can view an online version of its 2024 exhibit Dance to Belong: A History of Dance at 92NY on its website.
It’s no substitute for real, live performance, but thankfully other venues are embracing the work. “Revelations” is coming to City Center in December. It earned a bigger stage, but it started at the Y.
The post When the 92nd Street Y was a hub for Black innovation in dance appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani touts ‘Babies not Bombs’ messaging after flexing political muscle in the New York primaries
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated the victories of the progressive candidates he endorsed in New York’s Democratic primaries describing their success as a “shift in the balance of power.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the morning after the primaries, Mamdani touted the triumphs as a shift in the balance of power between “working people” and “special interests.”
Mamdani-endorsed candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez won Democratic nominations for Congress. During the press conference, the mayor repeatedly highlighted their calls to restrict U.S. military aid to Israel and redirect federal funding to domestic priorities.
Following Mamdani’s election night sweep in New York, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”
The victories offered an early demonstration of Mamdani’s political influence beyond City Hall, as several Democratic Socialist candidates he backed, including Chevalier, defeated established Democratic incumbents in their districts.
“The working person is struggling in our city to afford basic needs,” Mamdani said, adding that Avila Chevalier’s oft-repeated slogan of investing in “Babies not Bombs,” is “the kind of conscience, the kind of clarity, the kind of conviction that has been missing in our politics for far too long.”
Mamdani responded to the president’s post on Wednesday, telling a reporter who asked whether his goal is to make America a “socialist” country that his “goal is to make America a place that every American can afford.”
When asked about federal policies that could be affected by Mamdani’s endorsed candidates, the mayor cited Valdez’s support for “foreign policy that understands human rights for all” and Lander’s commitment to co-sponsoring the Block the Bombs Act, which prohibits the sale of certain U.S.-made offensive weapons to Israel.
Mamdani also dismissed a question about whether he was concerned about how the victories would play out in November as Democrats try to win back the House.
“Every time the fight for working people takes a step forward, you will hear Republicans say that this is actually going to jeopardize the existence of that very fight,” he said.
When asked whether the election of Chevalier, who has faced scrutiny for past social media posts attacking Democrats and her appearance at an Oct. 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, could “complicate campaigns for Democrats as a whole,” Mamdani replied “No.”
“[Chevalier] often speaks about a politics of life. She speaks about ‘Babies not bombs,’” Mamdani continued. “What could be a better example of what the people of the district want to see versus what the people of the district have been forced to experience, which is tens of billions of dollars being spent at a national level to bomb children overseas, while children in our own districts are struggling.”
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Jewish anti-Zionist David Orkin defeats incumbent in NY Assembly primary
(New York Jewish Week) — David Orkin, a Jewish anti-Zionist attorney and democratic socialist, defeated incumbent New York State Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Orkin won State Assembly District 38, which includes parts of Queens.
Orkin, an immigrant workers’ rights attorney and union organizer, received 58.8% of the vote, while Rajkumar, who has represented the district since 2021 and is the first South Asian woman ever elected to office in the state, received 40.9%. The district covers a swath of Queens, including parts of Ridgewood, Glendale, Ozone Park, Woodhaven and Richmond Hill.
“Pro-Palestine candidates are sweeping in NYC tonight,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action wrote in a post on Instagram celebrating Orkin’s win Tuesday. “Palestine was on the ballot — and won. David will be a champion for Palestinian freedom in Albany.”
The post from JVP Action echoed a message Orkin had highlighted throughout his campaign.
“It’s so incredibly meaningful to me to be running this race as an anti-Zionist Jew, to be one of the few anti-Zionist Jewish voices that is in an elected seat in the state government,” Orkin said in an Instagram reel posted by Jewish Voice for Peace Action earlier this month.
He added that, if elected, he would be able to go in front of the state legislature and assert that “criticizing Israel for genocide, demanding an end to the occupation, demanding an end to funding war abroad is not antisemitic.”
Orkin’s victory came amid a strong night for democratic socialist candidates across New York City, including left-wing congressional candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, who also defeated establishment-backed opponents in their primaries.
While Orkin was not endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose winning endorsements of Lander, Chevalier and Valdez signaled a pro-Palestinian lurch for the party in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Nonetheless, his victory elevated a self-described anti-Zionist to the ranks of New York’s elected officials at a time when debates over Israel have become increasingly prominent within Democratic politics.
While Israel-related issues were not listed on Orkin’s platform, which centered on affordability and immigration, he repeatedly expressed his support for a “free Palestine” and attacked Rajkumar’s record of support for the Jewish state during his campaign.
“In the past several years my opponent AM Rajkumar has walked in the Israel day parade but has said NOTHING against the war in Gaza, occupation of Palestine, or Islamophobic attacks faced by the people of New York,” Orkin wrote in a May post on X.
Rajkumar, who was a close political ally of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in her campaign platform vowed to combat antisemitism.
After establishing a Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in Tucson, Arizona, in 2014, Orkin remained involved in pro-Palestinian activism as a member of the anti-Zionist activist group.
“I’ve been involved in the Jewish Palestine Solidarity Movement for 12, 13 years,” Orkin told Democratic Left last month. “I’ve dedicated part [of my] life to making sure that Jewish people are creating religious spaces outside of Zionism, and to making more space for Palestinian organizing to have an impact.”
On the campaign trail, Orkin received a host of endorsements from prominent progressive groups and lawmakers, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, JVP Action and NYC Democratic Socialists for America.
Rajkumar was endorsed by ActJew, the new nonprofit focused on combatting antisemitism, as well as the Queens Jewish Alliance and Assemblymembers Sam Berger, Kalman Yeger and Chuck Lavine.
Orkin received over $290,000 in campaign contributions for the election cycle, including over $156,000 from the office of the state comptroller, while Rajkumar received over $270,000, including $9,000 from health care executive Daniel Lowy.
“I have dedicated my life fighting for immigrants and workers, I am proud to have earned their support in this election, and I look forward to spending the rest of my life winning the beautiful and joyous lives we deserve,” Orkin said in a statement, according to QNS.
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Half of Americans think the U.S. is ‘too supportive’ of Israel
(JTA) — A new survey found that 48% of American voters think the United States is “too supportive” of Israel, the highest since the pollster started asking the question in 2017.
The survey published Wednesday by Quinnipiac University also found that 60% of respondents reported that military intervention in Iran was “not worth it” as opposed to 34% of voters who said it was “worth it.”
The number of respondents who think the U.S. support of Israel is about right is 38%, while just 7% think the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel, the poll found.
Broken down by party, 66% of Democrats think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, while 9% think it is not supportive enough and 18% think U.S. support for Israel is about right.
Among Republicans, 20% think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, 69% think American support for Israel is “about right,” and 6% think the U.S. is not supportive enough.
Among independent voters, 55% think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, 34% think U.S. support for Israel is about right, and 7% think the U.S. is not supportive enough.
The poll data were released one day after three Democrats critical of Israel swept their House primary races in New York City, and in races around the country even some reliably pro-Israel Democratic candidates distanced themselves from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.
A survey last year by Gallup found dwindling support for Israel among Democrats, as well as waning support among Republicans.
Still the party divide was also in sharp evidence in the latest poll. In responses to the question about whether the Iran war was “worth it”, Democrats disfavored military action in Iran at 93% and independents at 66%, while 75% of Republicans surveyed thought it was “worth it.”
Given a list of 10 issues and asked which, if any, they considered priorities in their decision-making process in the election for the U.S. House of Representatives, 41% of voters cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, above AI data centers (38%) and Donald Trump (38%). The high cost of living (70%) and health care (59%) topped the list.
The Quinnipiac poll was conducted from June 18 to 22, and includes responses from 1,165 self-identified registered voters.
The margin of error is 3.4 percentage points.
Among those surveyed, 48% said they had an unfavorable view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Twenty percent said they had a favorable opinion, and 30% “haven’t heard enough” about him.
“Netanyahu gets poor marks from American voters as their appetite for supporting Israel wanes, with the share of voters who think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel hitting a new high,” Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy wrote in the report.
Voters were also asked about their views on the June 17 memorandum of understanding with Iran, which begins a 60-day negotiation period that does not outline an end to Iran’s nuclear program.
“After months of diplomatic fits and starts, global economic repercussions and a broad loss of life in the region, a majority of voters make their feelings clear: the Iran war was a bad idea,” Malloy wrote.
Voters who are either not confident or “not so confident” that the deal will succeed numbered 59%, and 61% think it is either likely or very likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
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