NAC member Perpetua Png reflects on Angela Andrew’s Live Archive: mearchivingme, which took place at SDS on Saturday 18 May 2024 as part of Artist Archive.
The Courtyard
It’s a warm Saturday evening. Sun filters through the mid-March leaves of the courtyard tree. Gathered outside. The event begins. We are listening to Stephen Atemie, a dancer from Angela Andrew‘s company Cookie and Her Black Mambas. He stands in front of a mic, reading from his small notebook, not unlike a preacher, recounting his journey into Lindy Hop. He talks about his voyage from evenings spent playing football to spending them dancing Lindy Hop in dance halls; describing how he was swept into the scene, coming for “the ladies”, but staying for the dance, how Lyon was the epicentre of Lindy Hop – containing the trifecta of: social, musical and community facets. A mirrorball of joy, community and camaraderie. “The first time I went to a dancehall. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced…I never looked back” he reflects. “It was like stepping in one door in time and stepping out another”.
Lyon was the epicentre of Lindy Hop – containing the trifecta of: social, musical and community facets. A mirrorball of joy, community and camaraderie.
Amidst the sound of cars travelling on the road just outside; the brick walls of the courtyard felt like a fort – enfolding us, creating space between and the outside world and our gathering. As we listen to Stephen weave his stories of how he found his way into dance from his pulpit there is the feeling of the sacred. Upon contemplation, this was perhaps because of the activity we were engaged in. We, a group of strangers, had taken time and come together to listen, learn, to be present with and witnessing another’s recounting of their journey through life. It reminded me of the power of our eyes, our gaze and the things that are hidden in plain (or from) our sight. In our increasingly digital and disconnected world, this felt analogue…ancestral.
Lindy Hop emerged as practice rooted in rebellion and hope – evolving as a visceral response to an urgent need for community to come together and move, quite literally through trauma as a collective…
There is an honesty to Lindy Hop; it is raw and beautiful, when watching it, you feel that its roots lie in something deeper and more substantive than pure aesthetics. Looking at its history, Lindy Hop is first and foremost a Black dance. Lindy Hop emerged as practice rooted in rebellion and hope – evolving as a visceral response to an urgent need for community to come together and move, quite literally through trauma as a collective – a potent form of embodied resistance, a tool for transmuting pain into the fertile grounds of liberation.
I have arrived in the Parlour on the ground floor of the building. I can hear the jazz from Winston Rollins & The Winston Rollins Quintet. An incidental performance by Stephen and Korentema Anyimadu, the final Black Mamba of Cookie’s trio, is unfolding. As I watch them dancing together, I notice their eye contact, how the beginning of a phrase of movement is initiated by a look, a head nod. I feel how much of this dance is about the act of testifying – seeing and being seen by another. The choreography is set, but I get the sense that they are also negotiating and co-creating something in the present moment. I am reminded of Stephen’s words from the beginning of the event when he explained that for him Lindy Hop is more than a dance style, it is a way of using dance to “share the same authentic moment”.
Watching Stephen and Korentema re-awakens within me the same visceral connection and familiarity I experienced when watching recordings of Lindy Hop from the 1940s, for the first time, during a workshop run by Angela at SDS. I saw fury, pride and joy pulsating, unrelenting through the dancers; the power of their percussive movements and rhythms transcending space, rippling across time, and moving something deep in the waters within me. It was an instant embodied recognition of black and brown bodies resisting and crashing up against the same oppressive forces myself and my community encounter (albeit in different forms) today. I feel how much of this dance is wrapped up in black identity and shared experience. How its lineage flows down racial lines, but also how its message and spirit is universal. I wondered at the ease and disease with which these truths exist.
Community percolated through the evening and as a group I felt as we became increasingly bound to one another as the event progressed, and as we rose as a collective through the building…
In his homily Stephen shares that at its core, Lindy Hop is a social dance, “something meant to be shared with everyone around you”. “Like a good meal. If you’re on your own… It’s a bit sad.” Indeed, community percolated through the evening and as a group I felt as we became increasingly bound to one another as the event progressed, and as we rose as a collective through the building to the final segment held in the Roof Studio. This inexplicit sense of kinship emerged through our shared embodied experience of the space – our sense of togetherness culminating in the last part of the evening when we shared food and came into felt contact with one another through dance. Being together in this way resonated with something ancient, kindling in me a desire to be in community and to move together.
Rising Up
During the evening, I felt a sense that I was weaving in and out of time. A feeling of temporal flux set the event’s tone – a result of several factors. The first being the inherent nature of the archive, looking back into the past from where we found ourselves in the present. This coupled with the historical essence of Lindy Hop contributed to these feelings. The vividness of the present moment contrasted with the vintage objects and films presented. Moments gathered together that make a life. All of this led me to a paradoxical feeling of both temporal agnosticism and an acute nostalgia. The archive and its themes reminded me of how bound we all are to our times and places in history and the power of art to transcend this.
Passing the jazz musicians by the stairs, and following the yellow taped road laid out before me, I made my way up the first floor. I passed a man standing on the staircase, staring into the distance. I had a sense he was being transported back in time- re-experiencing a fond moment. Memory. Time. Arriving in the Research Studio, I saw it had been consecrated to Angela’s archive. Leaflets from the workshops she had run, which had taken her across the world. Costumes. Dresses. Hats. Citalopram. Aromatherapy blends stored in small blue and brown glass bottles. Leaflets from around the world from Hamburg to Mozambique. A video reel of showcases. Objects and footage that tell the story of the life of an artist and trailblazer. A genius.
The Roof
Addressing in the round, Angela stood regally, bathed in a spotlight. Dressed in traditional wear of Dominica from Sakafet London, the train of the dress dropped across her left arm. “This Live Archive thing… what’s it about?” she smiles. Lineage. She talks about her parents, how she got her rhythm from her mum by dancing on her feet and pays tribute to her late father, showing us some footage of her dancing that he had filmed, which she says she had forgotten about until the creation of the archive. “How do we forget?” she asks. How do some things come to be hidden in plain sight?
Angela’s contribution to Lindy Hop is indelible. Like a loving and dedicated gardener she has tended to and shaped Lindy Hop’s landscape. She has been instrumental in addressing racism in the scene and democratising material. She laughs, “In 2020 Lindy Hoppers lost their shit”; indeed, surrounded by global Black Lives Matter protests, the scene finally realised the extent to which it had been white-washed. At long last, opening their eyes to the issue and to Angela who had been working tirelessly to address it. Angela critiques the accessibility of historical material, how the people who own the history won’t share it. She says in no uncertain terms that it is “usually white people who own black bodies”. The importance of this archive, Angela’s archive, glares with undeniable clarity.
Dancing Together
How do we weave together the threads of our lives? What does it mean to dance together? Who bestows the title of genius? Are all questions that Angela’s Archive provoked within me. There is a quote that goes, “What is an archive without those who continue to breathe life into it?”. Indeed, this is a living archive because Angela continues to breathe life into the community. During the archive, I learned about Angela and her extraordinary contribution to the world of Lindy Hop, and was left with the beauty of the community she has worked so hard to move forward and champion. A community that is not perfect, but one that has had the bravery and honesty to acknowledge and address its issues in order to continue to move together. This archive ran before racist riots gripped England this summer. I believe a lot can be learned from this Lindy Hop scene. With that said, maybe it’s up to us to bring back the dancefloors and find a way to move together.
There is a quote that goes, “What is an archive without those who continue to breathe life into it?”. Indeed, this is a living archive because Angela continues to breathe life into the community.
Writing by Perpetua Png. Commissioned by Siobhan Davies Studios.
Find Perpetua on Instagram @perpetuapng.
All photos from Zbigniew Tomasz Kotkiewicz.