Seeing Dances of the Harlem Renaissance, in Vivid Color

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There’s a scene in Toni Morrison’s novel “Jazz,” the 1992 work of historical fiction set in the Harlem Renaissance, in which young musicians play a tune on a rooftop in Harlem. As the music floats down to Lenox Avenue, people stop in their tracks to appreciate the sound emanating from above.

“It was just like the light of that day, pure and steady and kind of kind,” Morrison wrote. “I could hear the men playing out their maple-sugar hearts, tapping it from four-hundred-year-old trees and letting it run down the trunk.”

That scene served as inspiration for the photographer Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. when he photographed eight dancers in a New York Times studio this summer. He chose a vibrant yellow for the backdrop.

“It’s very Harlem,” said Brown, who, at the time of the photo shoot, lived on the same block in Harlem as one of the dancers. He added that Morrison’s “description of the sound, as tapped from the sap of their hearts, brings to mind that amber molasses glow that, to me, colors the lore of Harlem.”

Those dancers are featured in an article about three modern-day choreographers who are carrying forward a legacy of Black dance that flourished a century ago during the Harlem Renaissance.

LaTasha Barnes melds Lindy Hop with hip-hop and house in her show “The Jazz Continuum.” Ayodele Casel, who in 2021 was featured on a Forever stamp commemorating the history of tap dance in America, brings her own style and flair to techniques pioneered by Renaissance-era showmen like John Bubbles and Bill Robinson. And Camille A. Brown infuses Broadway shows, including the Alicia Keys jukebox musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” with the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of Katherine Dunham and the vocal clarity of Ella Fitzgerald.

The article is part of a series that The Times’s Projects and Collaborations team is producing this year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance. So far, we have published articles about the dinner party that kicked off the movement, New York’s first Black librarians and rent parties of the 1930s and ‘40s. Our team often uses history as a lens to explore today’s cultural currents.

“The Harlem Renaissance is a critical piece of the story of how New York became the cultural mecca that it is,” said Veronica Chambers, our editor.

As a visual editor, I think in images. So, more than a year ago, when we began talking about covering the Harlem Renaissance, I needed to see it.

Along with the researchers Allyson Torrisi and Dahlia Kozlowsky, I dove into the archives of the New York Public Library, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., among others. After combing through thousands of black-and-white images from the early 20th century, I knew I wanted to depict this story of Black dance — as much about the present as the past — in vivid color.

For the article, our team worked with the National Book Award-winning author Imani Perry and a group of 21 people, among them editors, designers and video journalists, to create a visually immersive piece that brings to life an ongoing cultural movement.

The photo editor Eve Lyons commissioned Brown to photograph the dancers.

“We wanted to work with someone who could bring an artful eye to the project and document the stories of these dancers through their expression and movement,” Lyons said.

Together, Lyons and Brown developed a concept that is “surprising and painterly,” Lyons said. Brown used motion blur, spotlights and shadows to introduce complexity and texture to the photo compositions. A sheer curtain diffused light and served as a canvas for shadows to interact with the dancers.

While the photographs convey artistry and emotion, the videos add energy and flow, showcasing the dances in their fullest physical form. We chose to film the dancers on a plain white background to eliminate distractions and to make it feel as though they were dancing inside readers’ computer or phone screens.

“There’s something satisfying about having the figure take up your whole phone,” said Alice Fang, a designer on the project. “Seeing them fill the frame makes you pause and spend time with the dance.”

As this project demonstrates, the work of these dancers is part of a cultural evolution that will influence art for generations to come.

“Where will those dances be 100 years from now?” asked Antonio de Luca, a designer and editor on the project. “They will clearly continue to evolve. Someone will be referencing Ayodele’s work 100 years from now.”