Cinema 53: Footwork on Film with The Era Footwork Crew and RP Boo

 Apr 24, 2019, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
 Harper Theater

5238 S Harper Ave, Chicago

Chicago filmmakers Brandon "Manny" Calhoun and Wills Glasspiegel from The Era Footwork Crew screen and discuss a series of short films from their archive that explore and expand upon the history of Chicago footwork. Calhoun and Glasspiegel's work engages footwork as a catalyst for collaborative filmmaking, community organizing and nonprofit activism through the arts. Footwork started as a dance to house music on the west side of Chicago in the 1980s. Today, it's an internationally recognized dance and electronic music. This hour-long screening and group discussion, moderated by UChicago music scholar and Cinema 53 curator Seth Brodsky, will be followed by a Chicago footwork party, DJ'd on vinyl by the originator of the footwork sound, RP Boo.

Admission is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first seated. Doors open at 6:45pm.

More info available on The Era https://www.theerafootworkcrew.com/ and their nonprofit Open the Circle https://otcprojects.org/.

The Era Footwork Crew are pioneers of the battle dance known as Chicago footwork. They have performed alongside leading artists such as Chance the Rapper and have launched film festivals and gallery exhibitions featuring footwork. Filmmakers, dance activists and educators, TheEra are widely recognized as boundary-breaking artists, including in many countries outside the US from Kuwait to Japan. At home on the south and east sides of Chicago, the group runs a footwork summer camp for youth. They have received recognition as cultural organizers of the year in FADER Magazine and choreographers of the year by New City magazine. TheEra features members of dance battle cliques Terra Squad and Goon Squad. Members of TheEra includes Jamal "Litebulb" Oliver, Sterling "Steelo" Lofton, Brandon "Chief Manny" Calhoun, Jemal "P-Top" De La Cruz and filmmaker Wills Glasspiegel.

Kavain Space aka RP Boois known as the godfather of Chicago footwork music. He was born on the west side of Chicago, though he has lived on the South Side for the last few decades. Boo started his career as a DJ and dancer working with the seminal dance group House-O-Matic and its founder Ronnie Sloan. As a young man, Boo became the first DJ to mount a turntable on the back of a float at the Bud Billiken Parade, bridging the history of live DJing into one of the oldest and most important black parades in America. Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, Boo released several popular tapes and records in Chicago, collaborating with other founding fathers of Chicago footwork music, including DJ Rashad , DJ Spinn and DJ Clent . Boo also started his own crew, D’Dynamic, which he references on several songs. In the late 2000s, Boo's music caught the ears of listeners across the world, and he signed to London-based label Planet Mu (OFFICIAL) . Today, Boo continues to tour across Europe, Asia and the Americas, bringing footwork to music venues and also lecturing about footwork's history at schools and universities.

Guest curator for the spring Cinema 53 series, Seth Brodsky is interim director of the Gray Center for Arts + Inquiry, and associate professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is the author of "From 1989, or European Music and the Modernist Unconscious" (California, 2017), and has published on such topics as opera, influence, and the music of John Cage and Benjamin Britten. He is currently at work on a book about music, psychoanalysis, and repetition.

Cinema 53 is a screening and discussion series presenting conversation-provoking films by and about women and people of color.  A partnership between the historic Harper Theater in downtown Hyde Park and UChicago’s Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry, Cinema 53 brings diverse audiences together to consider how visual cultures reflect, and reflect upon, enduring inequalities and revolutionary futures.