Jason Moran
Sept 20, 2019–Jan 5, 2020
STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1
1
With a curved wall stretching up to form a low overhang, STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1 is loosely based on Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, a block-long venue located on Lenox Avenue between 140th and 141st Streets, where big band jazz and swing ruled from the mid-1920s to the late 1950s. Club-goers there encountered the most prominent bandleaders, Lindy Hoppers, and jazz singers of the day, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Chick Webb. The pristine veneer of Moran’s sculpture, lined with Dutch wax print fabric, is seductive but impenetrable. This creates a tension that is further heightened by the repetitive droning sounds and enunciations of the recorded Black work songs—in particular, the sampled field recordings of Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) prison workers.
STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1, 2015
Jason Moran, STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1, 2015. Wood, paint, aluminum panels, fabric, carpet, lights, audio equipment, speakers, electrical cables, and sound, 120 × 216 × 120 in. (304.8 × 548.6 × 304.8 cm). © Jason Moran. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Photograph by Farzad Owrang
-
The Savoy Ballroom, Lenox Avenue and West 140th Street, Harlem, ca. 1950s. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. Photographs by Austin Hansen used by permission of the Estate of Austin Hansen