“We’ve got these huge, major things in Chicago. Like people say White Sox, people say deep dish pizza … footwork is one of those things,” said Brandon K. Calhoun, member of The Era footwork crew and animator and filmmaker. Footwork is set to take its biggest stage in the city yet with the installation of “Footnotes,” a new project in collaboration with the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and Art on theMart program. Audiences can see and hear “Footnotes” when it is projected on the south wall of theMart, the building formerly known as the Merchandise Mart, beginning July 6.
“Footnotes” is part of an ongoing series of initiatives from the two organizations that honor the history of music in Chicago. According to Calhoun’s creative partner and filmmaker Wills Glasspiegel, “Footnotes” also presented a unique opportunity to celebrate both the sound of footwork as well as the dance style it helped spawn.
Work on “Footnotes” began right before the pandemic in February 2020. But the two knew they needed more collaboration to create a project like this.
“From there, I would say the process was to create or to get a similar vibe to what we would naturally catch in a studio,” Calhoun said. Normally, the crew would go to The Era member and producer DJ Spinn’s home to watch him make tracks and become a part of the process. But “Footnotes” required Calhoun and Glasspiegel to think big. “Basically, the challenge was, how do you bring the history of footwork and the future of footwork to life in this medium and at this scale?” Glasspiegel recalled.
Glasspiegel had the initial idea to reference the classic Robert Johnson blues song “Sweet Home Chicago.”
“I think the idea that we were generating — me, Brandon and DJ Spinn, who is the musical director of the project — was to try to do it in the most kind of Chicago way possible,” said Glasspiegel.
To bring their ideas to life, the crew linked up with the famed Bucket Boys, a collaboration they had wanted to initiate long before “Footnotes” was even an idea. “Footwork has been a sample-driven music in many senses, for many years, and we thought that instead of sampling a record that’s already been recorded, we could sample live performances from selected Chicago performers,” Glasspiegel said.
The Bucket Boys came in and recorded a beat with DJ Spinn, who then set the recording to 160 beats per minute, the general tempo for footwork music.
Other collaborators for the original music included Alicia Chandler, a dancer with The Era and singer; composer and clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid; and Amal Baji Hubert of the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. The Chicago-based group is comprised of the eight sons of the late jazz trumpeter Phil Cohran, best known for his work with the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Hubert laid down more of the chordal structuring and harmonics, Glasspiegel said.
The choice may seem unusual to an outsider, but in it, the “Footnotes” creators and DJ Spinn draw a direct connection to the creativity and ingenuity of Chicago musicians and genres seemingly of the past with the sights and sounds of the present. “I think Angel said it when she came to set, but she was kind of like, ‘Chicago is the musical center of the world,'” recalled Glasspiegel. “And I can really see people continuing to realize that it just is.”
Once the music was all recorded, the next day, they invited all the dancers (including young dancers from their nonprofit summer camp) to perform in a studio to more of a traditional footwork track. “It just was like a community type thing, where we all collab’ed and got it done that way,” added Calhoun.
Calhoun then used this work to create the animations. In the end, it was Calhoun’s animation which drove the work because it was the most legible aspect projected on theMart building. TheMart, of course, is not a traditional flat surface, nor a blank canvas. But the creators embraced the challenge, using the structural difficulties as fuel for how they would create the overall piece.
Using the studio footage as a reference, Calhoun animated the characters, their dances and even some of the instrumentation. “I (drew) inspiration from the images that were recorded, (but) interpreted in my way. I’ll put my extra style on it,” Calhoun said about his process. “So stylistically. I like to be a little sloppy, or be as real underneath as possible because I feel a lot of energy.”
“I think we also tried to think about extending beyond even the scale of the building, like how do you imagine footwork even bigger? Or how do you imagine what we do even bigger than the building?” asked Glasspiegel. “There (are) a few sequences with just feet. And when you see those, I guess the idea is that you might imagine a dancer that’s even bigger than the building itself.”
From experimenting with colors (yellow was a favorite on the facade) to utilizing different building panels over others, the creators built a multifaceted and multisensory experience that embodies the creativity and uniqueness of footwork as a whole. “The idea that it can happen inside of the building, the skyline of Chicago, it makes a lot of sense to us with a certain respect,” said Glasspiegel.
Indeed, Calhoun hopes that the spiritual and influential heft of footwork can be felt not just on the South or West Sides of the city where it originated, but throughout the city as a whole.
“I want people to recognize that footwork belongs in this space. This dance was created in impoverished neighborhoods and it was something that the city didn’t necessarily support at its peak,” Calhoun added. “But it being downtown, I want people to be able to take away from it that it is a space for footwork.”
“Footnotes” opens July 6 with Art on theMart and plays nightly at 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. through Sept. 16. The series also includes works created by music ensemble Eighth Blackbird and new media artist Xuan; as well as by artist Selina Trepp and musician Dan Bitney, collaborating as Spectralina. Music from Footworks will be available for purchase on Bandcamp beginning July 5 (bandcamp.com). The free shows are best viewed from the Chicago Riverwalk on Wacker Drive between Wells Street and Franklin Street, with accompanying audio. More at artonthemart.com
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.