About these Responses

Juba was an extraordinary figure in early American performance.  During the 1840s, he astonished eyewitnesses with an original combination of dance, music and song that mixed precision with wild abandon, humor with wonder, parody with impersonation, grotesque acrobatics with grace.  He pioneered the introduction of an African-American performance style into European forms, helped to popularize folk traditions associated with the banjo, and popularized a new form, 'tap' dance. 

He was also a performer of colour in a racist minstrel show, surrounded by Euro-American (white) partners in blackface makeup.  He was praised for his sophisticated artistry, but scolded for pandering to that 'gallery crowd,' the working class.  He danced in morning coat and in drag, in the private homes of aristocrats and in saloons.   And when he died, by one report, his skeleton was placed on display in a museum.  He was idolized, and lionized--and barely tolerated.  An influential, extraordinary, troubled and troubling figure, whose brief life exposes the early Victorian attitude toward race, class, and gender. 

All we have left of Juba is a few documents—descriptions, songs, images.  He was famous, and then he disappeared.

Artists Respond to Juba is a gallery of work by contemporary artists.  We asked them to look at some of the documents, the remnants of Juba and his world, and to tell us how they would interpret them—not to re-create Juba's performance, but to translate the remnants of his art and life back into performance, into a modern idiom. 

With their own movement, sound, image or word.