In the third season premiere of Bay Area radio station KQED’s docuseries, If Cities Could Dance, Eden “Litty” Jackson, one of the Washington-based dancers featured in the episode says, “Go-go will always live here. You could dance on the side of the street and people would know [what] you’re doing. It’s like a secret handshake.”
The show, which explores the dance scenes in cities around the world, lets viewers in on that secret in its new episode, out today. The 7-minute video was shot over three days in November last year, and focuses on “beat ya feet,” the dance style that grew out of the go-go scene in the early 2000s.
The doc follows one of the form’s biggest names, John “Crazy Legz” Pearson. A D.C. native, Pearson teaches dance in the city, and leads the Who Got Moves Battle League at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington. The director and producer of the If Cities Could Dance episode, Charlotte Khadra, says she found Pearson, who has been called the king of the style, and reached out after doing a lot of “internet sleuthing.” Khadra, a producer on the KQED arts team, was familiar with go-go, and was seeking a similar dance scene that’s particular to D.C.
“We kind of got lucky to stumble across this movement,” Khadra says.
The episode follows Pearson as he practices with young dancers and performs for locals with members of his crew, Beat Ya Feet Finest, which consists of roughly 25 dancers.
“It’s cool when the dancers are authentically excited about building something out of their culture, and Crazy Legz and his crew are definitely building something,” Khadra says. “They’re really ambitious and driven.”
While in town, she worked with a local film crew, who helped her capture the key sites and sounds of go-go in the District. Randy Gill, a native Washingtonian who has own company, GW Entertainment, and manages Pearson, served as the field producer on the shoot. He says he helped Khadra map out locations and introduced her to locals.
One of those shoots was at a go-go at Power Nightclub, where the group TOB was playing, after they’d been filming all day. “The go-go didn’t start until, like, 11 o’clock [p.m.],” he says. “It was a very long process, but fun at the same time.”
Gill also helped set up another shot at the Metro PCS store in Shaw where #DontMuteDC was born last year. The episode recounts the citywide movement, which began when the Florida Ave. storefront was forced to shut off the go-go music it had played since 1995.
While the If Cities Could Dance crew was shooting, a crowd formed in front of the store as Pearson and his crew were dancing, and cinematographer Devin Johnson, who grew up in Alexandria, took pains to get the best shot.
“I’m like, ‘You know what would be a crazy shot?'” he says. “‘If I go [shoot] diagonally across the other side of the street, across the whole intersection.'” To capture the moment, he crossed quickly while the light was still green, and cars were driving by. Still, he says, it was worth it. “The shot looked crazy.”
The episode features footage of local landmarks, like the Howard Theatre and the Anacostia go-go mural “Many Voices, Many Beats, One City.” Local photographer and poet Thomas Sayers Ellis supplied images, and Khadra included shots from the late, famed D.C. photographer Robert H. McNeill, which she sourced through his daughter. Musicians like Tone P and TCB Band, also known as the Bounce Beat Kingz, provided the soundtrack.
The full season will feature episodes on other cities including San Francisco, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Albuquerque, and Houston. KQED is also releasing a beat ya feet tutorial video from Kevin “Noodlez” Davis, another featured dancer, next week.
Johnson hopes it helps viewers get to know D.C. better through its music community. “The people that define the culture of D.C. have a powerful voice that needs to be heard,” citing the #DontMuteDC movement as one important example.
“When you watch this documentary, you get a dose of that,” he adds. “But there’s much more where that came from.”
If Cities Could Dance is now streaming on YouTube.
