♪ Hi, everybody.

I'm Felicia Curry, and welcome to "WETA Arts," the place to discover what's going on in the creative and performing arts in and around D.C. ♪ Ahh ♪ In this episode, I meet with famed mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves about opera and activism... Graves: The stories that's important for me to tell now are those stories of truth.

Curry: a Latin dance instructor bridges communities... Woman: If you want to be a part of it, you can't be afraid to be passionate about it.

Curry: and we pay tribute to artist Alma Thomas, who broke barriers in the arts in D.C. and in the nation.

Woman: Being able to see the influence that she has had is inspiring.

It's all ahead on "WETA Arts."

♪ [Singing in German] Curry, voice-over: Although internationally renowned singer Denyce Graves performs in the most prestigious opera houses in the world, she's also local.

Hi.

Hello.

So why don't we go up to the garden?

Sounds great.

That's one of my happy places.

Well, all of this is my happy place, actually.

It looks like it.

Ha ha ha!

Graves: I love getting my hands dirty, and I always wanted space.

I imagine people, when they think of you on stage in gowns, are not thinking of this at all.

I know.

Curry, voice-over: Graves shares her time between the world's most famous concert stages and Parkton, Maryland, where she maintains an 88-acre farm.

Look at that.

Yeah.

Look at that, so we'll put that in our salad today.

How do you marry a life where you stand on stage with something like this?

I feel like this place is what allows me to continue to do the work that I'm doing.

♪ For love is... ♪ Curry, voice-over: With a vast repertoire of countless critically acclaimed performances, Denyce Graves became one of the most celebrated mezzo-sopranos in the world, and her journey started right here in Washington, D.C. [Gospel choir singing] Curry: Graves grew up with her mother, brother, and sister on Galveston Street in Ward 8 in Southwest D.C.

Her early exposure to music was singing gospel in her church.

Growing up, opera was not something she was aware of, much less a future she envisioned.

I'm excited to learn how she got to where she is today.

Denyce, thank you for inviting us into your home to chat today.

It's a joy for me, too.

Thank you.

So for a young, Black woman to grow up in Southwest D.C., how does opera become the genre that you want to pursue?

That was quite the journey from there to here.

My music teacher from kindergarten, actually, Judith Grove Allen, told me about the Duke Ellington school.

[Organ playing] ♪ The Duke Ellington School and the Kennedy Center have a relationship, and I went to a final dress rehearsal of Beethoven's "Fidelio."

[Woman singing in German] [Man singing in German] That really did it for me-- I just thought, "I don't know what this is, but this is what I want to do"-- that and also hearing a recording of Leontyne Price sing and being just stunned by the sheer beauty of her voice.

[Price singing in Italian] Specifically Leontyne.

Specifically Leontyne because she sings, and you hear the choir singing.

[Singing in Italian] Graves: It's just one of those exquisitely, heartbreakingly beautiful voices that will stop you right in your tracks... [Singing in Italian] ♪ to see this woman who looks like us doing this thing called opera and saying, "I would love to be able to do this with my life."

And did this lead to wanting to go to a conservatory?

Yes.

I graduated early from the Ellington School, went to Oberlin College, and then went to New England Conservatory and then went on to Houston Grand Opera.

[Chorus singing "Habanera"] Curry: Her star rose with her first appearance in the title role in the opera "Carmen" by Bizet at the Minnesota Opera in 1991, and from there she took to the world's great opera houses, and fame among opera fans followed.

Patti LaBelle: I think she has the most special voice that I've ever heard.

Curry, voice-over: Her celebrity crossed over to mainstream with appearances with pop stars, at national memorials, and even on "Sesame Street."

I just want to ask, the path to opera when you have a voice like this but live in a community that maybe doesn't know or understand about opera, how is it that?

So this is part of a really large conversation in terms of American history and what has been intentionally left out of the telling of the story.

During the pandemic, there was a student of mine who was singing outside of what was formerly known as the National Negro Opera Company that was created by Mary Cardwell Dawson.

She was this Black woman who wanted to be an opera singer, so she went to the New England Conservatory.

That was 1925.

For her to star as a leading lady on the world's opera houses as a Black woman was not gonna happen, so her response to that was, "Well, I'll create my own opera company."

She hired all the singers and the orchestra and the conductor, the director, the designers, and she took them all over the United States, including the Metropolitan Opera at a time where Black performers were not at the Metropolitan Opera.

The union would not allow them to do standard repertoire, so they did a piece by African American violinist and composer Clarence Cameron White called "Ouanga."

Of course, it was to great acclaim.

She taught piano.

She taught voice.

She taught languages.

She taught stage direction and launched the careers of so many spectacular artists, like Robert McFerrin, Ahmad Jamal, Lillian Evanti, Camilla Williams.

The first woman impresario of opera was a Black woman.

I did not learn that in the conservatory, not at all.

You started the Denyce Graves Foundation, which is highlighting voices of Black opera singers that none of us knew about.

Our Hidden Voices program is showing that Black classical performers have existed from the very, very beginning.

We are working on books, working on film, on creations of works of art that tell the story of these wonderful, great heroes, so that's the Hidden Voices program, and then there's the Shared Voices program, which is an HBCU conservatory exchange program.

Choir: ♪ Oh, when we get way over in Beullah lan' ♪ ♪ Yes, way over in Beullah lan'... ♪ We pair a HBCU student with a conservatory student, and they learn from each other.

♪ Way over in Beullah lan' ♪ Graves, voice-over: We know that HBCUs have a great tradition of glee clubs and choral groups and some of the most spectacular voices we've ever heard.

[Singing in French] Graves: We've got Morgan State, Peabody, Fisk, and Morehouse and Howard, Oberlin College, Manhattan School, and the Juilliard School.

I'm just over here beaming because the idea of access, opportunity, and community are all part of what you're doing, and that is-- As a young, Black musician growing up, that's what was missing.

That's exactly right.

The foundation's work is much larger than music.

We go through the lens of music because that's been the area of my experience.

♪ My soul is a witness ♪ We're celebrating and lifting into rightful prominence those great individuals who have contributed to our cultural fabric, who make America what it is, but who have been left out of the telling of the story.

It's something that has hurt us all because why is it that when I went to the conservatory, I had white professors say to me, "What are you doing here?"

Right.

I don't necessarily blame them.

They've heard a story that didn't include a face like mine.

And this is why it's exciting for me to know that you're in conservatories teaching.

It's so important because it helps us all as a nation.

The reason that this country is so great is because it's made up of all kinds of different people who have contributed to make it what it is.

It isn't just one group of people who've done all the work and done everything.

I've portrayed all kinds of characters.

For more than 40 years, I've told all kinds of stories, and the stories that's important for me to tell now are those stories of truth, are those stories of inclusion, are those stories that remind us that we are more alike than unalike.

That's so vitally important for our survival, so we're gonna keep sharing so that people realize that it's a place for all types of people.

Well, Denyce Graves, you are the Leontyne Price of your generation, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with you today.

I loved every moment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for doing this.

This March, you can find Denyce Graves at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture for Community Day with rising opera singers from the Shared Voices program.

To learn more about the Shared Voices program, visit thedenycegravesfoundation.org.

The Washington area is home to a thriving Latin dance scene driven by the confluence of Latinx cultures here in the DMV and the widespread popularity of dances like salsa, tango, and cha-cha, but there's another dance in town, one that's taken the Latin dance world by storm.

It's called bachata.

We get moving with bachata expert Kat Arias, who loves teaching everyone who wants to learn.

♪ Arias, voice-over: My name is Kat Arias.

I'm the owner and director of the Ferocity Dance Company.

I'm a professional bachata dancer, competitor, and choreographer, and I'm based out of Falls Church, Virginia.

Bachata has 3 steps and a tap, so you would go 1, 2, 3, tap and 5, 6, 7, tap, so you always have this pause in the middle, compared to a dance like salsa that looks like it's in constant motion... ♪ and you can see it danced at nightclubs, you know, pretty much anywhere in the world.

Curry: Originally, "bachata" just meant impromptu party.

Bachata as a music and a dance has its origins in the 1960s in the Dominican Republic.

You're going to hear a guitar, la guira--a cylindrical, metal instrument-- to give it that metallic, raspy sound.

You may hear bongos and, of course, the voice, which gives it its passion.

Curry: A Dominican exodus started in 1961 after the assassination of dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Baker: Dominican migration brings bachata to places like New York.

♪ You begin to hear things like electric guitars and, of course, lyrics in English and Spanish or even Spanglish.

♪ Te regalo una rosa... ♪ Baker, voice-over: By the 1990s, it makes its way into the Latin mainstream music, thanks to artists like Juan Luis Gura and his Grammy-winning album "Bachata Rosa."

Romeo Santos: ¿Donde por "Los Infieles" esta noche?

Baker, voice-over: By the 2000s, Aventura and its frontman Romeo Santos sell out Madison Square Garden.

♪ Tu y yo durmiendo con los enemigos ♪ ♪ Dos seres que jamas hemos querido... ♪ Arias, voice-over: Aventura, they are like the *NSYNC of bachata.

At TSR Tysons, not only is it one of the most famous clubs in the world and it's here in Tysons Corner, but their biggest night is the bachata night.

Man: Guapo.

♪ [Cheering and applause] Arias, voice-over: I am the only dancer in my entire family.

♪ I lived in Venezuela till I was 6, and my dad had come over here to just try to get a better life.

Because it was just very difficult to make ends meet, I never got to take dance classes, but I would watch Michael Jackson videos, and when Britney Spears came out, that's my girl, and I would just learn the choreography.

♪ Baby, thinking of you keeps me up all night ♪ Ubaldo Suarez: ♪ Hoy le compre a mi nina.... ♪ Arias: I really didn't dance until my quinceanera.

Suarez: ♪ No me habia dado cuenta, de lo que ya crecio... ♪ Arias: My mom did not want me to embarrass myself, so she signed me up for waltz, salsa, merengue.

It was on my second lesson that the instructor pulled my mom aside, and he was like, "She can dance.

Like, she could teach dance."

Khriz: ♪ Siendo tu amigo... ♪ Arias, voice-over: Through the culture that I came from, there are just certain things that they tell you you can't do because of your size, and so it was amazing to have this professional dancer tell my mom, "She's special."

Curry, voice-over: Like the music, bachata the dance also evolved In the Dominican Republic, the basic step is the box step-- stepping one, here, here, and here.

What happens in the U.S. is that there's a form that develops-- dance in a horizontal line across those same 8 counts but one direction 4, back 4.

It's a little hard to pin down exactly how this comes to be, but one of the contributing factors is the mega hit from Aventura "Obsesion."

♪ Pero es que en el amor soy muy original... ♪ Baker, voice-over: The music video comes out in 2002.

Not only does it take the airwaves by storm, but there's a scene with couples dancing in that horizontal line.

This form begins its spread.

When we're talking about the early 2000s, that means DVDs principally but also what are called dance congresses.

These are events that can bring in hundreds to thousands of people to take classes with their dance idols and then take that information back with them to their hometown, and, of course, 2005, with YouTube, they record what they learn at these congresses.

They put it online, and then it just spreads like a wildfire so that by 2008, bachata dancing has its own congress, and it moves from becoming a social dance to then presenting them and competing with them.

When I started ballroom dancing, I wanted to compete.

I like the dresses and the shiny rhinestones, but that's what I always saw in the movies.

I was working two jobs already and going to school and this part-time job at the Elan DanceSport Center.

The perk was, you got to take dance classes for free, but I was terrified, so I didn't dance anything for a year, but when I did finally get the courage to do everything, I was doing 19 dances every week.

♪ One of the instructors was coaching a local college team, and they did bachata.

It started with me just helping.

"Can you please help the girls with their arm styling?"

or, "Can you show, like, the guys how to point their toes?"

It went from, like, a couple of minutes every week to, like, a couple of hours every week.

Before I knew it, I was doing zero ballroom and all bachata.

♪ When I started, they were televised on ESPN.

♪ You would see them every Friday and Saturday night at TSR Tysons.

You're sitting there just having a drink and watching these, like, amazing dancers just, like, kill it, and so I was like, "Man, like, one day, I want to do that."

When I finally, like, really decided to go for it, I started the Ferocity Dance Company.

Ferocity is savage fierceness.

That's what I want.

[Crowd cheering] When I put myself on stage, that's the only thing I want to feel, is completely fierce.

♪ Man: Yay!

I had one dancer, so we did duos, and then I had 4 girls that wanted to dance with us, so then we did all-ladies piece, and then a few months later, 3 guys showed up, and they're like, "Well, we want to dance," and then we're like, "OK. We'll do couples pieces now."

2015, I decided, would be the year that we would try to compete.

In 2015, we just went with my amateurs.

Tony Santana: ♪ Morir ♪ ♪ Tu gran amor... ♪ Arias, voice-over: My couple and the team in Mexico got third place.

Our first professional title we won in 2017... Santana: ♪ Me emborrachare... ♪ Arias: and when they announced that we got first, I just completely lost it on stage.

You spend your life being told you can't do things over and over again, and you believe it, as much as you try not to, so to be told that you just won, like, this world championship, I don't think I could get my feelings together at that moment.

Curry, voice-over: Since 2015, the Ferocity Dance Company has received dozens of awards, and Arias teaches everywhere, including at the Kennedy Center.

For any artist, just being able to do anything at the Kennedy Center is just a huge honor, so the minute I got that email, I was like, "Yes," didn't matter what the date was.

I was gonna make it happen.

A social dance is such a powerful way to bring people together... Ball and heel, step, tap.

Ward, voice-over: and that's how we came to Kat and Ferocity.

Forward, back.

Ward, voice-over: It's important to us to bring in Latin dance because that culture is here in the DMV and it is important to us for those communities to feel like they are being seen, heard, and represented by the nation's cultural center.

Open, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

So when we're here, leaders, you must stay straight up so that they understand that it's just a direction change.

I just want her to face somewhere else, but if you do this, then she'll go.

We're not ready yet.

We have to build to that.

It was a little bit tricky at times, but I feel like the teacher was really good at meeting us where we were.

It's learning, it's fun, it's active, and it's always inspiring.

I definitely learned things.

I'm excited to continue to get better.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Keep those feet on the ground.

Arias, voice-over: I hope that they just like bachata at least enough to, like, believe a little bit more that they can do things that maybe they previously thought they couldn't.

I love dancing so much, and I love my students, and I love what I do.

If you're leading, you're leading the entire time.

Arias, voice-over: I don't know how to do anything in life without passion.

If you want to be here, you want to be a part of it.

1 and 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, basic... Arias, voice-over: You can't be afraid to be passionate about it.

Fierce is for everyone.

Whoo!

To find your footing in bachata with Kat Arias, check out classes at all skill levels at ferocitydance.com and try other dances for free through the Kennedy Center's Dance Sanctuaries program at the REACH.

Details are at kennedy-center.org.

In this segment, we celebrate Washington-based artist Alma Thomas.

Her works are on view in major museums nationwide, but in D.C., she was also a beloved teacher and groundbreaking artist who overcame racial division and the subordinate role assigned to women artists in the early 20th century to reach national acclaim.

In 2015, the White House unveiled renovations to an area known as the Old Family Dining Room.

It featured the White House collection's first artwork by a Black woman.

The painting, called "Resurrection," is by Alma Thomas.

Woman: She was a trailblazer, and being able to see the influence that she has had in what some would call a nontraditional area, particularly for Black women artists, is inspiring.

♪ Curry: Born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1891, Alma Thomas lived in surroundings her autobiography renders idyllic-- a Victorian house in a good neighborhood with circular flowerbeds later reflected in her paintings... ♪ but life in Georgia was difficult.

She wasn't able to go to the white school down the block.

She had to go to a Black school.

She can't go to school beyond elementary school.

She wants to learn.

She wants to make art.

♪ Woman: With the increased lynchings and anti-Black violence, her family really wanted to move to a place where she could have more promise, more possibility, more education, and so they relocate here to Washington, D.C., in 1907.

Curry: Washington, D.C., was strictly segregated at the time.

While the majority of Black Americans in Washington remained poorly resourced, the Thomas family's Logan Circle neighborhood teemed with members of a rising Black middle class.

Thomas enrolled in Armstrong Manual Training School, one of the few high schools that admitted Black students.

She wrote that when she entered the art room, she felt it was exactly where she belonged.

After graduating in 1911, Thomas chose teaching as the way to support herself, but she wanted to follow her artistic interests, which had turned to costume design.

She enrolled at Howard University for a career change.

She came to Howard to study, actually, in home economics, as what would then be considered a nontraditional student.

Curry: Thomas began designing costumes for Howard's theater department.

Her work caught the attention of Professor James Vernon Herring, founder of Howard's brand-new art department.

He became her mentor, and in 1924, Thomas became the art department's first graduate.

With no apparent path to becoming a professional artist, she started teaching at Shaw Junior High School.

In addition to teaching art, she introduced students to Black artists, organizing the first art gallery in D.C. public schools.

Harvey: Alma Thomas was a part of, I think, a era of educators that were directly engaged in what we call fugitive pedagogy now, things that would not have been important to a white conception of what African American education needed to be.

Curry: She also organized a series of lectures by Alonzo Aden, the curator of the Howard University's Gallery of Art.

Alonzo Aden was another protege of James Vernon Herring's.

In 1943, the 3 of them-- Herring, Thomas, and Aden-- would launch one of the nation's first commercial Black-owned art galleries-- the Barnett-Aden Gallery.

Unlike other art galleries at the time, artwork and guests of all races were welcome.

While teaching, Alma Thomas did not abandon her own artistic development.

Gaulke, voice-over: I taught for 35 years.

She taught for 35 years, but both of us were also doing our art the whole time.

You could give up.

You could be teaching, giving your energy to others, or you could create a community that's gonna support you in your own growth.

For Alma, a lot of who her community were were men--Jacob Kainen, David Driskell, Sam Gilliam.

It's finding those people that are gonna say, "You can do it."

Curry: In 1950, Thomas joined another interracial art endeavor called the Little Paris Group, founded by Howard University art professor Lois Mailou Jones.

In Jones' attic, members critiqued each other's artwork and prepared collective exhibits.

Thomas also started going to school at American University.

She was the wrong race, gender, and age to be taking studio art classes at American, yet she already knew several of her teachers, Robert Gates and Jacob Kainen, as artists who had exhibited at the Barnett-Aden Gallery.

At American, she began to transform her artistic style.

In an early assignment called "Joe Summerford's Still Life Study," she painted with perspective and realism.

By 1958, her "Etude in Brown: (Saint Cecilia at the Organ)" verged on the abstract.

She showed 3 pieces in the Little Paris Group's first exhibition in 1951.

By 1955, her work was in a group show at the Corcoran, a museum she said tried to keep her out as a teen in 1908.

By the time she turned to painting full time after she retired from teaching in 1960, she was a modern abstractionist.

[Crowd singing] She would paint only one more representational work, a depiction of the 1963 March on Washington.

A year later, at age 73, she invented the style that became her signature.

She credited this style, which she called Alma's stripes, to observing the light dapple through the leaves of the holly tree in her front yard.

Her first series, called "Earth Paintings," recalled the flower beds of her youth in Columbus, Georgia.

Her next series, inspired by the moon landing in 1969, were called the "Space Paintings."

Her work started to travel to universities, to small galleries, then museums.

In 1971, she got a solo show at the Whitney Museum in New York, one of the preeminent institutions of contemporary American art.

She was the first Black woman to do so.

When Thomas died in 1978, she was honored and celebrated across the nation, yet a decade later, she had mostly faded from view.

The exceptions: the art museum in her birthplace, the Columbus Museum in Georgia; and in Washington, D.C., where she worked on her art, on uplifting the community, and on integrating the art world.

Harvey: She really becomes a beacon for art students at the time, particularly at Howard University, to say, you know, "Our first graduate is able "to find not even local acclaim, but by the seventies, national acclaim."

Stevens: She set a standard.

It's a very high bar.

All of us, as artists, should be spending that time trying to make sure we're living up to the patterns that she established for us.

♪ The largest public collection of Alma Thomas' art resides at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, whose exhibition "Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas" is on view through June 2.

See americanart.si.edu for details.

Thank you for watching this episode of "WETA Arts."

Be well, be creative, and enjoy the art all around you.

I'm Felicia Curry.

The brown one is Lady, and the white one is Poet.

You can feed them if you want to.

Curry: I would love to.

Hi, Poet.

I don't have anything, though, yet.

Graves: They can get pushy, especially Poet.

Curry: Ha ha!

Ha ha ha!

If you're leading, that's it.

Until 12:45, that is what you are.

You are a leader.

Thomas: I knew, starting at the age that I did, that I couldn't do a whole lot of different things, that I had to do one thing, and I was only interested in one thing.

Announcer: For more about the artists and institutions featured in this episode, go to weta.org/arts.