Urban Stomp

Celebrating the creativity and joy of New York City dance cultures, Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor is a first-of-its-kind exhibition that explores over 200 years of social dance in the city, from the ballrooms and bars of the 19th century to the parks, living rooms, and clubs of today. The exhibition illuminates how New York’s dance cultures and their related dance floors create spaces of collective celebration and social possibilities that have an impact everywhere. 

Urban Stomp guides visitors through a rich history of dance, featuring styles like the lindy hop, salsa, hip-hop, hustle, bhangra, vogue, and more—each one born, shaped, or popularized in New York. Through a captivating mix of film, fashion, ephemera, art installations, dance interactives, music, photography, and instruments, the exhibition immerses visitors in the vibrant dances that have shaped—and been shaped by—the city’s ever-changing cultural landscape.  

Whether partnered, group, or dancing alone, dancers find spaces of connection that mirror the city’s boundless energy. Audiences will encounter practitioners of everything from the polka to the foxtrot through the Charleston and lindy hop; to styles of salsa dancing, merengue típico, and bachata; to traditions of collective celebration from breakin to litefeet.   

Other dance forms represented include globally influenced genres such as cumbia/cumbia sonidera, bhangra, contra, Jewish/Yiddish dances, Native/Indigenous American dances, and dabke. All of these dances have taken on new meanings when “remixed” in present-day New York City.  

The exhibition is drawn from the Museum’s collection, as well as through key loans from organizations including: Institute of Jazz Studies, Louis Armstrong House Museum & Archives, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Celia Cruz Foundation, Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro), Royal House of LaBeija, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Remix⟷Culture, CUNY Center for Dominican Studies, Apollo Theater, Karla Flórez School of Dance, Think!Chinatown, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, Brooklyn Contra, and private lenders such as Rubén Blades, DJ Rekha, Judy Santos, Hellotones, and many more. 

Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor is presented in collaboration with the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University–Newark. The Museum thanks the numerous dance teachers and culture-bearers for their assistance in creating dance tutorials that will appear throughout the exhibition and dance floors.