Lucy Gellman Photos.
The lyrics to Michael Jackson’s “Working Day and Night” soared through the auditorium, taking it back to 1979. On stage, dancers exploded into movement, arms slicing through the air as a dozen pairs of feet refused to stay still. Hips became pliant, flexible as they rocked from side to size. Toes pointed and ankles flexed, waiting for that octave-defying Ah! from Jackson that came every time. In the center of the action, Nehemiah McLaurin shimmied like his life depended on it.
Three years ago, he couldn’t have imagined wanting to be center stage in front of hundreds of people. Now, it was the moment he had waited the whole summer for.
McLaurin, who is a rising eighth grader at Elm City College Preparatory Middle School, brought that confidence to the LAB at ConnCORP Friday evening, as the Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology (ConnCAT) celebrated its 13th annual summer performance showcase. The product of a six-week journey through the fine and performing arts, the showcase paid homage to funk and soul, not just as musical genres but as social movements.
“We grew up in the funk era—everything was funk,” said ConnCAT Director of Programs Steve Driffin, who runs the summer program alongside Youth Programs Assistant Rachel “Rocky” Graziano and a dedicated staff of musicians, dancers, choreographers, and audio engineers. “It’s embedded in us. The fact that we can introduce them [the youth] to genres of music that they’ve never heard before and how they embrace it—I think it’s already in them. We’re just getting it out.”
This year, that flowed through the program’s first hot, sticky days in early July through its conclusion on Friday night, which managed to stay cool, calm and collected despite the lingering, heavy August heat outside. After last year’s mellifluous celebration of the Harlem Renaissance, Driffin said that he and mentor William Fluker weren’t sure what period of Black arts history to take on. The Harlem Renaissance, and particularly its connection to New Haven jazz, felt hard to top.
Then the two started thinking of a “summer of funk, with a pinch of soul,” Driffin said. Suddenly, a whole new musical world seemed possible. They dove into planning, with help from fellow teachers David Burgess, Nikki Claxton, and Jasmine Powell. They built a musical universe, with nods to artists that ranged from Kool & The Gang and Parliament Funkadelic to Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder, Con Funk Shun and The Emotions. They folded in visual art, from Maija Peeples-Bright and Keith Haring.
Top: Iziaya Martin, Nehemiah McLaurin and Jace Jones, who are all friends because of the program.
Graziano and Driffin, who are the wildly beating heart of the program, made sure the space was ready for the summer students, just as they do all year round. Then e last month, the organization’s team welcomed 60 students to ConnCAT, which sits off Winchester Avenue in New Haven’s Science Park neighborhood.
For the first two weeks, “we had to get to know all these beautiful kids,” Driffin said. Then they dove deep into both music and cultural history, building a two-hour show in just under the month that remained.
“It’s been a total joy” to teach in the program, said Fluker, who has become a steady and constant presence at ConnCAT, and one of its greatest champions in the community. “My love for these kids, it’s so great, you know. We work really hard.”
In a first-floor staging area across the building, that excitement hummed and buzzed through the air, palpable as students ran over lines, practiced songs and exchanged funk-inspired quips one last time before hitting the stage. Now in his third year in the program, 11-year-old Joseph Murphy remembered learning about the depth and breadth of funk music last month, and feeling like he suddenly had more of a handle on music history.
“I had heard of the genre but I never really knew what it was,” said Joseph, who will start the seventh grade at Barnard Environmental Science and Technology School (BEST) later this month. “
“I just like being able to do something, getting out of the house,” he added when asked what keeps him coming back to the program. This year, he was especially excited to break down musical arrangements with Burgess, who is the executive director of The Breed Academy and began collaborating with the program a year ago.
“Before, I would just hear music, and now I’m able to hear different instruments,” he said. He added that the program has given him an unexpected boost of confidence, particularly as he’s returned year after year. As he got into costume Friday, he prepared to sing backup on songs from Kool & The Gang, P Funk, and The Ohio Players.
Dressed in a sequin-studded cap and matching suit, rising Hamden High sophomore Iziaya Martin agreed, noting how much he’s grown through the summer program. When he joined the ConnCAT family five years ago, he was shy, unsure of himself and reluctant to stand in the spotlight for too long. By his second year, he performed an entire song by himself. Then he was co-hosting, just as he did last year. This year, he said, he was glad to return primarily as ensemble.
“It gives me confidence, discipline, the willingness to learn something new,” he said. While Martin doesn’t envision a career in the arts—”I’m still dead set on being a paleontologist,” he said matter-of-factly —performing has pushed him to grow socially and emotionally, which he now thinks of as transferable in any career.
“Yes!” McLaurin chimed in as he listened, straightening out the collar on a white-and-brown suit that fit him like a glove. Three years ago, he would have described himself as shy, with intense stage fright. ConnCAT pushed him—gently—to overcome it. “I learned how to be more confident, just be more myself. Nehemiah is energy. He’s funny. He’s happy.”
In the hallway just down a set of stairs, friends and family had begun to gather, forming a line that went all the way down a long gallery hallway where The Bldg Fund’s exhibition Beholder is running through Oct. 3. Already, it felt like a summertime reunion: parents embraced, chatted, and guided excited grandparents and little siblings through the long hallways. A few found their young performers, and slid last-minute bobby pins and shiny barrettes into their hair.
As students waited in the wings, Driffin took the mic, hoarse after a week of dress rehearsals and an art opening at ConnCAT’s 4 Science Park home. Jace Jones, who last year played Monterey owner Rufus Grenlee, could feel the excitement rising in his ribcage. Two years ago, at a summer showcase dedicated to hip hop, he got so nervous that Martin had to calm him down backstage. Now, “I have no fear,” he said.
“It’s been great, a process, they’re excited, they’re gonna do their thing,” Driffin said, shouting out members of the program’s summer staff as the audience cheered. Around them, the house was so full that a few people stood in the back and lingered at the sides of the room. “We love what we do, and the outcome of it, you’re going to see tonight. So without further ado, we’re gonna get this party started.”
And it was, true to his promise, a party. As attendees stilled in their seats, teacher Terrance Ivory Jr. transformed into “Dr. Funkenstein,” bringing the smooth sounds of radio W-FUNK to Newhall and Morse Street. Throughout the night, it was his voice that helped carry the show forward, bringing students onstage and ushering them off with quick, easy rejoinders and a silky-smooth voice that made the space feel at once homey and danceable.
Ivory, a member of The Breed Ent. team, works with Burgess in ConnCAT’s Mac Lab, teaching digital music production. As Dr. Funkenstein, he rocked a huge Afro, boxy glasses and a white lab coat, keeping the tables turning for over two hours, as early evening faded into night outside, and students journeyed from the mid-1960s through the late 70s.
“This is the station that keeps your Afro tight and your soul nice and funky,” he purred into the mic, and it felt as though he had turned the clock back to 1964, when James Brown began playing with the rhythms and instrumentals on his album Out Of Sight. On stage, dozens of students materialized, rotating in and out for a funk medley that got the audience on its feet.
Just as in years past, they found that delicate, sometimes glamorous balance, walking a fine-tuned tightrope between music history, splashy costumes, a little well-deserved end-of-summer goofiness, and raw, sometimes astounding talent that they have always had in them.
In a cover of the Staples Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” Sonaii Brannon stunned and delighted, hitting each note as she made the song her own. A few songs later, Amari Watts let the whole room heat up with Kool & The Gang’s “Too Hot,” crooning through the hook as her ruby-colored, sequined dress sparkled in the light.
In between, student Isaiah Wooten slipped into a cover of “Get Down On It,” as Driffin danced along, beaming, from the front row. And when she took on Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin' You,” Amelia Matthews hit every high, sweet and etherial note
Students were just getting started. By a minute into Tristan Spencer-Franklin’s take on Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove,” a handful of attendees had stood from their seats, clapping along as they sang the refrain of “Alllll right!” back to students, filling the whole auditorium with exuberant, cacophonous sound. It was still early in the night, and the space felt vibrant, listeners vibing on this trip through music history.
Top: Student Chyla Bright. Bottom: Trelle Lowery and ConnCAT CEO & President Erik Clemons.
“Each summer I come I know I have a second family here, always,” counselor Trelle Lowery, a senior at the University of Maryland, had said shortly before the show, and the words felt alive. Lowery, who is studying criminal justice, started as a camp counselor at ConnCAT when she was 15, and has returned every year since. Onstage, she watched that family come to life, students taking the mic one by one as the music swirled and bloomed around them.
So too, when student Chyla Bright (cooly presented as “Ms. Chyla B”) took a podium at the front of the room to present her poem “A Funk and Soul Medley” (read it in full here) which folded in song titles from two decades of music history. As she read Friday, the auditorium became surprisingly quiet, attendees spellbound as they listened. Just moments before, many had been clapping along, dancing from their seats.
“It's ‘A Lovely Day,’ so ‘What’s Going On’ in these streets?” she began, and a few delighted murmurs bubbled up from the front rows. “‘Let’s Stay Together,’ no time to wonder, the feeling is too sweet.”
She cleared her throat and kept going, pausing for just a few seconds. Each time she did, collecting herself, the audience cheered her on, excited to hear what was to come.
“When the music starts, a ‘Shining Star’ appears on the scene. / ‘I’ll be There,’ just like ‘Sir Duke’ on the music machine,” she continued. “We found our ‘Boogie Wonderland,’ so ‘Ain’t No Stoppin Us Now’ / ‘A Love Rollercoaster’ ride of funk that can't be stopped somehow.”
It was one of the many times during the night that it felt—even in a year in which Black history, Black stories and Black people have been under siege at the federal level—that the kids are all right and the future is in both good and harmonious hands, as long as the adults in the room are willing to listen, to share their knowledge, and to cede the floor and see what they do next.
Isn’t that what it’s about, Driffin asked aloud at once point, urging the audience to move vocally engage with the young performers onstage. If people don’t support the next generation of artists, who will be there to make art at all?
Nowhere was that clearer, perhaps, than in the night’s choreography, a tour de force from Claxton that brought together students who have danced for years and those who have no formal dance experience at all. As “Working Day and Night” oozed from the speakers, a dozen young people bounded onto the stage, their arms already sailing over their heads.
They joined together in a fast, syncopated clap—Ooh, my sugar! You got me workin' day and night! Jackson sang—and spun with the words, hips never not in motion. Not even 10 seconds in, and they were airborne, feet springing from the ground. They shimmied and crouched, joints elastic, and the audience exploded into sound.
“All right!” a proud parent yelled from the front row. “Yesssss!” another half-screamed.
Close to the center of the stage, McLaurin radiated light, so expressive that he could have pointed a toe or rotated into profile, and it would have conveyed whole paragraphs of speech. Offstage, he was still fairly quiet, excited to have somewhere to go for the summer. But onstage, it was suddenly as if his bones were made for the sound, bending back and forth to Jackson’s voice.
Nearby, rising Betsy Ross Arts & Design Academy (BRADA) seventh grader Kamren Robinson soared into a duet with another student, leaping counterclockwise in a half-circle around the stage. He captured the magic of the movement, blending styles as a leap turned into a shimmy, and a pirouette ended in a clap above his head. Students rushed back onto the stage, limbs loose and faces beaming as they moved.
Earlier in the evening, students Shine Langley and Samiyah Swint had zeroed in on the power of the arts as a tool for communication, and that belief was clear as they took the spotlight and left it all on the stage. For Samiyah, who is going into the seventh grade at BRADA, that’s especially true when she’s able to express herself through dance.
“I got that you can build more friendships and learn more things about yourself,” Shine chimed in. “And I learned that there’s different kinds of funk."
A student exhibition, also dedicated to funk and soul music, is still up at ConnCAT’s 4 Science Park home.