Event Statement – September 2023

The first Nevermore Jazz Ball and St. Louis Swing Dance Festival was designed to happen once. Once, and nevermore. That was in 2011. After nine editions that evolved year after year, the event's 10th anniversary––scheduled for fall 2020 and postponed indefinitely due to the global Covid-19 pandemic––finally saw the achievement of its namesake. 

            The Cherokee Street Jazz Crawl was inaugurated at the second edition of the event. Loosely inspired by a bar crawl on Frenchmen Street during the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Jazz Crawl sprouted up from a rich network of partnerships, formal and informal, up and down a street known for its grit, determination towards communal cohesion, and artistic spirit. The Cherokee Street Jazz Crawl has always been about civic pride, joy, and togetherness, and because it literally takes a village, a physical place where people live their day-to-day lives and work together to create and sustain culture, it has outlived the Nevermore Jazz Ball. 

            N/evermore is a new event that aims to remember and envision. The slash in the name represents a break­––a choice, a "yes, and," a melodic inflection on an old tune. With each participant as a partner, we aim to examine the role of Black vernacular dance in our lives and enact ways to live up to its values of self-expression for the benefit of a community. Rest assured, we will still party! Still laugh, play, and revel in the sustaining catharsis of the jam. 

            To dance despite the terror of the world: to heal, to feel, to connect, to experience pleasure, can be an act of resilience and subversion. But it can also be an act of escapism that leaves hegemonic structures unchecked. The nearly ten years of the Nevermore Jazz Ball happened against the backdrop of the murder of Michael Brown, Jr. by the police in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and the ensuing rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Against the backdrop of the election of an authoritarian and white supremacist to the U.S. presidency in 2016. Against a growing climate crisis that threatens our homes and ways of life. 

            How can we take on more responsibility towards action, powered with collective agency, and pleasure, within our jazz, blues, and swing dance communities?