In late August, YouTuber @atver600 caught a group in Memphis unlawfully unloading a boxcar by hand. This is not the group that robbed a boxcar in Boxtown, nor the duo arrested for lifting Nikes from another train last month.
Those were late at night and very early in the morning. The group @atver600 caught were brazenly operating in the full light of day.
Tricky
Posted to Facebook by David Dahler
This image was posted to the Stop Memphis Crime Facebook group. What turned out to be trickier than the stunts pulled by the rider in the photo? Commenters wondered, “Where are his legs?”
Who to Follow
Posted to X by Memphis Jookin
You won’t regret following Memphis Jookin on X. The dance videos are mesmerizing and stoke that city pride. Don’t miss the funny one to the right on “how to workout in Memphis.”
Ladia Yates is the founder of the Ladia Yates Entertainment Academy (L.Y.E. Academy,) which was founded in 2014. L.Y.E Academy, located at 4780 Riverdale Road, offers a number of classes such as competitive hip-hop and majorette, Memphis Jookin’, tumbling, praise dancing, and boxing.
This focus on Memphis-centric dancing, while also incorporating modern and contemporary styles, is unique, and according to Yates, it only makes sense. L.Y.E.’s distinctive approach to the arts has been noted, as their social media accounts have garnered over 600,000 followers, reaching more than six-million people in the last 28 days.
L.Y.E’s dancers have been involved with projects with Nike, Lil Baby, NLE Choppa, Duke Deuce, and more.
“We’re not in L.A., we’re not in New York, so they just find us on social media,” said Yates. “You gotta represent.You don’t want to be too commercial or watered down, you want to stick to your roots.”
Yates’ business represents one that is both Black- and woman-owned, which is important to note when examining businesses in the arts and entertainment industry. A research brief by Bonnie Nichols, senior analyst from the National Endowment for the Arts, said that “members of racial/ethnic minority groups own arts businesses at a lower rate than they own businesses in general.”
Not only did the brief assess that “Hispanics and non-whites own 9 percent of all ‘arts, entertainment, and recreation’ businesses,” but it also said that these groups also own only 11 percent of performing arts companies. The same study also said one in five performing arts companies are owned by women.
While Yates exists in both minority groups, she also realizes that she possessed a level of privilege and accessibility that she wanted to bring to Memphis’ youth.
Yates is originally from California, and moved to Memphis when she was 16 years old. Yates said that while California has its own industry and opportunities, she felt that Memphis lacked that.
“With me being from California and working in the industry, I have the resources to help the underprivileged kids out there [Memphis],” Yates said. “I just wanted to be a stepping stone and prove a point that you don’t have to move to Los Angeles, or Atlanta, or New York to be successful. Just work hard at whatever you do, wherever you are and you can make it.”
The idea of wanting to bring resources from bigger cities to Memphis is a sentiment shared by many creatives in the community. Chrysti Chandler recalls coming back to Memphis in 1991 after seeing there were many children who didn’t participate in after-school activities. She was shocked to find out that the reason for this was because students couldn’t afford it.
Chandler set out to start an organization that would allow for students to have affordable performing arts experience, which resulted in the founding of the Young Actors Guild (YAG).
Accessibility is very important when it comes to the performing arts, especially when it comes to location. YAG recently celebrated the re-grand opening of the Harriet Performing Arts Center, located at 2788 Lamar Avenue, in Orange Mound.
While they were able to purchase this space for only $1 from the city, one of the main reasons they chose to procure this location was so that they could bring the arts back into the community, and make them accessible for young children.
“If they have to walk, it’s right there in their community,” said Sabrina Norwood, executive director for YAG. “It’s a quick drop off, but it’s also an opportunity for students to have a positive space that they can call their own, where they can grow, they can develop, they can train within the arts. They can build leadership and character development.”
Young Actors Guild (Credit: Craig Thompson)
Lack of resources, whether they be local or industry-related, should not prevent students from accessing arts education. This is an idea that the three creatives agree upon, with them all expanding on how vital the arts are in enriching the lives of children in the Memphis community.
“Arts truly is a tool that saves lives in the community,” said Norwood. “There opportunities for young people to have arts accessibility in each community now, which is really great because it provides them the opportunity to dance away negativity, act out the things they’re seeing, and provide positive feedback of ways that we can provide solutions to some of the problems that we see currently going on in our community.”
This approach to the arts has also been exemplified by L.Y.E. academy.
In December of 2021, Juanita Washington, the head administrator of L.Y.E. Academy, was murdered at Walgreens off of South Perkins. This birthed L.Y.E.’s newest series of events that fall under the title of “Stop The Violence,” and is sponsored by Red Bull and Nike.
Yates believes that everyone is impacted by the arts, whether it be through singing, acting, or painting, which is why she chose to take a stance against violence, all while juxtaposing it with entertainment.
“You have to get people’s attention in a way you know they’ll pay attention to it. Events such as ‘Stop The Violence’ talent shows and concerts will hopefully inspire people to go another route,” said Yates.
The Memphis Jookin Facebook group had some love for that blue-shirted, smooth-as-hell clogger guy last week. The viral video of the smiley dancer hit 15 million views and made its way across TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
Even if the dance style was not their thing, nearly all on the Jookin page paid respect to his skills. “I don’t care what nobody else said,” Patrick Gatewood commented, “bro cuttin up.”
NBA chicken Protests
Posted to Twitter by Direct Action Everywhere
The MEMernet watched again as the Grizzlies playoff game last week against Minnesota Timberwolves was interrupted by a protestor.
So far, one woman glued her hand to the floor, another chained herself to the goalposts at FedExForum, and another ran onto the court wearing a shirt that read “[Wolves owner] Glen Taylor roasts animals alive.” They are all angry that Taylor, who owns a chicken farm, recently killed 5.3 million birds after positive tests of bird flu.
Porchfest
Posted to Instagram by CooperYoungMemphis
Cooper-Young sang with music and visitors Saturday for Porchfest, which bring musicians to porches all over the neighborhood.
With the success of musicals like Hamilton, it may not seem unusual that the Orpheum Theatre will premiere an important slice of Memphis African-American history this Friday and Saturday, focused on a turn-of-the-century music and dance craze that rose from the streets to take the world by storm. The star of the show is a dancer who is still making that history: Memphis’ own Lil Buck.
By now, most locals have heard of Lil Buck, aka Charles Riley, as he’s rightfully become a global ambassador of sorts for the style of dance originally known as “gangsta walking,” “choppin’,” or “buckin’,” now known over the world as “Memphis jookin’.” As he says now, “Ever since I first saw Memphis jookin’, I’ve always been intrigued by it, and I always had such a deep love and passion for it. Because it helped me find who I am as a person, through the dance and through the movement.”
Even as he’s famously combined jookin’ with elements of ballet and other styles, the original approach to dance he learned growing up here remains at the heart of his practice. And with this week’s premiere of Memphis Jookin’: The Show, he wants to let the world know that jookin’ is about more than just him. “It’s a show about the culture in general, Memphis dance and Memphis music. This show was inspired by a lot of the pivotal people that helped elevate Memphis jookin’ to the place that it is now. People who came before us. What we like to call the OGs. From DJs to OG dancers to people who were recording music at the time, who were very pivotal to us. You see the whole development through our lens.”
Speaking before leading the show’s cast through rehearsals at the Collage Dance Center, Riley uses one word again and again: community. “A show like this has always been on my mind, and something I wanted to do for the community,” he says. “We’re paying homage. There were a lot of OGs before who didn’t have these kinds of opportunities and had to handle things in a different way in their era, who grew up in an era when Memphis was really rough to live in. We want to give a glimpse of what they had to go through. It’s really storytelling through movement. So you can understand what it feels like to grow up in Memphis as a street dancer.”
For Riley, the local dance community is a living, breathing thing; the entire cast of about a dozen dancers is from Memphis. “I love being able to provide an opportunity like this for other jookers to gain some professional experience as dancers, doing what they’ve grown up doing. In Memphis, we have almost no platforms for Memphis street culture to be able to really shine.” Yet soon, the dancers will shine from coast to coast, as the ensemble prepares to take the show on the road starting February 25th.
“It’s definitely a story, a through line from beginning to end, with dialogue. It’s a Broadway-style show,” says Riley. “It features original instrumental music by the Mulherin brothers. Being from Memphis, they understand Memphis music on all levels. They’ve been studying tracks by DJ Squeeky, DJ Spanish Fly, and others.”
The show was co-created with some theatrical heavy hitters. “The idea came from myself and the co-producers of this show, CAMI Music group and Young Jai. Young Jai played a big role in capturing Memphis jookin’ on camera early on. He’s always been around as part of the community. And we have these amazing writers, Malcolm Barrett and Ameenah Kaplan. Ameenah is the director of The Lion King tour, and she suggested Amy Campion, the director of our show.”
For his part, Riley is excited to bring raw street culture to the stage. “It’s one thing to watch it being performed to classical music, but it’s another thing to see it performed to the music it was actually born from. That Memphis underground rap music. That grit. That’s where it came from. I want people to get a dose of that and be able to say, ‘Wow, this is incredible.’”
For nearly two decades, New Ballet Ensemble has been performing its take on Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker with its NutRemix. Set on Beale Street, this performance blends ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, flamenco, Memphis Jookin, and West African dance while the Memphis Symphony Orchestra puts a fresh spin on the original score.
“After a year not on our stage, a lot of our students are coming back, and the show is coming back to life and the love will emanate off the stage,” says Katie Smythe, New Ballet CEO and artistic director who conceived of the show back in 2003. “And the NutRemix is all about love, which is always needed.”
Since its inception, the production has gone through a few minor changes, but it’s always stuck to the same story. “In 2003, you had to be pretty explicit and didactic about social justice themes. It angered some audiences members, and it thrilled others,” Smythe says. “Now, we feel like people come to this show because they want to see this human tapestry on the stage. They embrace it for its diversity, and we’re going to dig deeper into the cultural diversity by bringing in experts of the art forms.”
For next year’s performance, the ensemble plans to explore Colombian, Indian, and Congolese dance. “This year is sort of a fond farewell to the genres that have been in Act II,” Smythe says, “and next year we’re gonna embrace some new genres which is a huge education for our audience, for our dancers, for our students, and for me.”
New Ballet’s NutRemix, Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, 225 N. Main, Saturday, November 20th, 5:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 21st, 2:30 p.m., $20-$45.
The free live-streaming app Caffeine will host its second display of the popular dance style Memphis Jookin with this Saturday’s The Jump Off 2. The performance will be streamed live at 7 p.m. Central Time.
The first Jump Off event aired on May 1st, and featured Word Play Shugg, Myles Yachts, and well-known dancer Lil Buck, among others. It was the debut of Memphis Jookin on the Caffeine platform, which has become a live-streaming home to street dance leagues like BattleFest.
Jai Armmer, manager to Memphis-born Jookin ambassador Lil Buck, says he hopes the partnership will draw more attention to the creative culture of Memphis. “Coming to Caffeine, we’re pumped to bring more attention and more people to street dancing and, beyond that, to give deserved props to the cultural contributions that Memphis has been delivering for folks nationally for decades,” Armmer said in a statement.
The Jump Off 2 will include head-to-head dance battles from a lineup of Jookin legends, including: Jadyn Smooth vs. Trent Jeray; Surf Taylor vs. JT Gvo; Trill V vs. Dotkom; and David the Dancer vs. KT3.
For a preview of the coming action, check out this performance from the event earlier in the month, featuring the Ladies of Jookin:
CREDIT: Andrea Zucker/Courtesy New Ballet Ensemble & School
If your holiday thing is the Nutcracker and you are not real nuts about seeing an adaptation, all I have to say is that sometimes a remake gets it right. Really right. That is definitely the case with Nut Remix, a modern reinvention of Tchaikovsky’s classic Nutcracker, by the savvy and talented team from New Ballet Ensemble & School.
The performance is set on Beale Street. The mash-up of dance and music styles really works. From ballet to breakdancing and flamenco to Memphis jookin, this uniquely Memphis production will mesmerize you from start to finish. This year, the production will be screened at the drive-in for your safety. If you’ve seen the production on stage and have made it your annual holiday tradition or if you’re seeing it for the first time, I can’t think of a better place to experience the magic of Memphis. Just remember to register for your tickets in advance. As part of the school’s mission to make the arts accessible to everyone, this screening is pay-what-you-can with a suggested donation of $40 per car.
Andrea Zucker/Courtesy New Ballet Ensemble & School
Nut Remix
Be sure to do it soon. After last week’s screening, word got around. According to New Ballet, “We sold out our original goal of 150 cars for next week’s screening, and we are now increasing our capacity to accommodate more viewers.”
Experience this uniquely Memphis reimagining of the Nutcracker with the whole family from the comfort and safety of your car.
New Ballet’s “Nut Remix,” Malco Summer Drive-In, 5310 Summer, Thursday, Dec. 17, 6:30 p.m., pay-what-you-can with a suggested donation of $40 per car.
Memphis has a diverse and enduring dance community, and some of the cities brightest exports and most exciting regional innovations are have their roots in a full-on collision of classical dance, music, and street cultures.
In recent weeks dance fans have seen classical companies like Ballet Memphis and New Ballet Ensemble taking their place on larger stages.
New Ballet Ensemble students ages recently performed with the Memphis Symphony at the Cannon Center and 13-year-old TJ Benson joined the world renown cellest Yo-Yo Ma for the encore.
New Ballet meets Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma has previously performed with NBE alum Li’l Buck.
Meanwhile, Ballet Memphis’ River Project lands some high praise and some prime real estate in the New York Times. An excerpt:
An introductory film suggests that the plan for these three new ballets was to reflect three zones through which the river passes: one ballet (Steven McMahon’s “Confluence”) on the central area around Memphis, one on the Delta and New Orleans (Julia Adam’s “Second Line”), and another on — what? This third ballet (Matthew Neenan’s “Party of the Year”) proved the least obviously river-connected: its setting was a party in Los Angeles. This didn’t make it a disappointment, however. Instead, it was both the evening’s biggest hit and one of the most beguiling new American ballets of our day.
This week dance fans can check out Company D’s “Let it Be a Dance” or the work of MacArthur Genus grant-winning choreographer Bill T Jones, both at the Buckman.
Andrea Zucker/Courtesy New Ballet Ensemble & School 
