The new work celebrates the city’s shared history through movement — exploring how dance has always been a language for connection across race, class, and neighborhood, and how Philadelphians have found freedom, belonging, and joy through rhythm.

Inspired by the calls from the sheet music of the Lafayette Ball of Francis Johnson’s music and an early nineteenth-century lithograph that caricatured a Black ball in Philadelphia, Dance Like It’s 1829 begins there — not to reenact the past, but to uncover it. Through choreography, improvisation, live music, and storytelling, it focuses on the early Black assemblies of the 1820s and the music of Francis Johnson and William Appo — two of Philadelphia’s pioneering Black composers and bandleaders.

Johnson’s brass bands performed for both free Black audiences and the city’s white elite, while Appo, an accomplished violinist, played regularly at the Walnut Street Theatre. Their careers reflect the complicated cultural landscape of early Philadelphia — where Black excellence often thrived within, and in spite of, racial barriers.

The story follows the LaFayette Ball, composed by Johnson, reimagining his suite of music through present day Jazz arrangements. This work will explore how 2026 would look with the rise of parlor dances, labor hall gatherings, and neighborhood socials that animate the lives of the city’s working-class residents. From the quadrille and polka to the bop, twist, and today’s digital dance culture, each step reveals how movement has mirrored Philadelphia’s evolving identity, carrying traces of resistance, pride, and community.

In the end, it reminds us that Philadelphia’s story has always been told through motion — one city, many steps. One Philly, a United City.