WHAT IS T21?

When, after 8 years of developing their skills as musical theatre playwrights in New York City & Los Angeles, Tim Long and Jerome Johnson returned to Tulsa to launch some new work, their first step was to create a 

NEW SERIES of STREET DANCE WORKSHOPS 

that were uniquely suited to Tulsa.  And although they have been focused on developing a worldwide audience in recent years Tim and Jerome maintain a deep love for and knowledge of Tulsa's extraordinary history.

As the workshop idea developed, it blossomed into a 3-part project including DANCE WORKSHOPS, SHORT DANCE FILMS and a NEW WORKS of THEATRICAL CHOREOGRAPHY, all based on Tulsa in 1921.

They held that creating any piece of Art for and about Tulsa would have to be deeply rooted in the PAST, wholly connected to the PRESENT, and designed to create a positive trajectory into the FUTURE. They came to the table armed with a vast knowledge about TULSA’S PAST, culled from the years of research that went into developing their first full-length book musical "A Song of Greenwood" (1997 - 2001), a widely-praised musical based on the facts leading up to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Those intense years coincided with a flurry of activity surrounding the completion of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission's final report, and placed Tim and Jerome in the unique position of being able to spend time with and learn from not only the remaining Riot survivors, but also the country's top scholars and historians on the subject, including Dr. Scott Ellsworth (author of what is considered the ground-breaking and definitive historical account of the subject, "Death in a Promised Land"), Author/Historian Eddie Faye Gates, and the venerable Dr. John Hope Franklin. (Among many others.)

As for their understanding of the PRESENT and the FUTURE... their work, from the early 90's to the present, has always been rooted in the world of STREET DANCE (long before the blanket moniker of "Street Dance" was popularized.) Born squarely into what is termed "the Hip-hop generation," Long & Johnson (the "Lo" and "Jo" of LoJoWERKz) have a unique artistic voice that has been best described as "the language of American Musical Theatre spoken with a strong Hip-hop dialect."  Their blend of an in-the-moment Hip-hop mindset and older, traditional genres of Art has held them in good stead with 2 generations of Hip-hop heads.  And yet, their observant knowledge of the twists, turns, and branches of "STREET ART" and "STREET DANCE" has always been coupled with a strong sense of responsibility to address the SOCIAL ISSUES that have grown alongside HIP-HOP itself. The nourishing, sustaining "wheat" of this vibrant, young American art form of Hip-hop has always grown entangled with the tares of VIOLENCE, FATHERLESSNESS and the SEARCH FOR IDENTITY and PURPOSE; tares that are disproportionately present in young Americans of color. These tares are still painfully manifesting on a daily basis in Tulsa.

Knowing that there are no easy solutions to social ills that have plagued Americans from the country's inception, Tim and Jerome have always chosen to embrace the total crop of young growth, uprooting the tares when possible but placing the strongest emphasis on nurturing growth.  They know that strong growth has everything to do with a soil replete with the nutrients of SELF-AWARENESS, ARTISTIC CURIOSITY and REALISTIC OPTIMISM.

LoJoWERKZ believes the most effective practice to fight against Tulsa's deep-rooted issues is a simple one.  They have witnessed, firsthand, the incredible power of HEALING that comes from bringing together diverse groups to work on a project. Tulsa's oft-ignored racial tensions can be directly traced to the events leading up to the 1921 riots, and the painful aftermath.

"We have seen a unique kind of ‘Tulsa healing’ that occurs when residents from different sections of the city come together with other residents of different socio-economic or racial backgrounds. Even in the relatively small population of Tulsa, this type of mixing is surprisingly rare.  Our projects tend to become bridges for these folk to cross, not because they are exclusively designed for that purpose, but because the art we personally like to create requires pairing up of odd bed-bellows, artistic styles that aren't always mixed.  The bridges are a side effect.  But the healing we see take place on those bridges is often the most satisfying and long-lasting result of the project. We didn't sit down to orchestrate some brilliant sort of ‘healing,’ we just witnessed it happening and embraced it as a unexpected blessing that comes from our own unique partnership as co-creators.  So we have remained aware of this and always try to create an atmosphere where this type of deeper understanding can take place. Often it's racial, but sometimes it is between different cultural or artistic disciplines, like ‘Musical Theatre Heads’ meeting ‘Hip-Hop Heads,’  ‘White Church folk’ meeting ‘Black Church folk,’ ‘High Art’ meeting ‘Street Art.’  But even in these more convoluted pairings, the core root is still often the racial one. One of my favorite comments from the New York Musical Theatre Festival selection committee about our musical "ROOFLESS" was, ‘This is like Cole Porter meets Lil Wayne.’   They got it.   And when people get it, that subtle healing process begins."

                                                                                 - Tim Long, LoJoWERKz Co-Founder

One of the most important elements of the T21 project is bringing in some of the most creative and innovative artists of the international Street Dance community to pour their knowledge and spirit into the best of our local young artists.  We also desire to collaborate with some of the best of Tulsa’s Classical Dance community, allowing for a deeper cross-discipline exchange of creative ideas that will add to artistic palette of our future crop of Tulsan creators.