When the musical “Hairspray” came out, filmmaker Beverly Lindsay-Johnson was deep into research on D.C.’s homegrown African American TV dance show, “Teenarama.” Friends started bombarding her with the suggestion that she should turn her subject into a musical or play — you know, like “Hairspray.”
“I don’t know anything about plays or musicals,” said Lindsay-Johnson. “I said, ‘Let me just get through this.’ ”
She did: the 2007 documentary “Dance Party: The Teenarama Story,” about the “American Bandstand”-style show that ran on WOOK-TV from 1963 to 1970. While D.C.’s “Milt Grant Show” had African American dancers only on Tuesdays, “Teenarama” featured Black teens six afternoons a week.
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