A timeless groove

She danced with modern dance pioneer Helen Tamiris in New York City during the Depression.

He played tenor sax with Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine and other jazz luminaries at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and has been a staple of Twin Cities jazz for decades.

On Sunday, Ida Arbeit, 100, and Irv Williams, 90, will celebrate the tradition of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s -- a period of explosive creativity in African-American arts, literature, intellectualism and pride.

They'll perform with the Kairos Dance Theatre, an intergenerational dance troupe (ages 4 to 100) and gospel singer Tom Tipton, 76.

Both can spend hours telling stories about the music and dance that still inspire them.

"You feel that beat?" Arbeit called out over a jazz riff from the Irv Williams Quartet during rehearsal Wednesday, her shoulders bobbing with the music. "That's Harlem. That's the Harlem where my sister and I would go on Saturdays and dance, dance, dance for two days."

Williams was just a kid then, but he already had his first sax. "When I heard that music, I knew that was my life," he said.

Warren Wolfe