As Washington DC rapidly gentrifies, street dancers refuse to be pushed out

In 2019, while passing through a Target parking lot in Washington DC’s Columbia Heights neighbourhood, photographer Nate Langston Palmer happened upon a crew of teens mastering the DIY art of street dance. Palmer watched the boys perform ​“Beat Ya Feet” moves, a new generation showing love to Washington DC’s legendary Go-go scene. 

It was a moment of recognition for Palmer, who came of age in the historically Black area during the ​’90s and ​’00s, before it was gentrified. ​“I’ve always held a lot of pride in my hometown and wanted my personal work to be centred in DC,” he says. ​“I developed a deep sense of curiosity about the neighbourhood, the ways it has changed and continues to change. Meanwhile an urgency to capture and memorialise a rapidly gentrifying city crept up in me.” 

Earlier this year, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition released a shocking report, Displaced By Design: Fifty Years Of Gentrification And Black Cultural Displacement In US Cities, which revealed how over 500 Black neighbourhoods have been erased by design, with more than half a million Black American residents displaced from their communities and homes via ​“urban redevelopment” projects and rising rents.

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Go-go, which got its start back in the mid-1960s, is homegrown DC funk from a time when the nation’s capital was known as ​“Chocolate City”. ​“Because DC is experiencing some of the highest rates of gentrification in the country, Black cultural movements like Go-go music and Beat Ya Feet are expressions of resistance by nature. The very practice of these traditions says: ​‘We are still here,’” Palmer explains. 

Trained in photojournalism and drawn to the fast-paced energy of traditional documentary work, DC’s native son understood the moment he was witnessing. Like Gordon Parks, who chose the camera as his ​“weapon of choice,” Palmer began working across portraiture, fashion, reportage, fine art, and street photography to craft an expansive look at the city’s contemporary Beat Ya Feet scene. 

Palmer began following the group, embarking on a long-term project that continues to this day. ​“What began as an interest in movement and tradition transformed into a fascination with relationship and emotion,” he says. ​“Each of the dancers have their own unique style. They blend in other forms of dance such as Jookin, Jersey Club, to more widely known forms of dance such as ballet. I am inspired by the beauty of the dance that these men create just for the sake of making something beautiful.” 

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With the new exhibition Song of Sons, presented by The Nicholson Project in Washington DC, Palmer crafts a majestic tapestry of public art, for the people, by the people of the city. Rather than be ensconced in a sterile, white cube, traditional gallery space, Song of Sons is designed to meet people where they are. The work appears across seven different locations in SW (Southwest) and SE (Southeast) DC, taking shape as building size photographs, nightly video projections, photographic installations visible from the back alley, and bus shelters in the city’s historically Black neighbourhoods.

“Having this work shown at such a large scale in the nation’s capital feels deeply significant and urgent. It reveals a side of DC, and of young Black men, that the world rarely gets to see,” Palmer says. ​“It honours a culture rooted in Black communities in a city where Black culture is being increasingly displaced. I believe it’s important for people to witness this side of the city, and be moved to consider what is at stake.” 

Nate Langston Palmer: Song of Sons is on view through September 28, 2025, in Washington DC. 

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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