In 1969, the Mark Taper Forum was the location for the Los Angeles Festival of Performing Arts's most unique offering: a movement experiment between Studio Watts and celebrated choreographer Anna Halprin's San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop. The piece they created, Ceremony of Us, set itself the goal of making a dance happening of a healing encounter between conflicting races.

“Good art makes me want to talk to people,” says curator Bennett Simpson talking to artist Ingrid Calame about his 2013 MOCA exhibition Blues for Smoke. Ruminating on the blues, their conversation roams over cultural influences and intersections from Robert Johnson’s Delta legacy to the poetics of everyday experience.