Name: Dancing While Black Festival / Black to The Future: A Long Table
Start: 2018-5-5T16-16-00-00
End: 2018-5-5T18-18-00-00
Location: BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance

History

DANCING WHILE BLACK is an artist-led initiative that supports the diverse work of Black dance artists by cultivating platforms for process, performance, dialogue and documentation. We bring the voices of black dance artists from the periphery to the center, providing opportunities to self-determine the languages and lenses that define their work. Since 2012, DWB has produced the work of more than a dozen Black dance makers, supported 22 Fellowship artists in the developing their practice and networks and gathered scholars, writers and artists to participate in diverse platforms that center their voices and build community.

Dancing While Black operates at the intersection of aesthetics and organizing. Central to the work is building partnerships – with presenters, organizers, curators and artists. Over the past five years, Dancing While Black has established ongoing partnerships with BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, the Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center, PURPOSE Productions, Urban Bush Women, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange.

Our partnerships are rooted in a mutual commitment to equity and serving the needs and visions of artists. In a field that encourages individualism, our work prioritizes community building. We celebrate that there is a momentum building around shifting the dance landscape, and we are committed to help shepherd these efforts. Our commitment to equity requires our solidarity with others who are also doing the work.

Up Next

may 2018

03mayallday05Dancing While Black 5th Anniversary Festival(All Day) EST BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & DanceDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

Event Details

CELEBRATE Dancing While Black’s 5th Anniversary!

In 2012, Paloma McGregor launched Dancing While Black, an artist-led initiative that supports the diverse work of Black dance artists by cultivating platforms for process, performance, dialogue and documentation. DWB brings the voices of black dance artists from the periphery to the center, providing opportunities to self-determine the languages and lenses that define their work.

Since 2012, Dancing While Black has produced the work of more than a dozen Black dance makers, supported 22 Fellowship artists in the developing their practice and networks, and gathered scholars, writers and artists to participate in diverse platforms that center their voices and build community.

This Spring we return full-circle to BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, where Dancing While Black held its first gathering. After five years of continuous partnership, it is only right that its Anniversary Celebration take place in this home space. We are excited to come together to honor the past, present and future of this work.

JOIN US for a Long Table, film screening, performances by Bronx youth, special guest artists, current DWB Fellows – Alethea Pace, J. Bouey, Jasmine Hearn, Kayla Hamilton, NIC Kay, Shelby Felton– AND a dance party!

THURSDAY MAY 3rd: Dance Futures

A celebration of the future of Dancing While Black with Bronx youth and families, centering the neighborhood which has been an important home to DWB the past five years. Performance, 7pm

FRIDAY MAY 4th: Living Our Legacies

Showcasing our current DWB Fellows and tap master Jason Samuel Smith (curated by Rashida Bumbray). Performance, 8pm

SATURDAY MAY 5th: Looking Back, Visioning Forward

Bringing together the full DWB history:
4 pm – Long Table discussion curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa/EYA Projects
6:30 pm – Screening of Gabri Christa’s film series, Another Building
8 pm – DWB Fellows & Donna Clark dancing Eleo Pomare’s classic Narcissus Rising (curated by Marya Wethers)
10pm – PARTY

“The Dancing While Black platform radically centers, uplifts, and creates space for black artists to dive boldly into our creative process with support, endless love, and in community.” -Brittany Williams, ’16-’17 DWB Fellow

“Dancing While Black invites myself and my fellow brothers and sistars to be together in our vastness without apology!” – Jaimé Dzandu, ’16-’17 DWB Fellow

Time

may 3 (Thursday) - 5 (Saturday) EST

Location

BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance

2474 Westchester Ave, Bronx, NY 10461

Learn More

Calendar GoogleCal

Organizer

Dancing While Black / Angela's Pulse and BAAD!

03may7:00 pmDancing While Black Festival / Dance Futures7:00 pm BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & DanceDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

04may8:00 pmDancing While Black Festival / Living Our Legacies8:00 pm BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & DanceDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

05may4:00 pm6:00 pmDancing While Black Festival / Black to The Future: A Long Table4:00 pm - 6:00 pm BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & DanceDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

05may6:30 pm7:30 pmDancing While Black Festival / Film Screening: Another Building6:30 pm - 7:30 pm BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & DanceDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

05may8:00 pmDancing While Black Festival / Looking Back, Visioning Forward8:00 pm BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts & DanceDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

“Dancing While Black means
my Blackness is me, but
not all of me.“
– Camille A. Brown

Process

Angela's Pulse Collaborator Ebony Golden and '15-'16 DWB Fellow Sydnie Mosely at DWB Story Circles captured by Whitney Brown

Get a Glimpse of our Freedom Stories

Last month, we gathered at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics to kick off our Fifth Anniversary Season with Story Circles on Organizing Toward Vision in an Age of Resistance. We were led by DWB founder Paloma McGregor and the incredible Wendi Moore-O'Neal, daughter of John O'Neal, the originator of the Story Circle process we have used at several gatherings.

By Angela's Pulse Team

Reflections from the 2016-17 Dancing While Black Fellows

The Dancing While Black 2016-17 Fellowship brought together seven emerging Black Women choreographers who spent seven months building community through workshops with master teachers, communal dinners and a public discussion at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Get to know the Fellows and their visions for this collaborative journey.

By Angela's Pulse Team

Dancing While Black Takes A Look Back to Move Forward

This past Sunday, we gathered at BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s Artist Services Day to reflect on the history of Dancing While Black, share stories of its deepening impact, and vision for its future.

By Angela's Pulse Team

Reflections from the 2015-16 Dancing While Black Fellows

The 2015-16 Dancing While Black Fellowship brought together eight emerging Black choreographers. They spent six months engaged in a collective developmental process which included workshops with seasoned artists Onye Ozuzu, Jawole Zollar and Ishmael Houston-Jones. We invited the Fellows to reflect on these workshop experiences. Check out what they had to say.

By Angela's Pulse Team

Reflections on the 2016 Dancing the African Diaspora Conference (3 of 3)

We invited Dancing While Black Fellows Candace Thompson and Sydnie L. Mosley to share reflections from this conference experience. Here are Sydnie's reflections from the gathering.

By Angela's Pulse Team

“Dancing While Black is…
an occupational hazard, an unrequested accolade and an immense responsibility.
– Christal Brown

Documentation

Past Events

Jump Months

march, 2018

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Press

Dancing While Black is...dancing
with a world perspective
without limitation.

Dancing While Black is...
dancing with a
world perspective
without limitation.

The visual and emotional expression of the
black body is immense.

The visual and emotional
expression of the black body
is immense.

– Germaul Barnes
Dancing while Black is...

Intellectual, beautiful, intimate,
aching, revealing, grounding,
sustaining, powerful, soulful,
glorious, piercing, historic,
futuristic, present, and awesome.

Dancing While Black means being critiqued by
some that don't understand or choose not to understand
the concepts, stories, and general importance of my stories.

Dancing While Black means embracing who you are
and setting your own ideal, creating a safe space for students
to create their ideal, and encouraging them to make a new door
if they do not see one that is opening for them.

Dancing While Black means embracing who you are
and setting your own ideal, creating a safe space for
students to create their ideal, and encouraging them
to make a new door if they do not see one that is
opening for them.

– Camille A. Brown
"Dancing while black is...more than what you sign up for.
It frees and it contains. It expands and compacts,
because as you embody it you become responsible for it
in a particular, a peculiar way. Even if you choose NOT to be
responsible to so called blackness….you still had to choose
THAT, you probably had to say it. And then there it is.

Dancing while black is to wrestle with representation.
Dancing while black is attractive and repulsive.
Dancing while black is probably not any different than
doing anything else while black. Dancing while black is
significant because of where the dancing is happening—
in an environment where the condition,
blackness/darkness of human skin is an object in and
of itself, significant enough to stand on its own.

– Onye Ozuzu
Dancing while Black

defies,

celebrates,

calls out,

&

calls forth

that which has come before,
that which is happening now,
that which is yet to be.

– Amara Tabor-Smith –
"Dancing while black is to imagine new human relations free from persisting hierarchies (racial, sexual or geo-political). Dancing while Black requires the work of human beings who believe in the practice of freedom. Freedom then becomes not a state from which one yearns but rather in insistent struggle to remake our lives and remake our relations and remake our communities and our future!

I am dancing under that influence everyday since I inhabited my mother’s womb and the dance goes on and on…"

– Nia Love
– James A. Frazier

Sounds a lot like dance to me.

Driving gets me where I'm going, just as dance has done. And, I know people have opinions about the kind of "car" I drive, how I drive it, and whether or not I should be driving it.

For me, dancing while Black is like driving while Black. I am who I am.

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[PHOTO CREDITS]Header Image: Jaimé Dzandu, photo by Julia Wang | Lisandra Ramos writing on wall from DANCING WHILE BLACK: This Body Knows Freedom by Whitney Browne Photography | Process Photo: Ebony Noelle Golden and Sydnie L. Mosley surrounded by Story Circle participants by Erik Carter | Photo of Paloma McGregor by Erik Carter | [DWB Is Gallery] Photo of folks gathered in circle with person on floor from Dancing While Black: On Fertile Ground at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, February 2016 by Melisa Cardona | Photo of smiling folks in chairs from DANCING WHILE BLACK: This Body Knows Freedom by Whitney Browne Photography | Photo of dancers in suits: Brother(hood) Dance!, ’15-’16 DWB Fellows Orlando J. Hunter and Ricarrdo Valentine, from DWB: Masculinities Re/born by Charles R Berenguer Jr.

Dancing While Black