Dancing While Black

Projects

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 center the voices of black dance artists, providing opportunities to self-determine the languages and lenses that define our work. Since 2012, DWB has supported 22 emerging Black artists as Fellows, incubated more than two dozen works and held countless convenings for folx to share, connect and simply be..

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

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.

View the Inaugural Dancing While Black Journal

Up Next

february 2023

11feballday12Dancing While Black: How We Do • Centering the Bodypart of DWB's 10th Anniversary Year(All Day) ET BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, 2474 Westchester Ave, Bronx, NY 10461Dancing While Black:Dancing While Black

Event Details

February 11 & 12, 2023 in-person and on zoom

Join DWB for shared embodied practices! This weekend of workshops asks how our practices as Black embodied/movement artists shift with the mo(ve)ments that we find ourselves in. Join us.

IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS:

Improvising our Diaspora

Feb. 11 / 11 am – 1 pm
with Marguerite Hemmings & Joya Powell

Two yaadies in the Bronx! Joya and Marguerite make a space for experimentation and play! They will move through various embodied languages of the Diaspora through games and collective makings. Beginning with a journey through many geographies and landing in their ancestral home, Jamaica. Bring ya wata, bring ya body, and bring ya humor!!!!

Move to Transform

Feb. 11 / 1 pm – 3 pm
with Candace Thompson-Zachery & Sydnie L. Mosley

In this movement workshop participants will explore ‘How We Be’ by lifting up the power in the everyday, caretaking as an activation of our interconnectedness, and our ability to transform energy in our lives. Come prepared to lead, be led, and reflect on physical practices as a metaphor for life. Note: Participants should bring a journal and writing utensils, and wear clothes that you can move in. Might get sweaty so an extra shirt might be needed.

Rest Your Eyes & Tell Me A Story

Feb. 11 / 3 pm – 5 pm
with Alethea Pace & Katrina Reid

The cold and dark days of winter provide us an opportunity to reflect and connect with ourselves. Leaning into the energy of the season, Katrina and Alethea offer a series of embodied and storytelling practices to generate warmth, to cultivate deep listening and to restore more balance between activity and rest.

ONLINE WORKSHOP:

All of Us: Coming Together Through Movement

Feb. 12 / 3 pm – 5 pm (virtual workshop)
with India Harville & Kayla Hamilton

Black Disabled Artists India Harville and Kayla Hamilton will guide us through a movement experience that centers disabled bodies and the disabled experience. This class is for BIPOC disabled artists, accomplices, and anyone open to learning. Please bring a note catching device of your choosing. If you are black, come!! If you are disabled come! If you are accomplices come! If you want to be with all.of.us. come!

Calendar GoogleCal

Time

february 11 (Saturday) - 12 (Sunday) ET

Location

BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance

2474 Westchester Ave, Bronx, NY 10461

april 2023

20aprallday23Dancing While Black: How We Build • Faculty Women of Color in the Academy National Conferencepart of DWB's 10th Anniversary Year(All Day) ET Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VirginiaDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

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

Process

Dancing While Black 10th Anniversary Year | May 2022 – May 2023

Since 2012, Dancing While Black (DWB) has served as a launching pad and community hub, bringing Black dance voices to the fore and centering a space for them to reflect and create authentically. In 2022, DWB turns 10! In the spirit of Sankofa, we are celebrating the past, present and future of Dancing While Black from May 2022 through May 2023.

By Angela's Pulse Team

Meet the DWB Shared Leadership Team

As part of AP’s continued investment in Black leadership, DWB’s 10th Anniversary programming and visioning will be guided by a team of co-directors: Paloma, DWB’s founder, is joined by Kayla Hamilton (2017-2018 DWB Fellow), Marguerite Hemmings (2015-2016 DWB Fellow) and Joya Powell (2016-2017 DWB Fellow).

By Joshua Bristow

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

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

Documentation

Past Events

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january, 2023

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14jan1:00 pm2:30 pmDancing While Black: How We Build • Collective(s) Actionpart of DWB's 10th Anniversary Year1:00 pm - 2:30 pm ET ONLINE via ZoomDancing While Black:Dancing While Black

Event Details

January 14, 2023 on zoom | 1:00pm – 2:30PM Est

Guest Artists/Speakers: Aimee Meredith Cox (moderator), Ebony Noelle Golden, Rashida Bumbray, Paloma McGregor

Join us as we revisit the multilayered practices of our first DWB fellowship cohort, Rashida Bumbray, Ebony Noelle Golden and Paloma McGregor.

In 2014, we featured artists who were working in, with, and through collective actions. These artists are cultural workers, organizers, who are movement building and using the body as a holding space for culture.

We welcome these artists, along with moderator Aimee Meredith Cox, to have an online conversation around how their collectivizing has continued over the past decade.

Cost: Sliding Scale – $0, $5, $20
We value both accessibility and class analysis, and leveraging privilege to support others in our community. We ask that you pay on the scale according to your ability, in order to support access, and engage in interdependence in action. The practice of choosing a rate that is both affordable and heartfelt is a mindfulness and justice-seeking practice. We will not question your self-determined rate.
This language has been used with general permissions from Worts and Cunning Apothecary.

If you can’t join us for this event, you may still purchase a ticket to support the cost of producing this event and the labor that brought this into motion.

Register here

Learn More

Calendar GoogleCal

Time

(Saturday) 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm ET

Location

ONLINE via Zoom

Dancing While Black in the Press

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

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

– Germaul Barnes

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

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

Dancing while Black is...

– Camille A. Brown

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

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

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 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.

– Onye Ozuzu

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.

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

DWB Masculinities ReBorn Brotherhood by Charles R Berenguer Jr

– James A. Frazier

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.

Sounds a lot like dance to me.

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

Can't be with us in person? Join the Dialogue online.

Follow #DancingWhileBlack

Check out the amazing line up for Angela’s post Dancing While Black: HOW WE DO:
Centering The ...

Feb 7

Open

19 1

It’s almost here!
We will share a weekend of workshops centering shared practices from our ...

Feb 7

Open

It’s almost here!
We will share a weekend of workshops centering shared practices from our community of Black embodied/moving artists.
.
Improvising our Diaspora
On Sat, 2/11: IN-PERSON @BAAD!

11am-1pm | Joya Powell @ayoj_powell @mopdance (DWB Fellow ‘16) & Marguerite Hemmings @margueriteangelicamonique (DWB Fellow ‘15).

Two yaadies in the Bronx! Joya and Marguerite make a space for experimentation and play! They will move through various embodied languages of the Diaspora through games and collective makings. Beginning with a journey through many geographies and landing in their ancestral home, Jamaica. Bring ya wata, bring ya body, and bring ya humor!!!!

Join us and move together!
More info:
https://bit.ly/ImprovisingOurDiaspora
#AngelasPulse #DWB10 #AP #Dancing #Community #Speaking #DancingWhileBlack

29 1

Happening this upcoming weekend:
Angela’s Pulse, HOW WE DO: Centering the Body

...

Feb 6

Open

27 0

HOW WE DO: Centering the Body
Join DWB for a weekend of workshops on how our practices as Black ...

Feb 4

Open

3 2

🌟Workshop Alert!🌟 MOPDC’s Joya Powell and MOPDC extended fam Marguerite Hemmings will be ...

Feb 3

Open

19 1

Afro/Solo/Man is making its Columbus, Ohio premiere at wexarts
February 16-18,2023, 8PM.
...

Jan 16

Open

Afro/Solo/Man is making its Columbus, Ohio premiere at wexarts
February 16-18,2023, 8PM.
Save the date, purchase your ticket(s), and tell a friend.
Link in bio for more information.
📷:Ryan Muir
#dancingwhileblack #osudance

18 1

Posted withregram • ubwdance #DontMissTHIS Join our #AngelasPulse and #DancingWhileBlack family ...

Jan 14

Open

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TODAY! HOW WE BUILD: Collective(s) action

A conversation with guests Rashida Bumbray, Ebony...

Jan 14

Open

TODAY! HOW WE BUILD: Collective(s) action

A conversation with guests Rashida Bumbray, Ebony Noelle Golden and DWB Founder Paloma McGregor, moderated by Aimee Meredith Cox.

Zoom in today at 1:00 p.m. EST

Click here to check in 👇:
http://bit.ly/3CAurpF

Celebrate our first decade of DWB!

#DWB10 #DancingWhileBlack #AngelasPulse #HowWeBuild

18 0

Tweets by DancingWhileBlk

[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.

History

Up Next

Event Details

Event Details

February 11 & 12, 2023 in-person and on zoom

IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS:

Improvising our Diaspora

Move to Transform

Rest Your Eyes & Tell Me A Story

ONLINE WORKSHOP:

All of Us: Coming Together Through Movement

Time

Location

Event Details

Event Details

april 20 – 23, 2023 in-person |

REGISTER HERE

Time

Location

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

Process

Dancing While Black 10th Anniversary Year | May 2022 – May 2023

Meet the DWB Shared Leadership Team

Get a Glimpse of our Freedom Stories

Reflections from the 2016-17 Dancing While Black Fellows

Dancing While Black Takes A Look Back to Move Forward

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

Documentation

Past Events

Event Details

Event Details

January 14, 2023 on zoom | 1:00pm – 2:30PM Est

Register here

Learn More

Time

Location

Dancing While Black in the Press

Can't be with us in person? Join the Dialogue online.

History

Up Next

Event Details

Event Details

February 11 & 12, 2023 in-person and on zoom

IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS:

Improvising our Diaspora

Move to Transform

Rest Your Eyes & Tell Me A Story

ONLINE WORKSHOP:

All of Us: Coming Together Through Movement

Time

Location

Event Details

Event Details

april 20 – 23, 2023 in-person |

Time

Location

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

Process

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

Documentation

Past Events

Event Details

Event Details

January 14, 2023 on zoom | 1:00pm – 2:30PM Est

Learn More

Time

Location

Can't be with us in person? Join the Dialogue online.

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

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