Is race still an issue in dance? Dance Magazine looked to key people in the dance community to take the pulse of prejudice in American dance. Is it dead, or dying? Or is it "rearing its head in new and more complex ways"? Black-white bias: problems, tension, debate.

When Michael Flamini, a senior editor at Palgrave-Macmillan, approached me about writing a history of "black" dance, I responded that, instead, I wanted to tell the story as a geography of the body itself. I wanted to travel around the black dancing body the way an explorer would approach an unknown continent. So I made chapters devoted to what I call the "embattled territories" of the black dancing body--feet, buttocks, skin (color), and hair.

I BEGAN to examine both black and non-black body image as I went to performances, screened videos and films, and interviewed dance practitioners about their perceptions and opinions on this topic. I realized it was important that this work have material representing my research on African American dance aesthetics as well as the contemporary voices of current dance practitioners. So I interviewed a spectrum of people--black, white, and brown, ranging in age from early thirties to early seventies, representing tap, African, modern, postmodern, Broadway, and ballet genres, as well as several dance writers and a librarian.

I uncovered a range of perceptions, images, and assumptions, past and present. And this information revealed that there is not a black dancing body-nor a white dancing, or other dancing body--that whatever black or white dance is, is a complex social and cultural idea based on body image and often body stereotypes. What scented to define a cultural body, black, white, or brown, was not so much physical characteristics as a particular sense of soul and spirit.

Some voices from the book, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool (2003)

"I speak in this book of a black/white axis of difference because that is the line across which all peoples of color must choose sides: are you light enough to pass for white? Are you a white Latino? As an Asian, can you assimilate and become white? If you are of mixed ethnicity (and aren't we all?) do you list yourself as black or white?.... a vital new field of study has opened in academia--whiteness studies...."--BRENDA, DIXON GOTTSCHILD

What is black dance? "A black dance is any dance that a person who is black happens to make.... There was a time when I never wanted to be called a black company or a black choreographer...."--BILL T. JONES

Does prejudice or limitation start in the studio?"... the dancer's job is to aim for the ideal set by the leader. It is a battle with the body to make it something other than what it is. If this is true for all dancers, then what is it that sets black dancers apart?"--THE BLACK DANCING BODY

"The kids today ... their technical skills are proficient, so they're able to do whatever it is that they have to do because they know how to do it, and it isn't about the body, I think it's about the training."--JOAN MYERS BROWN

"I think it's a cop-out to say that our bodies aren't made for anything. It's just a cop-out. And I think the culture of the whole thing comes through: who you are, what you've experienced, and how much you want it."--ZANE BOOKER

At some level "... people are willing to become colorblind when it comes to that shortage of good men dancers.... There are lots of young black girls who go into ballet, and it's hard for them to stay there."--JAWOLE WILLA JO ZOLLAR

Technique and training? "Now it's more about the dancer's body rather than about the race of the dancers' bodies. Because the bodies now can do the same things, and because they can do the same things the musculature has become similar."--GUS SOLOMONS JR

Beyond the body, the passion? "The body is spirit too.... I think that the business or the mission of art is dis-illusionment. To make us see the double nature of reality--that it is both material and spirit."--LI-YOUNG LE

TAKING THE CONTROVERSY

A Step Further

Last year, I attended several midwestern U.S. competitions, which draw hundreds to thousands of young dancers to a week of classes and competitive events. I was most impressed by the Dance Educators of America competitions in Las Vegas. This national membership organization, primarily of small to medium-sized studio owners and teachers, showed almost exclusively white finalists for many years. So I was amazed to find a production number that represented the greatly diverse population of America. I stayed to see who won the competitions. Not only did all levels of finalists, from pointe-shod teen Esmeraldas with their tambourines, to tiny tuxedoed Asian tap girls, to young black men contracting to modern dance, represent diverse enrollment in today's dance schools, but the teachers and parents supporting them did too. A remarkable shift in dance education.

JO ROWAN, educational spokesperson for National Dance Week 2004 is also artistic director of several dance companies at Oklahoma City University, so she sees lots of students on their way to professional jobs. "The kids do not have a sense of racism or prejudice," she says. "We double cast everything, on fine basis of body size, ability, height for partnering, but we have no racial blinders in casting." Rowan adds that she thinks that dancers are now smart enough not to pin all their hopes for success on being employed by one company, but to look at the composition and direction of a company and choose where they are best suited. JOHN BEDFORD, Dean of the School of American Dance and Arts Management at OCU, echoes Rowan's impression and is happy that young dancers seem to be quite oblivious to race. "It doesn't seem to make a difference where they come from, either, unlike their parents and grandparents. They are the great hope for the future where racism is not perpetuated." Bedford attributes ease of communication and mass media to a breakdown of fear and pre-judgement of the unfamiliar. He admits there are cultural clashes, particularly with timeliness, but the world seems to have adopted Western ways of conducting business, and dancers or arts managers must adapt to those standards. CHARLES REINHART is Director of the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, and Director of Dance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. As such, he sees a broad spectrum of dance professionals, students, and audience members. "I don't think race has been an issue in modern dance for decades," he says. "Not since Paul Taylor and Carolyn Adams. I can't remember any modern choreographer, black, white, or Asian, who has been racially biased in casting or booking for a long time. Ballet might be another question, but I sense the direction is less and less, and that's important." He grins. "Of course, when you are a huge star, everybody's color blind."

We invite your comments. Send to Editor in Chief, DANCE MAGAZINE, 333 Seventh Ave, 11th floor, New York, New York 10001, or [e-mail]--K.C. PATRICK

Brenda Dixon Gottschild is professor emerita at Temple University and is a senior editor/advisor for DANCE MAGAZINE. This is the third of a trilogy on dance history.