The black dance at 651.

There's a wide world of contemporary African-based dance that many dance lovers don't see or know about. These forms are as different from traditional African dance as American modern dance is from nineteenth-century ballet. They are created and practiced in Africa as well as across the African diaspora (communities outside of continental Africa inhabited by peoples of African descent). But opportunities for Americans--even New Yorkers--to see them have, in the past, been few and far between. Maurine Knighton, executive producer and president of Brooklyn's 651 ARTS (www.651ARTS.org), aims to change that picture with Black Dance: Tradition and Transformation (BDTT), an annual festival that was launched in 2000.

With a curator's sense of artistry and an impresario's showmanship, she has programmed exciting events that display the richness and exuberant variety of diasporan dance traditions. Last year Nia Love danced Ye Who Seeks Balance, a soul-searching solo. Suspended from the flies or moving in slow motion, she was a spiritual warrior and her chalked, nude body was her testing ground. On the same program soloist Robert Johnson's Five Loaves of Bread and Two Fish reached out in sinuous, endless curves that spoke of a different kind of quest. Compagnie Salia Ni Seydou, a chamber ensemble of four from Burkina Faso, presented Traveler, a surreal odyssey that juxtaposed African traditions against their postmodern present (see Reviews, Dance Magazine, June 2001, page 75). Pairings like these bring the audience up short: We are faced with the magic of-dance.

Sitting in her office above the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Harvey Theater last spring, Knighton, whose previous job was managing director of the Twin Cities's Penumbra Theater Company, exuded an aura of calm, friendly authority. Clearly, she is in charge of the small staff outside her glass-enclosed conference room, but she wields a velvet glove. "We're on a learning curve," she says. "As we began in the first two years to program black dance, we reached into Africa and then also Europe. I'm hoping that we'll become more familiar [with] and educated about the work that's coming out of Latin America."

Knighton is a forward-looking presenter who expands the boundaries of concert dance by introducing American audiences to ensembles from places as far afield as Madagascar and Zimbabwe. Carrying on a commitment to dance that was started by her predecessor, Mikki Shepard, she has helped to make the Brooklyn venue a hub of dance activity in a lively, multicultural urban setting.

Although the administrative offices of 651 are housed in the historic BAM Harvey [Lichtenstein] theater building, hers is a separate organization with an independent budget, funding base, and board of directors. Knighton's dream, she says, is "to create a regular national platform for what's new and what's next in contemporary black dance." Major help has come from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Leadership Presenting Institutions program, along with generous funding from AT&T, Con Edison, Fleet Bank, Philip Morris, and the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts. Through their auspices the BDTT festival is held during Black History Month and offers panels, discussions, workshops, lecture-demonstrations, and master classes, in addition to main stage concerts by worldclass diasporan artists.

Bebe Miller, who premiered her Bessie Award-winning quartet Verge at 651 ARTS last season, appreciates the festival for two reasons. First, "the theater is magical. To be able to mount a work with that visual scope is a challenge and an honor. Verge had a home there, and we had excellent production support." Second, she admires that Knighton chooses work in familiar dance idioms as well as more experimental work. "The festival has an unusual potential for the seeding of ideas. Maurine is creating a mix that doesn't happen anyplace else."

DRAWING FROM THE SURrounding communities, Knighton cultivates new audiences. The auxiliary activities of the festival provide what she calls "contextualizing tools" for appreciating the process of dance-making. "What I'm striving to do is to bring work that is of high artistic quality but that my audience will connect with," she explains. "I get a lot of feedback from them. I'm not looking to run so far ahead of them that they can't catch up, but I am looking to push the boundaries and to expand audience notions of black dance."

Knighton's enthusiastic mission reflects the rich mine of talent coming from practitioners across the African diaspora--from postmodern black dance in Brazil to Algerian hip-hoppers in France; from the current generation of black American innovators to contemporary companies from Senegal and Zimbabwe.

"WE'RE TRYING TO GIVE A `MINIATURE panorama' of contemporary dance created or danced by people of African descent," Knighton quips. (This explanation accounts for the phrase "black dance," in the festival's title--a term that has engendered debate amongst dance practitioners of African descent as they struggle to avoid stereotypes yet aspire to honor their traditions.) In order to fulfill this broad-based mission, each year BDTT produces works representing past, present, and future trends by offering a reconstruction or revival, a new work, a showcase in a shared concert format, and an international ensemble.

For instance, in February 2000 the Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco) revived Talley Beatty's Southern Landscape, while the London-based Union Dance Company and Los Angeles's Bre Dance Theater presented new-wave entries (see Reviews, Dance Magazine, June 2000, page 59). For 2001 the New York-based Forces of Nature's artistic director, Abdel Salaam, created Generations!, a "then-and-now" occasion piece that screened vintage footage of black dance pioneers followed by their live appearance onstage.

In an era of product-oriented, tight-fisted arts funding, Knighton's philanthropic attitude is rare. She supports the development of choreography in the workshop stages. "But," she says, "there is not a specific commitment to have it done at this time. In fact, none of the projects that we gave commissioning awards to this year will be on the main stage. They're all going to need a little bit longer workshop development period."

BDTT's annual commissioning awards for works-in-progress totals $40,000 to $50,000. The 2001-2002 awards went to Marlies Yearby; Rennie Harris (who also received a main stage commission for BDTT 2002); Louis Johnson's children's dance theater workshops; Chuck Davis and Donald McKayle (collaborating on a dance revival of the 1936 Federal Theatre vodoun production of Macbeth); and Noble Douglas (Trinidad), Reggie Wilson (Brooklyn), and Black Umfolosi (Zimbabwe), for a trilateral collaboration that they characterize as "linked by ties of African ancestry." Other initiatives include creative residency support (space grants, rehearsal fees) and a choreographer's craft workshop.

This year's main stage production features Rennie Harris PureMovement's Rome and Jewels (see Reviews, Dance Magazine, September 2000, page 86). A triple bill features Giovanni Luquini, a Miami-based Brazilian artist; Andrea Woods (a former Bill T. Jones company member with her ensemble, Souloworks); and Sophiatou Kossoko, a Benin native based in France.

Knighton waxes enthusiastic about all three performer/choreographers. Regarding Rennie Harris, she asserts that "the work he is doing resonates with my community, which is what I am here to serve. How can I not do it, with hip-hop such a strong current in Brooklyn?"

Some readers may ask what is black dance, and why is it the focus of 651's programming. Is it any dance done by black people--even ballet? Even if it's choreographed by a white person? And does traditional African dance remain "black dance" when performed by whites? The verdict is still out, and the discussion still open, on what black dance may or may not be. But there is no doubt about the African roots and high performance quality of 651's BDTT programming. As she wraps up the conversation Knighton muses, "How do I really reach out and provide what is deserved to all of these artists when I am just one institution doing one program a year?" Hopefully, the standard set by BDTT will serve as a model for other presenters to program this exciting and little-known world of dance.

Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of Digging the Africanist Presence and Waltzing in the Dark, is working on a new book, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool. It will be published next year by Palgrave/St. Martin's Press.