BLACK DANCERS SEEK FUNDS FOR MINORITY FEST

Citing an absence of local black dance troupes scheduled for the Los Angeles Festival, members of a new dance organization asked the City Council Tuesday for money to produce a separate minority arts festival to coincide with the Sept. 3-27 arts event.

The council took no action on the matter.

“We look at the (Los Angeles Festival) program and we are amazed that there is not greater representation of local black dance,” Dr. Ernest Washington, co-chairman of the year-old Dance Umbrella service organization, told The Times on Tuesday. “I don’t think they were being malicious; it was just a lack of vision.

“The head of the festival should have at least asked (members of the local black dance community), ‘Hey you guys, what do you think of this program?’ ” said Washington, an orthopedic surgeon with a specialty in dance medicine. “They didn’t do that and we felt they were very arrogant, and it turned out the selection (of local dance troupes) was very narrow.”

Dance Umbrella is a voluntary group of about eight Southern California dance companies. Its 11-member board of directors and roster of advisers include Jon Johnson, director of Repertory Dance Theatre; William Couser, director of Jazz Dance Workshop; C. Bernard Jackson, director of Inner City Cultural Center; Lula Washington, director of Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theater, and veteran dancer Thelma Robinson. These individuals and companies make up most of the black dance community that the Dance Umbrella claims was excluded from the Los Angeles Festival.

Local dance troupes included in the Los Angeles Festival are the Lewitzky Dance Company and the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble, neither of which is a black dance company. Rachel Rosenthal, who is white, will present performance art.

Members of Dance Umbrella met with Los Angeles Festival officials about two weeks ago to “present their case,” Washington said.

“They said, ‘We don’t have any more money, we’re very sorry,’ ” Washington said. “So we went to the City Council” Tuesday to seek funds for a festival that would “highlight minority arts” to coincide with the Los Angeles Festival.

“At this point,” Washington said, “we’ve just been promised meetings” with Councilman Robert Farrell, whose 8th district encompasses South-Central Los Angeles, and Maureen Kindel, chairwoman of the Los Angeles Festival and chairwoman of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.

Washington added that the Dance Umbrella particularly objects to the lack of local black dance companies, because he said that the festival is partially funded with public monies ($2 million) left over from the 1984 Olympic Games provided by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles.

The assertion that local black dance has been excluded from the festival is “a heck of an allegation to make,” Councilman Farrell told The Times on Tuesday. “I’ve raised the question with my staff to look into the matter,” he said.

Farrell said he couldn’t predict how the City Council will react to the request to fund a minority arts festival.

Los Angeles Festival Director Robert Fitzpatrick was not available for comment Tuesday, but festival associate director Thomas Schumacher said “there has been no exclusion of minority artists” from the festival.

“The festival’s programming philosophy, as well as our obligation to audiences, is to represent a cross section of work,” Schumacher said. “For example, work that would not be seen or known here, or work that might be seen in a different context because of its relation to other work. . . . It was not designed to promote local artists . . . and we do try to present work of high caliber.

“We have presented a program that is multicultural--with Hispanic, Asian and black work,” Schumacher continued. “We have foreign black artists, such as the Earth Players and Market Theatre from South Africa, and from the U.S., Urban Bush Women, a dance company.”

There are also black artists in the festival’s Evening of Classical Jazz, Schumacher said, and in such festival events as the Michael Clark & Company dance troupe and the nine-hour Mahabharata theatrical marathon.

“Also, this festival is programmed by the festival director, Robert Fitzpatrick. We solicited the funds for the event, we have raised the money, and from the beginning made the conscious choice to program it out of our office.”

Washington said Dance Umbrella has been working with representatives from the local music and theater communities that have similar concerns about the Los Angeles Festival. In addition, Washington said that Dance Umbrella troupes would probably not participate in the Fringe Festival/Los Angeles, which will coincide with the Los Angeles Festival and feature about 375 events by local arts groups.

“We think the Fringe Festival thing is insulting,” he said, specifically objecting to Fringe policies that require participants to pay a minimum $100 entry fee and all their own production costs.