Fallout From the Black Arts Festival

More than 1,100 artists from Manhattan to San Francisco took part in the country’s first National Black Arts Festival, which ended here last Sunday. But not a single dancer from Southern California was invited.

From abstract art to zydeco music, the citywide festival served up 105 events. About 20 of them were dance presentations, including a tribute to modern-dance pioneer Katherine Dunham performed by members from her Children’s Company in St. Louis and New York’s Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, and performances by Garth Fagan’s Bucket Dance Theatre, Urban Bush Women and the veteran tap-dancing Copasetics, all of New York.

Hardly every state or region could be represented in the nine-day affair. But to some, the absence of Southern California black dance represented a larger, more troublesome dilemma than a one-time, unintentional snub.

“I don’t feel disturbed about not being asked to be in the festival,” said Lula Washington, director of Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theater. “I’m concerned and disturbed about the lack of knowledge of black dance on the West Coast. I think a few Bay Area groups are starting to break out, but I don’t know of any in Los Angeles.”

Indeed, the Bay Area was represented in the festival by the Nuba Dance Theater, Dimensions Dance Theater and soloist Joanna Haigood.

“Everyone knows about Ailey’s company or any company that comes out of New York,” Washington said, “but they don’t know about black dance here. I went to Philadelphia in February for the International Black Dance Conference and most everybody said they were unaware that there were any companies in Los Angeles.”

Stephanie S. Hughley, the festival’s project manager and a former dancer, said that geographic parity was never the guiding ideology of festival organizers, who wanted to spotlight black dance legends as well as rising stars.

“When we talked about legends, everybody mentioned Dunham and the Copasetics,” said Hughley. “And for new, innovative groups, they all mentioned Garth Fagan.

“God knows, there’s hundreds of groups that probably ought to be in this. You’ve got to start somewhere. And if the festival is successful (and staged biennially, as planned), eventually we’ll get to spotlight everybody.”

(Availability had something to do with it, too, Hughley said, noting that a conflicting engagement prevented an appearance by the Dance Theatre of Harlem.)

The larger issue--the visibility of all black dance--was a key focus of the International Black Dance Conference that Washington attended in Philadelphia in February, and was taken up during a conference at Jacob’s Pillow dance institution in Lee, Mass., last week.

“I don’t think black dance has enough visibility across the country,” said A. B. Spellman, director of the National Endowment for the Art’s Expansion Arts Program that funds ethnic arts.

“I think the principal problem is that presenters of dance don’t book (black dance) enough so that they, as other multicultural arts organizations, perform principally for their own communities,” Spellman said.

Katherine Dunham said that money is the fundamental problem, especially when it comes to the “overwhelming” costs of touring, a major means of maintaining a high profile. She charged that the “private sector isn’t doing what it should” to support black dance.

“This is a serious thing and I wish that what’s happening in Atlanta would bring it to the attention of the private sector,” said Dunham, 79.

Black choreographer Alvin Ailey broadened the issue to the plight of all American dance, regardless of color.

Dance audiences have grown tremendously with the past few decades’ “dance explosion,” he said, but a lack of presenters’ support has hurt small and mid-size companies particularly. “It’s always the money.”

However, the director of one Los Angeles black dance troupe that has fought obscurity here for eight years is willing to take much of the blame for the situation.

“We really haven’t done our groundwork to get us out there,” said Jon Johnson, who heads the Repertory Dance Theatre.

But, with the help of a $13,000 grant from Pacific Telesis Group, Johnson has begun designing a program “to do something about it.”

He said that the program, a national marketing and promotional campaign to build audiences for his own company and others, will include a concert of works by 25 Southern California black choreographers, a series of fall performances at the Balboa Theater in South Central Los Angeles and a national tour of a premiere by Repertory Dance Theatre.

“So I don’t feel slighted about not dancing in Atlanta,” Johnson said, “because it’s up to us to make our work known, locally and nationally.”

Dr. Ernest Washington, co-chairman of the Dance Umbrella service organization (and no relation to Lula Washington), said he wasn’t concerned either. Citing an absence of local black dance in last year’s Los Angeles Festival, Washington led an unsuccessful quest for City Council funds for a concurrent minority arts festival.

“To be very honest, maybe none of us are ready,” said Washington, an orthopedic surgeon with a specialty in dance medicine.

Lula Washington agreed that a lot of growth has to happen in terms of the quality of choreography and its execution by other Los Angeles black dance companies. But, she said, her own company is ready for a national festival.

“I think we are as good as any of the other companies presented in the National Black Arts Festival,” Washington said. “We can’t honestly compete with Alvin Ailey’s dancers because we don’t have the means to (train and rehearse) our dancers eight hours a day . . . but the quality of work we’ve been presenting and our good reviews signifies that we’ve arrived.”