The Pied Piper of Durham : Chuck Davis’ African American Dance Ensemble keeps faith with the community

One of the most significant changes the American Dance Festival encountered when it moved in 1978 from Connecticut College in New London, Conn., to Duke University in Durham, N.C., is that it became part of a city that is 40% African-American.

The city has a large, historically black state university and several small colleges, a strong business community and a rich tradition of blues and jazz musicians, with plans now well along for the Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute, an independent conservatory affiliated with Duke. The current mayor and seven of the 13 City Council members--including gospel great Shirley Caesar--are also black.

In Durham, as in New London and Bennington, Vt., before that, the festival has had a consistent presence of African-American dancers, companies and choreographers--including Donald McKayle and Talley Beatty. The first few years in North Carolina, the community outreach program was under the direction of Arthur Hall, whose Afro-American Dance Ensemble performed in 1978. Hall remained in charge of community outreach in 1979, when Alvin Ailey’s company opened the festival, but in 1980 the festival made one its greatest contribution to Durham when it brought to town a huge pied piper of dance named Chuck Davis.

Davis attended numerous American Dance Festival seasons in New London, both as a performer and a faculty member. A native of nearby Raleigh, N.C., he arrived with his New York-based company and Durham was never the same. Whether on the stage of Duke’s Page Auditorium, in scores of public schools, prisons and shopping centers, or on the banks of the Eno River where thousands gather each July 4 for a community festival, Davis has become a fixture on the Durham scene.

Ultimately, Davis gave up his New York company and moved to Durham, founding a community company called the Chuck Davis African American Dance Ensemble. From an all-part-time group, practicing and performing after day jobs, the company has grown to eight full-time dancers and musicians and five administrative employees, plus apprentices and community members.

“Chuck’s a magic man,” said festival director Charles Reinhart. “We’ve built our whole community outreach program around him, and kept bringing him down for longer and longer times. . . . Out of that community outreach program came the nucleus of his company. We still have a very strong relationship with him (and his dance group), but they’re an independent company. Obviously, we’re very proud of what Chuck has done. We’re trying to keep this connection going.”

“He’s doing something more than making dances,” said choreographer McKayle. “This is something that has reached into the community. Everywhere I go, people know him. . . . He certainly has a way with an audience.”

Interestingly, Davis’ popularity seems to have more to do with class than race. He involves white students equally in his public school appearances--the Durham system is more than 90% black--sometimes at four schools in a single day. But he is especially concerned with reaching people who may not have leisure time--or enough money--to see his company perform in a theater.

“I tailored my programs to the needs of the community, rather than have the community fit my needs,” says Davis. “It’s in keeping with my philosophy, that dance is from the community, and I’m just giving back to the community what they have given up.”

When dance is brought to the people at large, he said, it is no longer confined to “a certain type of clientele. All of a sudden it’s beyond the elitist area. The man and woman in the street realize that they can enjoy dance without being snubbed.”

Davis, 53, who spends each August studying dance in West Africa, brushes aside critics’ concerns that his work is too adaptive of traditional African genres.

“The minute dance leaves that village in Africa, it’s no longer ethnic--it’s theater.”

Linda Belans, dance critic for the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer and a longtime observer of the local dance scene, sees Davis as “an ambassador. He has a most enormous presence in this state. He’s always looking for the teachable moment. Chuck comes in and with his charisma and literally his energy and his philosophy of dance as a means for educating.”

The festival’s involvement with African-American music and culture has not been confined to Davis and his dancers. In 1980, the festival presented “An Evening of Jazz and Dance,” with Dizzy Gillespie and the Rutgers/Livingston Jazz Professors, with dancing by Scoby Stroman and Honi Coles. The Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Life Achievement went to Katherine Dunham in 1986 and Alvin Ailey in 1987.

For the past three years, the festival has had as a major component a series called “The Black Tradition in American Modern Dance,” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation. In addition to the performances, the series has included panel discussions and master classes, and produced an excellent, illustrated handbook tracing the history of African-American dance from slavery to the present.

The program had its origins in 1986, when the ADF commissioned McKayle to re-create his classic “Games” with Davis’ ensemble, with financial assistance from the state humanities committee. Since 1987, 14 works have been re-created and performed by various companies, and the program has drawn heavily on black communities throughout the state.

This season, the series brought two predominantly black companies to perform--the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble of Denver and the Dayton Contemporary Company--and re-created a number of earlier works by Eleo Pomare (“Missa Luba,” 1965), Beatty (“The Mourner’s Bench,” 1947) and McKayle (“Saturday’s Child,” 1948; “Shaker Life,” 1973).

World premieres included one by McKayle (“Distant Drum”), commissioned by the festival with funds from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund and the North Carolina Arts Council, and another by Davis (“Healing Forces”).

Midway through this season, both were performed by Davis’ company. Whether in the 300-seat Reynolds Theater or outdoors, such performances share a good deal. At the outset, there is a traditional West African call-and-response, with Davis addressing the crowd: Ahhh-go!! To which they respond with practiced ease: Ahh-maaay!!! Like a church congregation, audience members are required to introduce themselves to half a dozen neighbors they don’t already know.

Davis uses a variety of other devices to give the performance the feel of an African village. He salts the audience with company members and has dancers enter the theater from the back of the hall. Onstage, there are, invariably, drums, brightly colored robes, occasional bare skin, considerable shaking and a surplus of energy. Usually, audience members are invited to join the dancers onstage for extended finales and encores, and many do.

Davis concludes performances by leading the audience in a familiar chant: “Peace. Love. Respect. For everyone.” As Davis explained, “We never perform before strangers. . . . We are from the community and we are a community group.”