Last month's Newsletter brought you up to date on the Spirit of Sankofa: Bridging the Legacy of BCM and BCF, the dance project in which I am currently involved. Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21^st Century (BCM), was a national dance initiative that I started in 1989 and continued until 1995.

Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now (BCF) continued that legacy in 2005 with Co-Founders Laura Elaine Ellis and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes. BCF is now celebrating 20 years of bringing Black dance makers’ work to a younger audience.

The Spirit of Sankofa yearlong project started on February 7 at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco with a 3-member panel, and me as the moderator. The panel, called "Throwback to the Future," explored a gamut of issues from what is Black dance to how do we see the Afrofuture in dance?

Veteran choreographers Robert Moses (Robert Moses' Kin Dance Company) and Raissa Simpson (PUSH Dance Company), along with mid-career choreographer Dazaun Soleyn dialogued about their perspectives. The sold-out audience was fully engaged in the lively conversation about Black choreographers.

The next event was the BCF annual Black History Month concert at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco, February 22 & 23. The general theme was BLACK JOY IS RESISTANCE! The choreographers and their dancers delivered on that theme.

The concert of established Bay Area choreographers presented works that span the gamut of contemporary ballet and jazz to Haitian carnival and vodoun dances, testifying to the unique face of the region's Black dance scene.

The multi-generational choreographers were represented by Deborah Vaughan's Dimensions Dance Theater, Gregory Dawson, formerly of Alonzo King's Lines Ballet, Raissa Simpson's PUSH Dance Company performing an all-male dance ritual, and Portsha Jefferson's RaRa Tou Limen's Haitian company, who brought the house down with the audience invited on stage to party with them.

Black Joy was the message, and it was clear: our joy, despite oppression, is what has always saved this country, through Negro Spirituals, Jazz, R&B, Hip-Hop, and Black Dance.

As the SF Chronicle review of the concert said, “'Don’t shrink when they ask you to join the party,' Laura Ellis had told the audience between pieces. Everyone heeded her instructions until the whole theater was shaking."