The Bay Area Dunham-Beckford Dance Legacy

KATHERINE DUNHAM

(1909-2006)

"L'Ag'ya" 1938

RUTH BECKFORD

(1925-2018)

"Legba" 1953

Dunham & Beckford

Grand Matriarchs of Bay Area

African Diasporic Dance

Greetings Halifu,

These grand Dance Matriarchs are the subject of the next panel in the BCM-BCF Sankofa Legacy Project. The panel happens on Saturday, May 10, 6:00 PM in San Francisco at Minnesota Street Project. Again, Kendra Kenbrough, laura e. ellis, and I collaborate to produce this panel discussion on our unique Bay Area dance community.

This panel consists of multi-generational African diasporic dance authorities: Dr. Yvonne Daniel, Deborah Vaughan, Dr. Colette Eloi, and Eyla Moore. They will each discuss their perspectives on our Dance Mothers: Katherine Dunham and Ruth Beckford, and the Bay Area dance community.

Miss Beckford joined the Dunham Company in the 1940s and brought Dunham Technique to the Bay, influencing my generation of dancers.

Following the panel is a site-specific performance by the 2025 BCF Dancer-Choreographers.

Suggested Donation: $20.

I started Dunham Technique with Miss Beckford in the 1960s, and continued with Miss Dunham in the 1980s

After studying Ballet and Modern Dance, Dunham Technique with Miss B taught me articulate rhythmic torso isolations. Miss D, herself, taught me the connection between Mind, Body, and Spirit!

FUN FACT:

Ruth Beckford Co-Founded the Black Panthers' Free Breakfast Program for Kids

Miss B started the Panther's Breakfast program in Oakland, considered one of their most successful projects, which went national. Check out the Video to the left.

REMEMBER: Dancing in Blackness Now on AUDIBLE!

Dancing in Blackness ON AUDIBLE

Dancing in Blackness covers the beginning of my dance career in the late 60s in the Bay Area, continuing to my expatriate period in Europe and my professional dancing in New York, as well as my first West African sojourn in 1976. All these international experiences led to my founding one of the first African-centered dance centers in Oakland, California, today known as the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts.

This story is vividly read by professional narrator Jeanné Giddens and delivered in a way that puts you in all those places.

CLICK FOR AUDIOBOOK

Dancing The Afrofuture

(2024) The story of a dancer with a long career of artistry and activism who transitioned from performing Black dance to writing it into history as a Black studies scholar.

BUY

The Hiplife in Ghana (2012) How one West African country has received hip-hop and turned it into a new genre by remixing it with their century-old pop music of highlife.

BUY

The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip Hop (2007) Explores the two reasons for hip-hop’s globalization: 1) American dominant pop culture internationally, and 2) hip-hop’s beat and empowerment of youth.

BUY

DANCE IS LIFE AND LIFE IS A DANCE!

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