Ten dance companies, a one-night performance. That’s the math that brings performers from the latest cohort of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project to the Harris Theater for Music and Dance at the end of the month.
Artists from notable local Black dance organizations such as Chicago Multicultural Dance Center, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, The Era Footwork Collective, Forward Momentum Chicago, Joel Hall Dancers & Center, M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Move Me Soul, Muntu Dance Theatre, NAJWA Dance Corps and Praize Productions will bring their genre of repertory performance (African, traditional, contemporary modern, ballet, jazz, tap and more) to life under the theme “Dancing the Archive: Embodied Histories, Collective Power.”
“Who keeps our stories? Who tells our stories? Who keeps our stories accurate? How are we being stewards and archivists of our stories?” asked Mashaune Hardy, executive director of CBDLP. “The archive is not pieces of paper that sit. It is a living, breathing thing; we are the archive and we’re dancing the archive because we’re dancing our living, breathing stories.”
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The show is a celebration of movement and expression that pays homage to the city’s change agents whose work and leadership have helped shape and inspire the current dance ecosystem — one not based on competition, but one of collaboration and complement that enhances growth within the dance community.
Hardy said the production will play out in chapters, with each company presenting a work spotlighting a legacy bearer whose life and contributions embody that chapter’s theme. The honorees and categories are: Carol Adams, for Record Keeper; Chance the Rapper, for Stewardship; Ida B. Wells via Dan Duster, as Wordsmith; James and Pauline Montgomery, for Moral Courage; Curtis Mayfield and Lupe Fiasco, for Sound; Runako Jahi, for Voice; Jackie Taylor, as Space Maker; Pamela Crutchfield, as Cultural Ally; NAJWA, for Cultural Memory Continuum; and Anthony Brown, for Transmission.
According to Hardy, this year’s theme is a result of the current environment — one where the erasure of Blackness is happening all around the nation.
“We wanted to assert that we are still here and we are still making the work,” she said.
William Gill, artistic director at Joel Hall Dancers & Center, said the 52-year-old organization — one rooted in jazz — has been part of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project since its inception.
“Coming together once a year, every year, it’s like a family reunion,” he said. “To see all the different companies… we’re in the same city, but we don’t see each other all the time until we do these fantastic projects.”
CBDLP was born in 2019 after data showed that dance companies, specifically Black dance companies, are underfunded. Tracie Hall, then-director of the Joyce Foundation’s Culture Program, imagined the CBDLP in partnership with the Logan Center for the Arts to help provide resources. Since then, CBDLP has held a number of concerts showcasing the work of emerging and legacy companies under titles like “Legacy” in 2019 at the Logan Center, and “Reclamation: The Spirit of Black Dance in Chicago” in 2022 and “Divination: The Dancing Souls of Black Folk” in 2024 — both in Millennium Park.
“The project was developed with the intent for us to uphold the traditions of Black dance in Chicago and pass them on,” said CBDLP artistic director Kevin Iega Jeff. “We have professional, pre-professional and youth-based dance companies, and this ecosystem feeds the entire Black dance ecosystem, and beyond into the Chicago dance ecosystem. There was a need to make sure some ground was made up to level the playing field — funding and support for institutions that were less funded.”
CBLDP support over the years has meant working to increase dance companies’ sustainability and visibility through advocacy, archiving, capacity building and presentation. By starting with the question: “How can we help you?” Hardy said everything from artistic professional development and organizational capacity-building funds has been given and used to hire choreographers, assistants and buy amplified floors on which dancers tap and amplify their steps with microphones. The floor has since become a source of revenue for the company.
“That’s something we are really interested in — doing things that are transformative for a company like that,” she said.
In that vein, CBDLP also brings veteran artists in conversation with upcoming ones, so wisdom can be imparted from the likes of Tony Award-nominated director and choreographer Camille A. Brown and National Medal of Arts recipient Joan Myers Brown, dancer and founder of The Philadelphia Dance Company. In her 90s, Hardy said Myers Brown has a wealth of information about creating a Black dance company in an urban environment when it wasn’t the cool thing to do.
“There is a core of civic, municipal, cultural Black leaders in their 70s, 80s and 90s who have gone through this already,” Hardy said. “They got civil rights legislation passed. How’d they deal? Let’s bring them in and have them talk about how they used creativity to make things happen at a time where it seemed like it couldn’t happen.”
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“The work still has to get done,” Gill said. “We are committed to it, and with performances and opportunities like the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, it gives us the opportunity to be seen. Dance Legacy is definitely important. Ever since I’ve been a part of it, we’ve presented to sold-out audiences. Everybody is thirsting for this work; these Black dance companies, equity and visualization, just knowing that we have a place in this city is so important, especially with the current political climate that’s happening right now.”
After all, dance is all about human development, Hardy said. Dance as a healing modality, dance as a character builder. Dance as a job. And dance as wellness.
“It opens up the world. There’s cross-pollination of audiences. There’s cross-pollination of people’s minds about what is possible,” she said.
If you go
The Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project is 7 p.m. Aug. 28 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St.; tickets from $35 at harristheaterchicago.org