Dallas Black Dance Theatre springs into the future with final 2008-2009 season performance

by Gordon Jackson of Dallas Weekly

The Dallas Black Dance Theatre’s final performance series for the 2008-09 season exemplifies the many ways they will stride and glide back to the past in order to move into the future.

Founder and Artistic Director Ann Williams and Associate Artistic Director Melissa Young will help DBDT’s Spring Celebration Series prance to an end of one era while bringing in another.

Young’s return as a dancer, along with DBDT reviving past performances that pays tribute to music icons Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles, makes up the lineup for the Spring Celebration Series, to be held May 22-23, with both shows beginning at 7:30 p.m.

The series not only wraps up the 32-year old dance company’s current campaign, but also will say goodbye to the Majestic Theatre, DBDT’s main home for the past two decades.

“It’s going to be kind of tearful. It has been a home to us,” Williams said. “For old Dallasites, the Majestic has good and bad feelings, but everything moves on. There’s a change for everything. The performances are going to have a nostalgic feeling.”

Beginning with the 2009-10 season in October, the Charles Wyly Center, one of the anchors inside the new Dallas Center for the Performing for Arts complex, will be DBDT’s new home. But Williams personally remembers those mixed feelings she spoke about, in terms of the history behind the Majestic Theatre. She vividly recalled as a young girl, when the Majestic was a movie theater and she was forced to sit and watch in the balcony, during Dallas’ harsh segregation days.

“Still today, we have some of our famous African American citizens who still don’t want to come there today,” Williams said. The wealthy Hoblitzelle family would eventually sell the theater to the City of Dallas, who renovated the structure with the current art deco look.

Williams feels that DBDT performing at the building for 20 years has been her way of striking down such racist policies in Dallas. Additionally, Williams was that same young girl who took swimming and dance lessons at the old predominantly-Black Moreland YMCA, now renovated into DBDT’s new headquarters, also located in the heart of Dallas’ Arts District.

“This is a way of ending one era and going into another,” Williams said. “We want to be that focal point for the African American community. I really want to reach out to those that have been here (in the past). If they can just come down and see the change that has taken place.”

Young has seen many changes herself the past 15 years; 11 years as a DBDT dancer and the last four helping the Black Dance Theatre develop the existing corps of both senior and junior dancers. During the Spring Celebration Series, Young returns to the dance floor to perform the solo, “One More Gin,” choreographed by Christopher Huggins, a former principal dance with Alvin Ailey and close friend and supporter of DBDT.

“I’ve known him for several years. It’s been interesting working with him on a one-on-one basis,” Young said about Huggins. A Santa Ana, California native, Young had just completed a certificate program at the Alvin Ailey Theater in New York when she was persuaded to audition for DBDT, who were in town holding auditions. When she got offered a dance position in 1994, never having been in Texas, she decided to take things one year at a time.

She became the dance company’s principal dancer.

About “One More ‘Gin,” (music by the late Nina Simone) Melissa stated: (Huggins) has captured the two sides of Melissa. A lot of people, they’ve seen me the last 15 years. They’ve perceive me to be one way only but they don’t know about the other side of me. This hits the mark.”

The Spring Series will also bring back “Marvin,” a tribute to Marvin Gaye and the same suite of music DBDT performed in Atlanta, during the 1996 Summer Olympics. It will be performed in memory of late former associate artistic director Darryl Sneed. “Smoke,” a tribute to the music of Ray Charles, first performed at the Majestic in 2004, will be choreographed by Bruce Wood. Guest artist Camille Brown from New York will dance to a solo, in memory of her grandmother.

“You probably would never see all five of those pieces on the same program, because they were Majestic favorites,” Williams said.

With DBDT rising to new heights, Williams is working to assure that the dance company upholds its deep relationship with the African American and grassroots community that helped make it a success. Alpha Kappa Alpha hosting the series, along with corporate sponsorship subsidizing tickets and sponsoring youth groups to see the performances, are some of the ways that connection remains.

“I never wanted to forget that it was that community that helped us get to that point,” Williams said.