History of Black dance

The term black dance describes a range of styles whose origins include the tribal dances of Africa, the slave dances of the West Indies and the American Deep South, the Harlem social dances of the 1920s and the jazz dance of Broadway musicals. Black dance has often been bound up with social and rights issues.

The history of black dance in Britain is relatively young and the first black British dance company, Ballet Nègres, was formed in 1946. However black dancers from the USA have been touring to England since the early 19th century and black musicals from the States were popular on the British stage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Origins of black dance

The two main origins of black dance are African dance and the slave dances from the plantations of the West Indies.

Tribes or ethnic groups from every African country have their own individual dances. Dance has a ceremonial and social function, celebrating and marking rites of passage, sex, the seasons, recreation and weddings. The dancer can be a teacher, commentator, spiritual medium, healer or story-teller.

In the Caribbean each island has its own traditions that come from its African roots and the island’s particular colonial past – British, French, Spanish or Dutch. 18th-century black dances such as the Calenda and Chica were slave dances which drew on African traditions and rhythms.

The Calenda was one of the most popular slave dances in the Carribean. It was banned by many plantation owners who feared it would encourage social unrest and uprisings. In the Calenda men and women face each other in two lines moving towards each other then away, then towards each other again to make contact - slapping thighs and even kissing. The dance gets faster and faster and the movement more and more sexual. It is thought that the Calenda and the Chica come from the courtship dances of the Congo.

Popular social dances of the 20th century such as the Charleston and Cakewalk are descended from these slave dances.

Minstrel shows

Some of the first black dancers to tour to England were the black minstrel performers from the USA. Records show them appearing at Vauxhall Gardens and in London theatres from the mid 19th century. Black minstrel Billy Kersands performed for Queen Victoria, who was said to have much admired him.

The first minstrel performers in the USA were white performers, who smeared their faces in burnt cork and danced and sang in imitation of black people. The dance they performed most widely was a mixture of an African ring dance and an Irish jig. Two stereotyped minstrels developed – the Clown and the Dandy. These comic caricatures ridiculed black people, but black performers too began to black up as minstrels.

Famous black minstrels who performed in Britain included the Bohee Brothers, Billy Kersands and Juba.

Billy Kersands specialised in the soft shoe dance and another dance called the Buck and Wing. His comic talent lay in the fact that he was a huge man yet danced with an extremely light step. The Bohee Brothers, who also danced the soft shoe dance, played the banjo at the same time. They were said to have taught the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) how to play the banjo.

This is an illustrated music sheet from the 1830s with the title and images on the front and music and lyrics inside. This was a progression from the single ballad sheets with one side showing both music, lyrics and images.

Publishers realised that the power of an image would sell and this song sheet shows 14 images (lithograph). This is an early example of illustrations by John Brandard, one of the masters of Victorian illustrated music sheets.

The music sheet is for the song 'Oh England Is de Grand Place, or the Real Jim Crow', written by Alfred Bunn and sung by the comedian and singer Paul Bedford in the pantomime Harlequin Gammer Gurton at Drury Lane.

The song and dance in the pantomime was a parody of 'Jump Jim Crow', a song which became a huge-19th century hit in the United States.

It was first performed in 1828 by the white comedian and minstrel Thomas Dartmouth Rice, blacked up as an African American.

He was not the first white man to use burnt cork to black his face and appear as a black man. As early as 1767 a New York act was billed as 'a Negro dance, in character'.

It was Rice, however, who popularised the act and made a fortune. He performed throughout America, where both the song and the dance became a national craze, and also in London and Dublin.

The popularity of the minstrel show in the late 19th and early 20th century owed much to his success. According to Rice, his posture, movements and song were based on those of an elderly, lame, black groom he had once seen. As a showman, he would have exaggerated and distorted the movements, not reproduced them exactly. Rather than giving a true picture of a  black slave's dance, Rice helped create the caricature which was passed down through the minstrel shows.

Master Juba

Master Juba, alias William Henry Lane, was born in Rhode Island, USA. He made his name in the clubs and music halls of Manhattan in the 1840s where he was nicknamed the King of all Dancers.

Charles Dickens, visiting New York in the 1840s, attended a performance of Juba’s and wrote afterwards that Juba was ‘the wit of the assembly and the greatest dancer ever known’.

He was famous for dancing the jig and toured to London in 1848 with Pell’s Ethiopian Serenaders. He appeared at Vauxhall Gardens on 1 July 1848 in an evening’s entertainment that also included Tom Barry the clown who sailed down the river Thames in a wash tub drawn by four geese.

Juba died in London in 1852. The name Juba comes from a dance derived from Africa via the West Indies. The dance is very rhythmical, using lots of stamping and clapping.

Dance in musicals

Two US musicals to visit the UK at the end of the 19th century were to spark a craze for the popular dance, the Cakewalk.

The Creole Show

The Creole Show was the first all black musical and had premiered in New York in 1889. The show starred 16 black women as chorus girls. The black leads were Dora Dean and Charles Johnson who performed the dance, the Cakewalk, as the finale. The dance came from the mocking dance created by slaves in the West Indies to imitate the way that white people danced. In the Cakewalk the upper body was stiff but the legs were fluid. It was danced to Ragtime music made popular by Scott Joplin. The syncopated rhythms of Ragtime music developed from the rhythms of West African drumming.

In Dahomey

The musical In Dahomey came to London in 1903 from New York. It was the first all black musical to reach the London stage. The show played at the Shaftesbury Theatre and featured the comic duo of writers Bert Williams and George Walker.

In Dahomey was a huge success in London and the Cakewalk and Buck and Wing dances that featured in the production became the latest dance hall crazes in the UK.

The lyrics were by a well known poet, Paul Dunbar, and the music was by Will Marion Cook. He was a pupil of Antonin Dvorak, the famous Czech composer.

The show hadn't had much success in America. It had failed to attract audiences and closed after only 53 performances. However, London enjoyed the unfamiliarity of its lively leading men, Bert  Williams and George Walker, and it remained at the Shaftesbury Theatre from mid-May 1903 until Boxing Day that year.

Rhoda King, Jessie Ellis, Birdie Williams and Ida Gigas were members of the chorus of In Dahomey, which boasted a cast of over 100.

The show was heavily publicised. Photographs of the production showing the prettiest chorus girls appeared in all the illustrated magazines and the front of the theatre was covered with posters and photographs.

At this time, there were few black people to be seen in the West End, so the management made sure that the performers were seen walking up and down Shaftesbury Avenue to increase public interest in the show.

Harlem Renaissance

Black culture had a real influence on dance and other art forms in the 20th century. After the American civil war a surge of people from the Caribbean and Deep South migrated into North American cities. In New York the district of Harlem became home to black people from different cultural traditions with their own dances and music.

Harlem became the ‘in place’ to be amongst both black and white New Yorkers – its clubs brought together dance and music that was alive and exciting. Dances such as the Charleston, Lindyhop and Jitterbug sprang from these clubs as did Jazz music. The influence of this Harlem Renaissance on music and dance in New York in the early 1920s spread into Europe.

Harlem Renaissance

Shuffle Along

The first all black musical on Broadway called Shuffle Along opened in 1921. This was a smash hit, creating an interest in black dance in the theatre. The show also developed opportunities for individual black performers and dancers. In 1923 the Broadway hit Running Wild came to England and the Charleston became the dance of the decade.

Josephine Baker

The Revue Nègre in Paris introduced the dancer Josephine Baker. She became a huge star in Europe but was never as popular in America (where racial tension continued to marginalise black dance and dancers). All black musicals disappeared from Broadway in the 1920s when white musicals started to employ more black performers and black dance was incorporated into their programme.

Florence Mills

In Britain, black dancers appeared in musicals and revues from the early 20th century. In the 1920s Florence Mills starred in the Broadway musical Shuffle Along (which inspired the growing popularity for tap dancing) and later Plantation Review which toured to London in 1924.

Her next musical Blackbirds opened in London in 1926 and her song ‘I’m a little Blackbird looking for a Bluebird’ became Mills’s theme song. Her singing was beautiful and her dancing had a comedy streak that audiences loved. Florence Mills became a star in both New York and London. In the UK reviewers proclaimed her talent and she was the talk of London.

Tragically Florence died at the age of 32, after an operation to remove her appendix. Thousands of people attended her funeral in Harlem.

Buddy Bradley

In 1933 C. B. Cochran invited Buddy Bradley to London to work on the Rodgers and Hart musical Evergreen. It was the first time a black dancer had worked on an all white show.

Buddy Bradley was a major force in musicals and revue in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1908, he was mostly self-taught and made his debut as a dancer in 1926 in the Florence Mills Revue in New York. He staged dances in the great 1920s revues for Ziegfeld, George White, Earl Carroll and Lew Leslie’s legendary black revue Blackbirds. He also staged routines for such stars as Eleanor Powell, Ruby Keeler and Adèle Astaire.

In the 1930s he left New York and danced in London in C. B. Cochran’s 1931 Revue. There was a rumour that he was forced to leave New York because the Mafia owner of Harlem’s Cotton Club did not appreciate Bradley teaching his girlfriend to dance.

Bradley went on to work with Jessie Matthews and Jack Buchanan on their major musical shows and films throughout the 1930s. In 1932 he collaborated with Frederick Ashton on a ballet High Yellow. Bradley had to teach the ballerina Alicia Markova how to dance with snake hips. He said that the most difficult thing to teach classical dancers was how to bend their knees.

Until 1967 Bradley ran a dance studio in London. He also continued choreographing in England, France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. His choreography mixed classical and modern dance and he also took movements from ice shows and jazz. When tap fell out of favour in the 1950s, he concentrated on jazz dance. He became the first African-American to run a British white company when he formed his own group to appear in variety shows and television in the 1950s.

Black American dance

Modern black dance

The emergence of a black modern dance movement was inspired by the work of two black American women, Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus. Both were academics as well as dancers and spent a great deal of time researching the origins of black dance in the USA. Both toured to Britain with great success. In particular their work influenced the young Berto Pasuka, who went ahead to form the first British black dance company Ballet Nègres.

Katherine Dunham

Dunham made her name in 1934 on Broadway with musicals Le Jazz Hot and Tropics where she introduced a dance called L’ag’ya. This was based on the rhythms and martial arts dances of the slaves who used dance to develop their stamina in preparation for uprisings against their white masters.

Dunham researched dance from Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Martinique for her choreography. She believed that black dance should have equal status with the white European tradition and wanted to trace black dance roots. The technique that she developed also drew on ballet and modern dance. In 1944 she founded a school of dance. At her school students learnt philosophy, anthropology and languages as well as tap, ballet and primitive dance and percussion.

Pearl Primus

Pearl Primus was the first black modern dancer. Strange Fruit was her first performance. It had no music but a sound tape of a poem about a black man being lynched by a white racist. It was passionate and angry. Like other black dancers in the emerging black dance culture she used the art form to express the social and political constraints on black people within America.

She was born in Trinidad before her parents immigrated to Harlem in 1919. She worked at the New Dance Group Studios which was one of few places where black dancers could train alongside whites. She went on to study for a PhD and did research on dance in Africa. Her most famous dance was the Fanga, an African dance of welcome which introduced traditional African dance to the stage.

In the 1940s, Pearl Primus was one of the first dancers to make an in-depth study of black dance traditions, embracing West Indian, African, and primitive dance. Her recitals and performances with her company showed these dances both in their authentic form and used as a basis for new choreography.

She was an important figure in the preservation and study of ethnic dance and was consulted on dance in many countries, including Libya. This photograph shows the influence of African dance on Primus' work. She spent three years in Africa making a survey of native dances and, on her return in 1951, she presented many performances based on the dances and rituals she had studied.

Black American dance companies

Arthur Mitchell

In the 1950s and 60s Arthur Mitchell challenged the myth that black dancers were unsuited to ballet. He grew up in the Harlem district of New York and when he was 18 won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet. On graduation in 1956, he joined New York City Ballet and danced with them for 15 years. George Balanchine, the choreographer and founder of the company, created many roles for him, including the ballets Agon and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mitchell had a great belief in the power of education to help children develop their potential. He wanted children within the black community to have more opportunities. In 1968, shortly after Martin Luther King's assassination, Mitchell founded a school called the Dance Theatre of Harlem. The school was a huge success and in 1971 the company, also known as Dance Theatre of Harlem, gave its first performances. It has since performed to great acclaim all over the world. The repertory includes works by major 20th-century choreographers, including Fokine, Nijinska, Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Mitchell also commissioned works, some of which explored the origins of black dance.

Alvin Ailey Dance Company

Born in Texas in 1931 in a poor rural area, Ailey was inspired to dance after seeing Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo as a schoolboy. He trained at Lester Horton Studio in New York and later with Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Katherine Durham. He supported himself during his studies by dancing in Broadway musicals and teaching. During this time he was lead dancer in Jamaica, a musical choreographed by Jack Cole.

In 1958 Ailey founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. The company’s twin aims were to express black cultural heritage and enrich American dance. His choreography showed a highly individual mix of elements taken from primitive dance, modern dance and jazz dance. His most famous and popular work is probably Revelations.

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  Photograph of Arthur Mitchell in Agon

  Arthur Mitchell challenged the idea that black bodies were not suited to classical ballet. He danced with George Balanchine's New York City Ballet in the 1950s and 1960s, the first black dancer to become a leading dancer with a ballet company.

  In 1957, Mitchell was not yet a soloist. He also had a foot injury but Balanchine was eager to begin work on his new ballet Agon, saying 'OK, I'll do everything for you on the right foot'. The music too was a problem. The score was a new one by Igor Stravinsky. 'There are parts I don't understand,' the company pianist said. 'That's all right,' replied the composer, 'I don't understand them either'.

  Until Agon, Mitchell had been cast without regard for his colour. Now Balanchine used the difference between him and his partner, the fair Diana Adams, so that the placing of a hand or the arms provided a colour structure that became part of the choreography. It was to be one of the greatest pas de deux ever created.

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  Dance Theater of Harlem

  Dance Theater of Harlem was the first black classical ballet company. Forces of Rhythm was choreographed by Louis Johnson to show various forms of black dance: Afro-ethnic, jazz dance and ballet. Its message was that Dance Theater of Harlem was not turning its back on its heritage but believed it had equal right to make classical ballet its own. This photograph was taken during the company's hugely successful first London season in 1974. The visit started quietly. Then word spread that something special was happening at Sadler's Wells Theatre and suddenly huge queues formed at the box office.

  To cope, the theatre staff gave up their free time to help. T-shirts and lapel badges bearing the company logo of two strutting dancers were to be seen everywhere. When founder and director Arthur Mitchell announced that the next company into the theatre had generously changed its rehearsal schedule so that the season could be extended by a week he was greeted with shouts of 'We want six months'.

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  Dance Theater of Harlem

  Dance Theater of Harlem was the first black classical ballet company. Its founder, Arthur Mitchell, wanted to challenge ballet companies on their own ground and show that black dancers could dance the same ballets equally well. Concerto Barocco was one of George Balanchine's major ballets and a great test for the company, some of whom had only been dancing for five years. It was the ballet chosen to open the company's first season in London in 1974. Audiences were amazed that a company only five years old could master the cool serenity of Balanchine's style. As Mitchell said, London was important for his company because it was one of the major centres of classical dance.

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  Arthur Mitchell teaching

  Arthur Mitchell challenged the prejudice that black bodies were not suited to classical ballet. He danced with George Balanchine's New York City Ballet in the 1950s and 1960s, the first black dancer to become a leading dancer with a ballet company. In 1969 Mitchell started his own school in Harlem 'to get the kids off the streets'. He used 'dance' rather than 'ballet' which the boys thought 'sissy'. They soon found out their mistake. Ballet training involves more physical discipline than any sport. But Mitchell knew when to relax the rules. Boys did not have to wear the dreaded tights. They danced to drumbeats rather than classical music. He also believed that the discipline would help children who had known little control in their lives. In 1971 he founded Dance Theater of Harlem to showcase the dancers he had trained. Mitchell gave structure and purpose to the lives of thousands of children who went on to dance, work in the theatre or, applying the discipline he had taught them, to become doctors or lawyers.

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  Revelations - Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre

  Alvin Ailey was the protégé of American pioneer modern dancer Lester Horton, and also danced with Martha Graham. He formed his own black dance company, American Dance Theatre, in 1958 to present his own works, a blend of tribal African-American dance, jazz, and modern dance. He wanted to explore the black experience: what he called, in Martha Graham's phrase, 'blood memories', but also to keep key works in the modern American dance repertory alive. Revelations is Ailey's tribute to black sacred music and the evangelical force of religion. His 'blood memories' were the church of his youth when he was growing up in the Depression in Texas. Like the churches of the Deep South, Revelations mixes ritual, hell fire and rousing praise. The company always performed it with a passion and commitment that had audiences on their feet, shouting. In the 'Take me to the Water' sequence, shown here, figures move against a deep blue ground, the white dresses and the parasols weaving themselves inextricably into the choreography.

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  Hidden Rites - Alvin Ailey Dance Company

  The photograph shows Sara Yarborough and John Parks in Alvin Ailey's Hidden Rites. They were members of his City Center Dance Theatre and in this piece are playing the roles of two deity spirits who dominate the action. In Hidden Rites, Alvin Ailey delved so deep into the African roots of black ritual that it became a study of the roots of all ritual. The patterned tights have African sources but also suggest the Minoan civilisation of Crete, of around 2000 B.C. The action centred on universal themes of creation, love and death. This was in keeping with Ailey's aims. Although his company had its roots in African- American culture, he always wanted it to include the best works from whatever source, and not be limited in themes.

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  Roots of the Blues - Alvin Ailey Dance Company

  The photograph shows Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theatre in Roots of the Blues. This ballet was Ailey's tribute to the Blues and its place in American black culture, and another example of his drawing on 'blood memories' to create dances. It was a series of short sketches tracing the Blues from the brothels of New Orleans to the speakeasies (shops or bars where alcohol was sold illegally during Prohibition in America) and nightclubs of the 1920s. The setting was very spare - a few chairs, stools, a ladder, a hatstand, but combined with Ves Harper's equally simple yet striking costumes, and stunning lighting and back projections, it created unforgettable stage pictures. Ailey's choreography showed off the individual dancers to perfection. On the company's first visit to London in 1964, it was the work that made audiences realise just how good Ailey's dancers were.

Black British dance

Ballet Nègres

The first British black dance company was Ballets Nègres. Its founder, Berto Pasuka was born in Jamaica and learned dancing from the Maroon Negroes, descendants of runaway slaves. He performed native songs and dances for tourists. In 1939, convinced he had to be a dancer, he came to Britain.

In 1946 Pasuka launched an eight week season of Ballet Nègres at a small fringe theatre. The first black dance company in Europe, it included British-born black dancers, a Canadian, three Nigerians, a Trinidadian, a German, a Guyanese, two Jamaicans and a Ghanaian. The five drummers were from Nigeria. The company rapidly won glowing reviews and toured both in Britain and internationally. Pasuka created all four works himself, basing them on Caribbean themes from philosophy to the daily bustle of Market Day.

The company lasted for six years but failed to gain official subsidy. Without subsidy or capital, it was impossible to maintain the dancers and create new works from box office takings alone. The company closed in 1952. Pasuka died in 1963.

British dance companies

In the last 30 years black dance companies have developed a strong repertoire of work in the UK. Black British dancers have made their name internationally in Ballet Rambert, London Contemporary Dance and a host of other modern and classical, national and internationally renowned dance companies.

Adzido

Adzido presents classical African tribal dance adapted for stage performance, moulding traditional dances around selected themes and poetry. It was founded by George Dzikunu in 1984. After founding Adzido he toured many African countries researching dance for Adzido’s repertoire. Adzido’s first full length piece was Coming Home, with 28 dancers and musicians telling the story of the son of an African chief who returns home to Africa from the West and discovers he has forgotten his tribal dances. The show was performed at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in 1988.

Irie!

Irie! Dance Theatre was founded by Beverley Glean in 1984. Born in the Caribbean, Beverley Glean trained at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and then worked at the Albany Empire as Dance Development Officer. Irie! Dance came out of a project to celebrate Caribbean culture in Deptford in South East London. Irie’s first major production was a reggae production of the Orpheus myth, Orfeo in a Night Town, set in the Caribbean. It opened at The Place in 1989.

Phoenix Dance Company

Phoenix Dance Company was formed in 1981 by Leo Hamilton, Donald Edwards and Villmore James. They all attended Harehills’ Middle School in Leeds, where, unusually, dance was a compulsory subject for boys and girls, taught by Nadine Senior. By 1982 they were performing outside Leeds and the number in the company had risen to five. By 1989 the first female dancers were under contract and in 1990 Phoenix was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for the most Outstanding Achievement of the Year in Dance.

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  Darshan Singh Bhuller

  London Contemporary Dance Theatre produced many extraordinary male dancers, who thrilled audiences not just with their extraordinary virtuosity but also with the sensitivity of their performances. The last in the great line was Darshan Singh Bhuller. Born of Asian parents, he was brought up in Leeds and learned dancing as part of the school curriculum at Harehills Middle School.

  In 1981 he joined London Contemporary Dance Theatre, becoming one of their most exciting dancers and a major choreographer. He is now Artistic Director of Phoenix Dance Company. This study is one of many of Bhuller taken by Anthony Crickmay, the outstanding dance photographer of his generation. Crickmay always perfectly understood the qualities that made a dancer special. He concentrated on Bhuller's extraordinary flexibility, his ability to make the most beautiful sculptural shapes on the ground and in the air, and on his perfect balance and control. The moves in these sessions were devised by Crickmay and Bhuller in the studio. As Bhuller said of Crickmay, 'He thinks like a dancer and choreographer himself, that's why he's so good'.

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  Ballets Nègres invitation, 1946

  Ballets Nègres was the first British black dance company, founded by Jamaican-born Berto Pasuka in 1946. This letter was sent to the press inviting them to the first performances of the company at a small theatre in west London. Traditionally, a management invites critics to review a performance and gives them free seats. Pasuka created most of the ballets himself, basing them on Caribbean themes, from philosophy to the daily bustle of Market Day. The company lasted for six years but failed to gain official subsidy. It was impossible to sustain the company from box office takings alone and it closed in 1952. Pasuka died in 1963. In 2000 the Theatre Museum and Positive Steps dance company invited surviving members of Ballet Nègres to work with young people to recreate Pasuka's ballet Market Day.

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  Ballets Nègres programme, 1946

  In 1946 Berto Pasuka founded Ballet Nègres and launched an eight-week season at a small fringe theatre. The company rapidly won acclaim and glowing reviews, and toured all over Britain and abroad. Pasuka created most works himself, basing them on Caribbean themes, from philosophy to the daily bustle of Market Day. The company closed in 1952. It failed to get official subsidy and it was impossible to sustain the company from box office takings alone. Pasuka died in 1963. In 2000 the Theatre Museum and Positive Steps dance company invited surviving members of Ballet Nègres to recreate the ballet Market Day.

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  Ballets Nègres programme, 1946

  Ballets Nègres programme, Fowler and Company (printer), London, England, 1946

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  William Louther

  William Louther was the first black dancer to appear regularly with an English dance company. He had worked with Alvin Ailey and was with Martha Graham's company when he came to England to appear with the embryo London Contemporary Dance Theatre in the early 1970s. He was a charismatic personality, and his performances at times reached the level of genius.

  This photograph shows Louther performing a swirling jump from Robert Cohan's 1971 work, The Consolation of the Rising Moon, danced to music arranged and played by the great guitarist John Williams. The ballet was an uneasy mix of oriental and Spanish styles, but was dominated by Louther as a priest-like figure. He was dressed in a long, skirt-like garment, which, as so often in contemporary dance, became a central part of the choreography.

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  Darshan Singh Bhuller workshop

  This photograph shows Darshan Singh Bhuller working with boys at Harehills Middle School in his hometown, Leeds. Bhuller shot to fame as a dancer and choreographer with London Contemporary Dance Theatre. His energy, athleticism, and beautiful line (the shape made by the body) made him one of the most exciting performers of the 1980s and 1990s. In 2002 he returned to Leeds to direct Phoenix Dance Theatre.

  Harehills is unique in being the only comprehensive school to give birth to a dance company. Dance was part of the normal curriculum and, through their extraordinary teacher Nadine Senior, boys came to see that dance was far from 'cissy'. So many promising boys emerged that Phoenix Dance Company was formed in 1981. It was chance, not design, that, with so many boys coming from African or Asian families, the original members of the company were black. The photograph captures the energy and style that gives Phoenix Dance Theatre, as it is now known, its particular excitement.