The 19th annual African American Dance Company workshops aim to celebrate and teach participants about the variety in dance tradition rooted in the African American and African diaspora communities.
This year’s workshops, taking place March 3 and 4 at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, will include not only some familiar faces as visiting instructors, but the new addition of the vogue dance style taught by choreographer Cesar Valentino.
Hannah Crane, special projects assistant and communications specialist with the African American Arts Institute at IU, said inviting Valentino to the lineup of instructors was part of a partnership with the LGBTQ+ Culture Center.
“We’re bringing in a dance form that exposes that intersectionality in dance and in our communities,” Crane said. “Vogue has its history rooted in LGBTQ as well as black and Latino communities.”
The goal of the workshops in general is to bring together people of all ages, from IU students and faculty to the Bloomington community, all the way down to middle and high school students, invited as part of a scholarship program, Crane said.
Iris Rosa, director of the African American Dance Company, said all the master classes will also include live drumming, a means to connect with the heritage of the dance styles.
“We carry on our traditions that people will not only enjoy, but they will learn history, they will learn culture and politics,” Rosa said. “We tend to have preconceived notions about dance that comes from African tradition — that they’re all fun and have no technique and structure. These professional practitioners, these artists, will put all of that in context from a historical, cultural and social perspective.”
Crane said students — especially those coming through the scholarship program — are given the opportunity to find a connection to dance styles that they may not see in generally Eurocentric dance education, which puts an emphasis on certain styles such as ballet.
