#dallasblackdancetheatre

[korydwilliams]

photoshoot with @thefloydjr of @dallasblackdance 😎👍🏿 #dallasphotographer #fortworthphotographer #houstonphotographer #dfwphotographer #korywilliamsphotography #dallasblackdancetheatre #blackdancers (at Kory Williams Photography) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHpcgKSpXP7/?igshid=shvkhg495qu3

[browngirlsdoballet]

A little Wednesday inspiration @hdintheplace2be💕 . Photo: The Dallas Dance Project @nicoleroseportraits #dancemagme #worldwidedance #browngirlsdoballet #dancemagazine #dancespiritmagazine #moderndance #dancephotography #thedallasdanceproject #dbdt #dallasblackdancetheatre #dance #prettybrowndancers #dancerofthedayentry #dancer #blackdancers #Dallas #photography #fitness

[kennonleather]

Cowrie earcuffs🤩🤩🤩 Brass Copper At the Dance Africa Festival & Marketplace 10-05-19 #kennonleatherworks #dallasblackdancetheatre #marketplace (at Annette Strauss Square) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3Ayqnxh_xo/?igshid=xc7mcul0m9en

[christopherjdowdy]

Forty Years Forward

One morning this week I waited in the library for one woman to meet another. One had traveled a long way, the other had not. A husband, a sister, waited too with the one who had traveled--a woman with a cosmopolitan voice, clear, patient. 

There is a little happy commotion when her old friend makes it. They stand and talk, after they embrace, next to a dress she or the other had danced in. Maybe both, in the company they had started together: part of a display telling a history of this, the Black Dance Theater. Their Black Dance Theater. Yellowed clippings in a book and a case with playbills and photographs, brightly colored costumes, glistening faces in performance.

The old friend had stayed behind in this city to build the theater they started together and they have seen each other not infrequently but still they are glad, hugging one another. Both know our librarian, who seems to know everyone.

The dress is orange and blue underneath a sheath of white cotton. 

“You know the company started here?” the librarian mentions to me, while they are murmuring by the display case, a photographer clicking away, a theater staffer streaming things on facebook. 

“On the campus?” I say, surprised. 

Yes, and in a building since razed to the ground (green grass there now: a question mark, a possibility; a great emerald arm reaching to the next thing) on the south part of the grounds. They started dancing, and kept on, building around both of their arms and waists and chins held at precise angles. So many stories I have yet to learn.

They held themselves, together. Forty years gone by. 

-- 

Getting in the car this morning with S. I notice I have left a rake out by the porch this past week, exposed to the sun and, for the past day or so, the rain. It has gone from tan to grey; washed out. Around it a bush, which I think may privet, is unruly. Bright green weeds mix in with the purple diamond leaves of oxalas and the the freckled orange petals of transplanted day lily from L.’s sister’s yard. Though I don’t work as hard as I should to support it, in contrast to the faded wood of the tool the crepe myrtle is brown-green; shoots pushing out all around, waxy leaves and pink flowers around the four or five crooked stalks of trunk, heedless. It has endured the same week of punishing sun and sudden rain as the neglected tool. Though both are themselves independent of me, the contrast is sharp, given that --

the tree remains flowering

holds its color 

is alive

[lachandadupard]

Girls Day Out at Dallas Black Dance Theatre "Cultural Awareness" performance with my Sister-in-God Paula Brown was incredible! I'm inspired by the performers amazing bodies, "Testament" and "Strange Fruit" were my favorites! #DBDT #dallasblackdancetheatre (at Wylie Theater)

[murderfewrote]

Last night with my sister-friend Donielle! #DallasBlackDanceTheatre #VisionRenewedAtPVAMU (at Prairie View A&M University)

[tyrellrockstarr]

MNWSH Bulls 4 Life #bluengold #mrt #throwbackthursday #dallasblackdancetheatre (at Dallas Black Dance Theatre)