Cleo Parker Robinson Dance (Denver, CO): Founded in 1970 by choreographer and artistic director Cleo Parker Robinson, CPRD is one of the nation’s foremost dance companies rooted in African American cultural traditions. There are five pillars of the organization: the CPRD Ensemble, Academy, Theatre, Education Programs, and Art in Wellbeing. Working in concert, CPRD programs have created an oasis where a varied population—by gender, race, age and ethnicity—gather to study and appreciate a modern, cross-cultural approach to creative community development. Housed in a historic A.M.E. Shorter Church in the Five Points neighborhood, CPRD serves as a convener of community, art and dance.
JazzAntiqua (Los Angeles, CA): Founded in 1993 by choreographer Pat Taylor, JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble celebrates the jazz tradition as a vital thread in the cultural fabric of African American history and heritage, and a defining element of the American experience. Dedicated to jazz arts education, preservation and creation, JazzAntiqua embraces "the movement in the music," and aims to be a hub for the study of West Coast jazz and jazz dance. JazzAntiqua is in residence at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center / Ebony Repertory Theatre, and is committed to providing free and low-cost community arts programming.
Jennifer Harge/Harge Dance Stories (Detroit, MI): Jennifer Harge is an interdisciplinary choreographer, performance artist, and educator. Her work centers Black and queer vernacular movement practices, codes, and rituals that manifest at the intersections of performance, installation, and community gathering. Harge’s processes and artistic products grow out of Black subjectivity; Black feminist thought; nurturance of intimate reciprocal partnerships; and iteration-based research that allows the work to evolve nomadically across time and varied contexts. She founded Harge Dance Stories in 2014 as a container for choreographic research.
Segunda Quimbamba Folkloric Center (Jersey City, NJ): Segunda Quimbamba is a percussion and dance ensemble that performs authentic Bomba and Plena, the drum music of Puerto Rico. The ensemble was founded by director Juan Cartagena and his wife Nanette Hernandez as Los Pleneros de la Segunda (The Pleneros from Second Street) in 1989, and adopted its current name in 1996. SQFC celebrates the Puerto Rican Folkloric drum music Bomba and Plena, which reflects the influence of the African diaspora throughout the Carribean and beyond, through education, live performance, research and documentation. From 1997 to 2007, they published the only periodical on Puerto Rico's drum music anywhere in the U.S. or Puerto Rico, called Güiro y Maraca.