Black Artists Dance Collective’s Summer Program Gives Back to the Atlanta Community
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, a group of professional dancers who’d grown up training together in Atlanta joined forces to talk about how to support young Black dancers in their hometown. Those conversations eventually led to the formation of The Black Artists Dance Collective, whose founding members—Shonica Gooden, Jamal Kamau White, Amber Jackson, Terrance Martin, Wendell Gray, Brianne Sellars, Takia Hopson, Danielle Swatzie, and Vinson Fraley—are veterans of concert dance, Broadway, and the commercial industry. Together, they have worked to inspire and empower Atlanta’s next generation of performers.
“Once you know how to navigate this field, you have to pass it down to the youth,” says White, TBADC’s CEO of creative strategy and community engagement, who is currently an assistant professor of dance at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.
One of TBADC’s most influential initiatives has been its dance intensive. Launched in the fall of 2022 as a three-day program for 12 students, it’s since evolved into a two-week, audition-only summer intensive for a cohort of 24, open to Black teens from the Atlanta area. And it’s fully tuition-free, and dancers receive lunch each day. “We don’t want money to be an issue for a child to have access to quality dance training,” says Gooden, the organization’s executive artistic director and a cast member in Hamilton on Broadway.
Crafting an Accessible Intensive
TBADC’s intensive curriculum includes ballet, jazz, tap, hip hop, modern, contemporary, improvisation, Afro dance styles, musical theater, and conditioning, as well as acting and vocal performance, mindfulness, and dance business seminars. Because TBADC’s cohort is small, classes feel intimate. “There’s so much care and attention to detail with each student,” says Layla Alexis White (no relation to Jamal), who attended the program in 2022 and 2023. “I felt safe to be myself and to cultivate my artistry.”
The second week of the intensive focuses on college prep, educating dancers—and their parents—about various degree programs. Workshops cover the process of applying, auditioning, and securing financial aid. TBADC also brings in college representatives to hold auditions. For Layla Alexis White, now a freshman dance major at the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, the college prep offerings were “transformative.” “They brought in a USC alum to talk about the curriculum and her experience, and it inspired me to research the school,” she says. “It was clear that being a scholar as well as an artist was valuable, and that changed my perspective on how I should pursue my training.”
Supporting Artists of Color
At traditional summer intensives, Gooden says, Black students “may not feel seen and heard.” TBADC provides a training space where students aren’t in the minority among their peers and where they work with teachers and choreographers who have been in their shoes.
“Our program is built for young people, but we support artists of color at all stages of their careers,” Gooden goes on. For instance, TBADC brings in emerging Black choreographers to create works-in-progress for the final intensive showcase. “It’s a twofold thing,” she says. “We give space to the choreographers, paying them for their time as they work out new ideas, while teaching students what it’s like to be part of the creation process.”
Strengthening the Arts Community
Putting on a tuition-free intensive means doing plenty of fundraising, and the team has worked hard to gain its 501(c)(3) status and assemble a board of directors and a community advisory board. These efforts aren’t just about TBADC; outreach also bolsters the local arts community. “My dream is to build a culture of philanthropy for the arts among Black people in Atlanta,” Jamal Kamau White says. “If we want to see new dance companies, new plays, or exhibitions of new visual artists, we have to put our money there.”
For local students, it’s life-changing when performers who grew up in Atlanta and went out to succeed in the industry return home to share their wisdom. “They’re pouring information back into the community, giving kids who want to pursue dance as a career access to this generational wealth of knowledge,” Layla Alexis White says. “That process of reciprocation means the legacy will be preserved.”
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