Stepping up

'WHENEVER I have an anniversary it seems like I get crazy," laughed Joan Myers Brown over the phone last week from her studio in West Philadelphia. She expected to be working into the wee hours of the morning - and not for the only time that week - to prepare for the horde of dancers, teachers and students expected to stream into town for this week's International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference.

Philadanco, the predominantly African-American dance company that Brown founded in 1970, will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year, culminating in a series of performances at the Kimmel Center in April. But to kick the birthday year off, Brown invited the conference that she started in 1988 to return to Philly for the first time since 1995 - the year of Philadanco's 25th anniversary.

More than 600 dancers, teachers, choreographers and other dance professionals are expected to gather for five days of classes, workshops, panels, discussions and performance showcases the public can attend. It all gets under way tomorrow.

The IABD Conference grew out of Brown's experience at events held by Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance.

"People at the conference weren't interested in audiences of color, who weren't coming to their concerts, and weren't interested in modern dance because they only did ballet," Brown recalled. Philadanco "being a modern dance company that is predominantly black, that made two important issues that weren't even being talked about. So I tried to gather a group of people together to talk about how we would address that."

For its first two years, the IABD Conference was hosted in Philadelphia, but soon enough of a network had been established that it traveled to other cities, hosted each year by a local company: Ron K. Brown/Evidence in New York; Lula Washington Dance Company in Los Angeles; Cleo Parker Robinson Dance in Denver; Chuck Davis' African American Dance Ensemble in Durham, N.C.; and Dance Immersion in Toronto, Canada.

"The conference is a very serious pilgrimage for people to come together and embrace each other with an excitement and energy that is not being offered anywhere else," said Dr. Sherrill Berryman-Johnson, chair of the IABD. "It gives people a chance to share camaraderie and to network. A major part of it is the opportunity to perform before a larger audience, beyond their own regional location."

Even as the conference grew and moved around the country, Philadanco continued to run the association for its first decade. In 1998, the IABD moved to Howard University in Washington, D.C., which now handles its daily operations and archives. Berryman-Johnson hopes that as the audience for the conference grows, the association's membership and goals will keep pace.

"The association's mission is to continue the communication and keep members informed of the range of things that take place within the dance profession throughout the year, so that we don't get locked into the celebratory moment of the conference itself," she said.

More than a dozen classes will be held each day of the conference, from master classes for experienced dancers to stretch classes for interested amateurs.

Performances are grouped into four showcases, each featuring six to 10 companies. Thursday's showcases include one spotlighting youth groups from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., Baltimore Dance Tech, Camden's Creative Arts High School, and Philly's own Soliloquy in Motion, among others; and a second, "Meet the Philadelphians," showcasing some of our city's innovative talents.

"I want everyone who comes to know the caliber and type of dance that goes on in Philadelphia," Brown said of the locals program, which includes Rennie Harris Dance Puremovement, Kùlú Mèlé African Dance and Drum Ensemble, Eleone Dance Theatre and others. "We would also like the people of Philadelphia to come out and support the event. Let's show that we mean it when we say that brotherly love stuff."

The issue of support was obviously a sore one to Brown, whether its lack came from within the broader dance community, from audiences, or from funding sources. This year's conference is subtitled "Back to Basics," referencing the need to re-examine priorities in a time of economic hardship.

"This conference should encourage people to talk about survival," Brown said. "The panels try to address thinking back, in this economic climate, to the things that helped you survive back when you started out - when you had no money, when you had no staff, when the idea was just incubating in your mind.

"There are things that you need to think about and make positive decisions so that you can survive through these times. People who don't know how they're going to pay their rent aren't going to send their kids to dancing school."

Saturday night's sold-out awards banquet, hosted by Maurice Hines, honors five women who know something about survival. The honorees, all in their 70s, were innovators in the black dance community at a time when there was barely a community to speak of, and all are still active as teachers and speakers.

The group includes Philadelphia-born Mary Hinkson, one of the first black women to join the Martha Graham Dance Company; Mary Barnett, former associate artistic director with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Raven Wilkinson, first black ballerina with the Ballet Russe; Dolores Brown, who joined Alicia Alonso's ballet troupe in Cuba; and Carolyn Adams, the first black dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

Brown stressed the importance of paying tribute to pioneers such as these, especially to raise awareness of the community's history among younger dancers.

"I speak at colleges around the country, and at some of them the kids don't even know about Katherine Dunham," Brown said, referring to the legendary African-American dancer, choreographer and activist. "They're into 'So You Think You Can Dance?' and 'Dancing With the Stars,' but they don't know the rich history that this community has."

Brown has witnessed a good deal of change over the conference's 22 years (and Philadanco's 40) - but "not enough."

"There's more knowledge and more access to training for dancers of color. The quality of presentation has changed because people are more aware of marketing and audience development," she said. "But if you go to a Broadway show, there's still only one black person in the cast unless it's an all-black show. Very seldom is there a black person in the major ballet companies, and if there is, it's usually a male dancer. A lot of these issues have come to the forefront and been addressed by us."

Philadanco is hosting the 22nd Annual Conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD) in collaboration with the University of the Arts, where workshops, classes and showcase performances will be held tomorrow through Sunday. All showcases will be at the Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St. Tickets for the youth showcase are $35 reserved seating, $25 general admission; all other showcases, $55 and $35. For information and schedule, 215-387-8200 or www.philadanco.org.