Praise for Halifu Osumare’s
Dancing in Blackness
"As per the West coast Black Arts Movement, especially its origins at San Francisco State College/now University, Halifu was there from the beginning and thus is a critical personality in the BAM dance genre, also as organizer of dance venues in the Bay, especially Oakland's Alice Arts Theatre, now Malonga Center. She is among such Bay Area choreographers as Grand Diva Ruth Beckford, Ed Mock, Raymond Sawyer, Ellendar Barnes, Deborah Vaughn, Linda Johnson, Traci Bartlow, Rehema Yenbere, Jamilah Charlene Hunter, Delores Cayou, et al."--Marvin X, BAM co-founder
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Dancing in Blackness is a professional dancer's personal journey over four decades, across three continents and twenty-three countries, and through defining moments in the story of black dance in America. In this memoir, Halifu Osumare reflects on what blackness and dance have meant to her life and international career. Osumare's story begins in 1960s San Francisco amid the Black Arts Movement, black militancy, and hippie counterculture. It was there that she chose dance as her own revolutionary statement. She moved to Europe, where she taught "jazz ballet" and established her own dance company in Copenhagen. Returning to the United States, she danced with the Rod Rodgers Dance Company in New York City and played key roles in integrating black dance programs into mainstream programming at the Lincoln Center. After dance fieldwork in Ghana, Osumare returned to California and helped develop Oakland's black dance scene. Along the way, she collaborated with major artistic movers and shakers: among them, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Jean-Léon Destiné, and Donald McKayle. Now a black studies scholar, Osumare uses her extraordinary experiences to reveal the overlooked ways that dance has been a vital tool in the black struggle for recognition, justice, and self-empowerment. This is the inspiring story of an accomplished dance artist and a world-renowned dance scholar who has boldly developed and proclaimed her identity as a black woman. |
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"Osumare has engaged with black dance as performer, choreographer, educator, arts administrator, researcher, and activist in the United States, Africa, and Europe, and through multiple careers. In this equal parts memoir, autoethnography, history, encyclopedic catalog, and sociocultural analysis, she traces her activities from the 1960s through the late 1990s, as she becomes a tenacious advocate for black dance. . . . An eclectic melange."--Library Journal "Finally someone who knows a dancer's process and a choreographer's vision that has tackled the mystery that is the magic of contemporary African American dance. In Dancing in Blackness, Halifu Osumare has extricated the fundamental influence of Dunham, the choreographic strategies of Rod Rodgers, Eleo Pomare, Chuck Davis, Donald McKayle, and Alvin Ailey, as well as illuminating the paths they created for Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Bill T. Jones, Garth Fagan, and Diane McIntyre. What a wealth of treasure and scholarly and aesthetic understanding Osumare brings to this often misunderstood and woefully neglected American art. Bravo!"--Ntozake Shange, author of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf "Dancing in Blackness belongs on every dancer's and artist's shelf. It is a wonderful personal telling of the black experience in dance, in art, in life, and of the dance world in Boston, New York, and the whole Bay Area. It is beautifully written--an engaging and fact-filled narrative where you meet the choreographers of the period, their work and visions, trials, successes, and triumphs."--Donald McKayle, choreographer of Rainbow Round My Shoulder "Halifu Osumare is a relevant voice from the Black Arts Movement of the '60s and '70s. She has danced the talk, music, and history of that period and beyond. This is a must read for insight into a black artist's personal and professional journey."--Kariamu Welsh, editor of African Dance: An Artistic, Historical and Philosophical Inquiry "Coming of age amid the counterculture and Black Power in San Francisco, Osumare becomes a professional dancer in Europe and New York before returning home to realize her mission as an artist, activist, and thinker. Her memoir reveals an astonishing ability to evoke and to historicize her lived experience."--Susan Manning, author of Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion "An unapologetic, rapturous travelogue detailing life, love, and an abiding mission to further the place of black dance in global histories."--Thomas F. DeFrantz, author of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture "Osumare affirms the spiritual and tangible power for dance to teach, energize, heal, and inspire all peoples on this human journey."--Joselli Audain Deans, consultant, Black Ballerina |