Chats Vol.4: Black Men and Dance

Shacon Jones II

Dancer Demonte Ricardo (2018) | Photo: by Daryl L. Foster

In the wake of the 2024 Presidential election and the dismantling of DEI initiatives that have long supported Black studies and affinity spaces, alongside enduring and newly emerging debates about Black masculinity and the Black male body, this issue of Chats turns its attention to Black men in dance as a vital site of inquiry, memory, and inheritance. What new histories of Black men in dance emerge when we center the voices of those working in K–12 classrooms, community spaces, and the academy? How might Black men’s movement practices and artistic labor complicate the narrow scripts of visibility, stoicism, and spectacle imposed upon them—from boyhood to manhood, from student to professional? And how do these practices invite us to rethink the very terms through which Black men in dance are studied, remembered, and carried forward?

This issue emerges from the following themes:

• Black masculinity, identity, and vulnerability in dance amid a volatile sociopolitical climate
• The intergenerational influence and hidden lineages of Black dancers, choreographers, and educators
• Black male mentorship and the creation of third spaces for the development of male dance professionals

Daryl L. Foster, Aubrey Lynch II, and Dr. Mark Broomfield each offer distinct interventions into what it means to participate as a Black man in dance today. Foster grounds his practice in futurity, cultivating mentorship and choreographic innovation in Atlanta through the founding of LIFT as a means of opening and safeguarding space for the next generation. Lynch extends this investment by returning to his personal and professional archive, revisiting dance lineages and critical moments where Blackness, memory, and artistry converge. Broomfield turns to Bill T. Jones’s 1997 solo performance, as captured in Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers, re-reading the work to uncover radical dimensions of masculinity and vulnerability often obscured. All three remain attuned to the institutional silences, exploitations, and misreadings that have shaped Black men’s participation in the field. They move between the studio and the street, the stage and the everyday, the remembered and the yet-to-come. As former professional dancers with companies such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dayton Contemporary Dance Theater, and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, these artist-scholars bring lived experience and critical precision to their reflections on the past, present, and futures of Black men in movement.

This Chat does not pretend to offer a resolution to the state of Black men and masculinity in dance studies. Instead, it extends an invitation: to witness how three unsung Black men in dance continue to mobilize presence, mentorship, and worldbuilding strategies to increase opportunity. Whether through scholarly reading interventions, community performance, or pedagogical practice, collectively these voices insist that Black men in dance are unfolding, unfinished, and insistent on being otherwise.