Black Dance Legacy Mural Dedication

Join us to dedicate a new mural celebrating the long legacy of Black dancers and educators who shaped and defined a new cultural identity in the genre, right here in Philadelphia. Featuring a speaking program and live dance performances, the event will highlight the city’s powerful, expressive Black dance community that has flourished over the last century.

Visual and spoken-word artist Bernard Collins, Jr. pays tribute to the trailblazers who overcame centuries of racial gatekeeping to teach European techniques to Black students, at a time when Black dancers were excluded from white ballet institutions. Pioneering dance instructor Essie Marie Dorsey (1893–1967), who passed as white in order to circumvent racial barriers to classical ballet training, taught Black students from her own home studio, beginning in 1926. These students—including Sydney King, Marion Cuyjet, and Philadanco founder Joan Myers Brown—became members of a powerhouse generation of transformative dance educators, cultivating a lineage of excellence that echoes throughout the dance world today. In addition to these luminaries, the mural also pays tribute to Judith Jamison, a student of Cuyjet’s who rose to prominence as director of Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, and Michaela DePrince, a Sierra Leone–born prodigy who trained in Philadelphia and rose to international acclaim.