Black British Dance

Dance is memory in bodies, memory in movement. As much as storytelling, or the oral tradition, is important for African heritage dance is a way that culture is carried through generations and across oceans.

The history of people of African descent in the UK goes back at least 2000 years. White English Morris dancers in Horace Ove’s & Colin Luke’s made for TV mock-umentary The Black Safari (1972) think that the roots of Morris dancing come from Africans in Britain. If this is true then Morris dancing becomes the first documentation of cultural exchange between the British Isles and the African continent.

Ignatius Sancho (1729 – 1780) led an uncommon life. He was the first Black Briton known to have voted in British elections. He was charismatic, well educated and well connected. Arriving in Britain at the age of two, he liberated himself from slavery in 1749 aged around 20. He went to live and work for his patrons, the landed Montague family.

Sancho is best known as a composer, actor and writer. He’s especially well known for the edition of his letters, published after his death, in which he gives an early account of what it was like to be a slave, from an enslaved African’s perspective. Less well known, and less well documented, is his work in dance. Alongside his music compositions he created accompanying dance works. He was working in the medium of minuets, cotillions and country dances. Forms of dance common in Georgian society, pre-dating the development of British ballet by some 200 years.

The survival of Sancho’s dance works lies in the tantalising evidence of a few collections published in London in the 1770s. More research is needed to uncover early dances by him that lie in private collections, or deep within larger archives. For now there are 24 dance works available in public collections. These works are occasionally revived by modern day dancers, thanks to Sancho’s detailed notes on each step.

Even earlier than Les Ballet Negres, African American dance was part of the cultural exchange in London. Buddy Bradley was a West End director and choreographer who presented American vernacular dance into the nightlife of London. He ran a dance studio from 1933 to 1967 teaching jazz and tap techniques.

Another African America influence on the dance in Britain came via Katherine Dunham, who toured her company in England for months in 1948.

Creating her own clear genre of movement, the Dunham technique fuses African, Caribbean and ballet styles allowing for classical lines to move alongside isolations and undulations of the body.

Later Hip Hop forms of dance became important in the development of the British dance communities. Kompany Malakhi and Jonzi D are fusing their embodied experience of Hip Hop with their British experience to create and tour new dance.

Dance of African descent in Britain includes Classical African dance. One of the leading companies performing Classical African dance to emerge in the 1980s was Adzido Pan African Dance Ensemble. At their height Adzido were the largest Black dance company in Europe, with over 30 dancers and musicians.

Appearing in the culture around the same time as Adzido, Irie! Dance Theatre pushed
Black dance further into the British mainstream consciousness with their bold use of
Caribbean cultural references as well as dance forms.

Irie! used reggae as well as Caribbean
choreography to create Orfeo ina Night Town (1988), a production based on the Orpheus story. The ancient story of Orpheus mixed with ancient movement traditions translated across oceans and time into a box office hit.

The Association for Dance of African Descent (ADAD) was formed in 1994, following a meeting of dance practitioners who could see their work being marginalised and misunderstood. Eventually ADAD became part of the main professional body for UK Dance, One Dance UK. Its work included providing platforms, forums and career progression opportunities for Black dance practitioners working in the UK. Its quarterly newsletter, Hotfoot, became an essential source of information for Black dance artists, as well as making sure that topics important to the development of dance of African descent were being debated.

Black dancers themselves continue to influence and push forward Britain’s cultural landscape, including dancer Kenneth Tharp OBE who was the CEO of seminal Contemporary dance house, The Place, and went on to lead the Africa Centre, and Hilary Carty, who went from dancer to leading dance historian, to leading the UK’s Clore Leadership Programme. Although dance practitioners resist their work and careers being labelled ‘Black Dance’, seen through the lens of the development of Black history in Britain, their contributions and evolution can be understood as vital parts of the story of the development of dance, both in the UK and globally.