HYBRID DANCE FESTIVAL
Save the Date!!! VBDF 2024
February 2-4!!
VBDF3
Focus (BLACK)
Dancing Liberation & the State of the Black Dancer in Virginia
VBDF is back for a 3rd year!
Thriving through a pandemic and rapidly changing world.
And we’ve still got some pressing questions:
What does success look like for Black dancers, particularly in Virginia?
How do Black dancers cultivate and sustain the tools they need to fulfill their goals?
What is the role of community in the life of Black dancers?
We invite you to join us as we continue to inquire, look for answers, and find solutions, TOGETHER, at the 3rd Annual Virginia Black Dance Festival.
VBDF 2023 will include over 20 dance encounters including classes, workshops, panel discussions, and a performance - all focused on Black dancer histories, opportunities and futures.
VBDF 2023 is hosted by
Appomattox Regional Governor's School
and Virginia State University Dance Minor Program
WHEN /
April 28-30, 2023
May 3, 2023
WHERE /
Appomattox Regional Governor's School
For the Arts & Technology
&
Virginia State University
OR WHEREVER YOU ARE
ABOUT THE EVENT /
Virginia Black Dance Festival provides community building and networking opportunities for members of the Black, Indigenous, and Afro Latina dance community in Virginia. With workshops and performances that highlight the diversity of dance genres cultivated as part of Black Dance culture in the diaspora, it honors the traditions of multigenerational dance performance and practice. Virginia Black Dance Festival accomplishes this through workshops, panel discussions, professional workshops as well as juried, showcase performances.
Check out some of the amazing Artists Joining Us for 2023!
Class line up this year includes
Jazz,
Contemporary Ballet
Musical Theatre Workshop
Southern Style Majorette
Bomba
Salsa
And More!!!
Participating Artist Gallery
Stay Tuned More Artist Images to Come
Deandra Clarke
Business of Dance Brunch
Presenter
Studio 4 Dance Agency, LLC
Deandra Clarke is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, with a bachelor's degree in Radio Broadcasting. After four years as an on-air personality with WBTJ 106.5 The BEAT radio station, she decided to expand her professional career in dance choreography by founding 4 The Streetz Choreography in 2003.
This professional dance company served as a way for dancers in the area to fulfill their dreams without having to leave Richmond for places such as New York or Los Angeles. Providing them with similar opportunities to build their dance resumés, gain experience in the dance industry and help prepare them for the time when they do decide to make that move into a professional dance career. She is now continuing her mission by focusing her attention on her newest projects.
One of which being the Co-Owner of MOVE! Dance Workshops, a traveling dance workshop series that makes stops all over the country, providing hip hop and contemporary masterclasses for aspiring and semi-professional dancers from established choreographers in the industry.She is also the Co-Owner of Studio 4 Dance Company. A professional hip hop dance company based in Richmond, VA that focuses on the training of semi-professional dancers. In addition to private company rehearsals, these members are provided performance opportunities to showcase their talents along the east coast. Not limiting their training to only company members, Studio 4 Dance Company additionally offers open company classes to the public on Wednesday evenings.Over the past three years, Deandra has been the Director, Choreographer and Coach for two sports dance teams; The minor league basketball team, Hampton Roads Sharks and the minor league football team, Virginia Hornets. She is currently the Dance Team Coach for Midlothian High School Trojanettes.In addition to her many business ventures, she still choreographs and dances regularly for numerous independent artists along the east coast as well as teach weekly hip hop classes at the Village Dance Studio and Jadore Dance Studio in her hometown of Richmond, VA.
Julinda Lewis
Dance Faculty &
VBDF Performance
BeMoved with Julinda
More Information Coming Soon
Tribal Unicorn Collective
Workshop Facilitator
Cues and Moves for Group Improvisation
Tribal Unicorn was founded in 2017 by April LaMar and Debbie Richardson to promote diversity, inclusion, variety, and love in the belly dance realm and beyond. With the addition of Missy Moore in 2019, Tribal Unicorn continues to be a beacon of black belly dance excellence. With culturally aware passionate performances, these ladies have graced stages from coast to coast, leading by example every time. For more info on Tribal Unicorn performances, workshops and classes please follow them in IG.
Kevin LaMarr Jones
Business of Dance Brunch
Presenter
African Roots Reunion
Beyond the social barriers of race, religion, gender, and geography, Kevin LaMarr Jones professes that dance and music have the ability to unite the world. Since graduating from the University of Richmond with a B.S. in Business Administration and Virginia Commonwealth University with a B.F.A. in Dance and Choreography, Jones has become a graphic designer, dancer, choreographer, and producer based in Richmond, Virginia. His dance portfolio includes work with the Latin Ballet of Virginia as a professional company member, in addition to founding, CLAVES UNIDOS, a community-based dance company and academy which connects Richmond, Virginia to the world and gathers its residents around dances of the African diaspora. The centerpiece of this work is a weekly community dance class on Saturday mornings that he has led since 2011 called African Root Reunion.
Mr. Jones has been cultivating his own Pan-African dance style since the mid 1990s when as a Senior at UR, he was introduced to and became a permanent fan of the music of, salsa band, Bio Ritmo. Jones studied traditional West African dance with Sister Faye Walker and Judy Lynn Edwards. He discovered a passion for flamenco through teachers like with Ana Ines King, Anna Menendez and Antonio Hidalgo Paz as well as many other master flamenco teachers during his travels to New York, Washington DC, Jerez de la Frontera, Madrid and Seville. He has studied Afro-Cuban dances with Ifé Michelle Milligan, Alberto Limonta Perez and various other master teachers in workshops between Miami, New York and Barcelona. He has studied salsa and partner dancing with various artists including Edwin Roa, Steve Greene and Yamil Boo. In 2006 & 2007 he delved into community engagement through the arts with Urban Bush Women as a participant in their Summer Leadership Institute in Brooklyn, NY. In 2015, he performed with his Bomba Afro-Puerto Rican dance mentor, Isha Renta and VA-based bomba group, Semilla Cultural, at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. He currently serves as a member of the board of directors for Dogtown Dance Theatre where he also creates and presents concert dance performances and productions.
William Sterling Walker
VBDF Performance
Choreographer
Ballet
WILLIAM STERLING WALKER began dance training at the age of 14, at the Chamber Ballet (now the Virginia Regional Ballet) in Williamsburg, Virginia. He went on to receive the Artist Merit Award from the Virginia School of the Arts, and was a Regional Dance America scholarship recipient. He also trained with the Allegheny Ballet Company, and Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. He has danced professionally with the Richmond Ballet, Starr Foster Dance Project, Chris Burnside and Dancers, Charisma Dance Theater, and has guest taught and performed throughout Virginia and as far reaching as central Mexico, the coast of Columbia South America and Southern Spain. He is a certified teacher in the Wolf Trap teaching method for children. William taught for eleven years Ballet, Jazz, Modern, Latin, Flamenco and Techno Hip-Hop at Henrico County High school's Center for the Arts, and The School Of The Latin Ballet Of Virginia in which he was the Junior Company Director and veteran dancer of it's professional company The Latin Ballet Of Virginia. He is most pleased to currently teach full time at Virginia Regional Ballet having returned full circle to where he was first given the opportunity to discover the world of dance.
Mr. Walker believes Movement is a means to transcend color and race. It can lift us all up to the same unified dance floor. He is very excited to share his love for Ballet and movement in general at Virginia Black Dance Festival.
William Sterling Walker
Ballet
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