“Black Dancers Matter” and “Dancing Times”: Black History Month in Dance, 2021

Black History Month in Dance 189. “Dancing Times” is the world’s oldest dance magazine, first published in 1894. Last summer, when the world was trembling in response to the “Black Lives Matter” movement, I was impressed by the powerful cover image with which it at once expressed the mood. The dancer is Brandon Lawrence of the Birmingham Royal Ballet. I love the calmly but commandingly multidirectional expansiveness of this jump as caught by Drew Tommons in this photograph.

I began writing for “Dancing Times” in 1978, was in many issues for the rest of the twentieth century, and have gone on contributing up till 2020. Earlier this month, I asked its editor, Jonathan Gray, when it first put a black dancer on the cover. (I remember Dance Theatre of Harlem there in the 1970s.) He knows that Katherine Dunham & Company made it there in the early 1950s; it would take time to find out earlier covers showing black dancers, but he thinks they exist. He reminded me that this Brandon Lawrence cover photo is not the magazine’s most recent.

I mention this because “Dancing Times” has often seemed the safe and conventional voice of the British dance establishment. Covers such as this show that the British dance establishment has long been more diverse than is often thought.

“Black Dancers Matter” could have been my motto for this whole series of Black History Month in Dance, which has been a fascinating exercise for myself, calling on many facets of my own experience and memory. I have placed all the posts on my blog at www.alastairmacaulay.com , where I will file them in a separate group in March. Thanks to all followers who have sent in their own responses: February has been an exciting journey for me. I’ve had to omit many marvellous names in black dance history: the subject is vast, revealing, and vital.

Sunday 28 February

Brandon Lawrence of Birmingham Royal Ballet, July 2020 front cover of “Dancing Times”. Photograph: Drew Tommons.