When Lauren Curry watches fellow dancers step off-stage after a performance, she describes the feeling as “interpersonal joy.” She sees how much hard work they put in behind the scenes.
“For an artist, that is the biggest high,” said Curry. “And (it’s) the reason that when the dancers come out from backstage and greet the audience – they’re glowing.”
Curry, the executive director of the Indy Movement Arts Collective, wants to scale up that joy. That’s why she helped start Neon Black, a dance festival June 8 and 9.
Two performances – 7 p.m. June 8 and 2 p.m. June 9 – will showcase 10 Indianapolis dance companies led by people of color at the Madam Walker Legacy Center. Tickets to the performances are $30 for adults and $15 for people 18 and under. The audience will see different kinds of dance, like Reggaeton, hip hop, contemporary, West African and Latin dance.
One example of the show’s range is Ronne Stone, an adjunct professor at Butler University who teaches at Iibada Dance Company. Stone teaches West-African dance and takes regular trips to Ghana to stay connected with what she teaches.
The festival will start with a workshop from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 8. Tickets cost $42 for the two-hour workshop. Michelle Gibson will share the art of New Orleans’ famed second line dance alongside a live brass band.
The second line is a New Orleans tradition for funerals, marriages, births and other big life moments. In it, a community forms a parade: a second line of dancers follow a first line of musicians, who follow the leader – a grand marshall.
The workshop is open to everyone: all ages, all experience levels, all faiths.
Gibson, a New Orleans native who lives in Texas, grew up in the Black church. Her father, maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were in the ministry.
“I come from a city where movement and music, dance and music as a part of our everyday is phenomenological experience, right? And so, when we worship, we worship through our bodies,” she said.
With the workshops and performances, Curry hopes the audience will learn about the Black dance community in Indianapolis and be inspired to support it.
“There is so much – especially for Indiana – there’s so much Black dance, and so much non-Eurocentric, diverse dance by black people and people of color in this city,” she said. “And I want the audience to feel like, ‘Oh, this is something to be nurtured.’”
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