September 30, 2022 / Gia Kourlas
The fourth program of Fall for Dance, New York City Center’s affordable festival of mixed bills, had more going for it than others: a duet for Robbie Fairchild and Sara Mearns, who danced together so magnificently with Twyla Tharp last year; a New York premiere by the rising choreographer Abby Zbikowski for Dayton Contemporary Dance Company; and a highly anticipated taste of Ukrainian dance in the form of Kyiv City Ballet.
October 21, 2023 / Tresca Weinstein
April 14, 2016 / Charmaine Patricia Warren
May 24, 2018 / Countess V. Winfrey
April 14, 2016 / Charmaine Patricia Warren
The Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC) staged its performance of Inside Out: Women’s Voices at Cincinnati's Aronoff Center for the Arts from March 31-April 2. The show celebrates Women's History Month with dance numbers created by Black female choreographers. Photos by Ron Valle.
March 27, 2023
“My work reflects the ways in which I am inspired by the resourcefulness and boundless creativity of my African/African American ancestors and contemporaries. I often seek to evade respectability politics under the ‘white gaze’ by zeroing in on that which is truest to the black expression of self, of joy, of community, of divinity and philosophical approaches to life, while refusing to shy away from truth and accountability...”
March 24, 2016 / Alastair Macaulay
“The program opened with Stafford C. Berry Jr.’s “Wawa Aba,” an exhilarating celebration of modern-infused African dance that centers rhythm, percussion and brilliant compositions and The few times I’ve seen the Dayton company, it has shown that it knows how to give maximum impact to little-known choreography from the past, making it burst into life….Destan Owens, Michael McElroy and the Broadway Inspirational Voices made the music beautifully stirring, while the Dayton dancers brought rich texture and incisiveness to the movement.”
November 16, 2022
September 10, 2021
2023 Season
October 4, 2022 / Laura Hobson
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company is the modern Black dance organization in the area. Known in Dayton, it also draws dancers from across the country and performs in places like New York. Its mission is to be a culturally diverse contemporary dance company committed to teaching the broadest audience for exceptional performances and arts-integrated education.
February 9, 2024 / Russell Florence Jr.
In one of the biggest coups in its 55-year history, DCDC is the first African American dance company to receive Paul Taylor’s 1975 masterpiece “Esplanade” into its repertoire. Taylor’s acclaimed routine features everyday, pedestrian movement — standing, skipping, sliding, falling, running, walking — set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. “A masterpiece of physical joy.”
2022 Season
Quentin Sledge is a 2022 Archiving and Preservation Fellow with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.