Joan Myers Brown, formidable and indefatigable founder of Philadanco, was sitting in her office at the company’s West Philadelphia headquarters the other day when the phone rang. A woman from Washington was calling.
“Where are you going to be July 9 and 10th?” she asked. “I’m going to be in Chile,” Brown replied, “with the company.” Philadanco will be performing at the Danza Patagonia festival in Frutillar, Chile – the first American company to be invited to the festival.
“No,” the woman said, “you’re not.” “Oh?” Brown responded, not realizing another first was about to show up. “You’re going to be at the White House.”
It seemed to come, Brown reported later, right out of the blue. Along with 11 others, she had been named a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest civic honor for artists and arts patrons.
So as Philadanco heads way, way south Wednesday morning, Brown will be greeted by President Obama and presented with an award “for her contributions as a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director.” The president will note that when Brown founded the Philadelphia Dance Company in 1970, she “carved out an artistic haven for African American dancers and choreographers to innovate, create, and share their unique visions with the national and global dance communities.”
For Brown, 81, “it was totally unexpected and totally exciting.” But it also meant scrambling to change her schedule because there was no way she was not going to be in Chile with the troupe she calls “the kids.” The White House ceremony ends at 3 p.m. At 7 p.m., Brown will be on a plane.
“She’s international,” said Brenda Dixon Gottschild, professor emerita of dance studies at Temple University and author of Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina.
“The places she’s performed! Poland, regularly in Germany, Amsterdam,” Dixon Gottschild continued. “She was the first American company to perform in Macedonia. Macedonia! She really has international renown.”
The National Medal of Arts is the second major award bestowed on Brown in a month; in June, DanceUSA, the national advocacy and service organization, selected her as a 2013 honoree. “We’ve always received recognition nationally,” said Brown of herself and her company. “In Philadelphia, it’s the reverse.”
While the city honored her with the Philadelphia Award in 2010, she says it remains a struggle to attract funding and audiences here, even though Philadanco is the resident modern dance company at the Kimmel Center.
Dixon Gottschild says that Brown’s career, beginning with the founding of the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts in 1960, through the founding of Philadanco (1970), the International Conference of Black Dance Companies (1988), and the International Association of Blacks in Dance (1991), has been critical in creating a “whole American dance aesthetic.”
Her students and company members have moved on all over the country, particularly to the Alvin Ailey Dance Company in New York, bringing a “very gorgeous aesthetic” with them. What are the key elements of that aesthetic? “The Philadelphia/Philadanco work ethic” is the foundation, said Dixon Gottschild. “It’s about doing it 150 percent because you know you have to be that much better to succeed.”
Added to the work ethic is an “African American elegance” and a kind of “showbiz pizzazz” that probably comes from Brown’s years doing “very upscale cabaret work” with the likes of Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., and Larry Steele. “Over her 50-year career she has set the stage for a whole American dance aesthetic to blossom,” said Dixon Gottschild. (philly.com)