- [Announcer] The following program has subject matter and language that some viewers may find objectionable.

Viewer discretion is advised.

- [Man] It's about social justice issues.

It's about conversations.

It's about bringing the community together and bridging those conversations.

- [Woman] Highlighting local black artists.

(gentle music) (calm music) - [Narrator] Donald Byrd came to Seattle in 2002 after a prominent dance and choreography career in New York.

As artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater for the past 20 years, he has brought issues such as police brutality and blackface to the stage and influence generations of dancers.

- Being in Seattle has taken a substantial amount of time for me to do here the kind of dance that I really want to do.

It has been a really tough for a lot of reasons.

I'll say it this way.

I can't get away from being black.

(chuckles) You know, when I am black, I know I'm black, but sometimes you go like, "Oh, maybe I don't have to always frame things in blackness."

Well, it doesn't matter whether I wanna frame them in blackness.

They get framed in blackness for me anyway, so I might as well just embrace that.

I'm able to draw on, not just what's happening around me now, but also in my history, where I come from, what that's about, and I think it makes the work richer as a result of that, and it feels really personal to me.

Early on, in my choreographic career, I started to kind of make pieces, dances that were, even though sometimes they might have been abstract, they were, the inspiration was for something real.

I think if it's immediate and alive for the performer, it is for the audience as well.

In a rehearsal, in a process, in a creation process, that's around art and stuff, that's a good way to practice intentionality that you want to carry into your life or that you want to consider in your life because you're getting to practice it every day in the studio about how to be intentional and ask the kinds of questions that go along with that.

I would like to see that there is a rich and vibrant and large black artistic community here.

What I really hope and dream for here is that the black community here that goes to artistic and arts events, performances, and things, tend to go, show up at the most well known.

But people don't show up for the local black artists.

Show up for everybody.

Each one is an opportunity to, I think we reawaken our sense of who we are as black people, as black people in America, as you know, just folks.

(lively music) - [Jade] That first dance class, that first opportunity to be exposed to this other medium that wasn't just like language and speaking, blew my mind.

- [Narrator] Jade Solomon Curtis is on a mission to create socially relevant work through dance, her choreography, teaching, nonprofit collaborations and riveting performances, all reflect her commitment to sparking counter culture conversations.

- I wanted to and want to continue to make work that the average person who may not go into a theater, may have never experienced a theater, can be a part of the conversation.

The work that's being made, that's oftentimes, it's oftentimes about communities that are not in the space.

And so, I wanted to make sure that the work that I made was accessible, and also, not just in terms of what people are viewing the subject matter, but the conversation that ensues, whether it be wrapped up inside of the piece or happening after.

My process is different for every work that I make.

Everything stems from a personal experience.

Every gesture comes from either watching my dad convulse on the floor or having a panic attack, or feeling like I'm running nonstop or fighting, like, all of these things come from a place inside of me that manifest as gestures.

Before we even get to embodying what the choreography is, we spend most of our time in conversation.

In my past, I think that I haven't always felt held and protected and supported in the spaces that I have been in, in terms of being a dancer.

Sometimes all I have to do is ask a question and it's like a breakdown moment, and how that manifests inside of the body is astonishing.

"Keeper of Sadness" came out of the creative process for another piece, "Black Like Me: An Exploration of the Word Nigger."

I was really sad and I was really like, it was deeper than sad.

And so, I started to really, to explore that, by asking the elder women in my family, how do they deal with this?

Many of them didn't necessarily have solutions but I wanted to figure out some solutions.

So really thinking about this idea of like, what it means to be a keeper of sadness, what it means to release that and no longer be a keeper of those things.

Radical Black Femme Project was started because I still wanted to figure out how do I create this cultural exchange, if you will, between artists of the diaspora living on the continent and those here.

It was all around centering voices who are oftentimes not heard, even within the art scene.

One of the artists, she sent me her work samples.

My response was like, "This is so dope, this is amazing!"

And her response back to me was, "Hey!"

Having been in residency before and communicating with people, I never felt like I could just like be entirely myself like, bring all of my hood, all of my love book, all of my Dallas and Junction City, Kansas, all aspects of myself and the places that I've been, and my blackness, fully to the space and that particular email exchange, I knew that we had accomplished it.