FUNDS ASKED FOR MINORITY ARTS FESTIVAL
- Share via
Citing an absence of local black dance troupes scheduled for the Los Angeles Festival, members of a new dance organization asked the City Council Tuesday for money to produce a separate minority arts festival to coincide with the Sept. 3-27 arts event.
The council took no action on the matter.
“We look at the (Los Angeles Festival) program, and we are amazed that there is not greater representation of local black dance,” Dr. Ernest Washington, co-chairman of the year-old Dance Umbrella service organization, told The Times on Tuesday.
“The head of the festival should have at least asked (members of the local black dance community), ‘Hey you guys, what do you think of this program?’ ” said Washington, an orthopedic surgeon with a specialty in dance medicine.
Dance Umbrella is a voluntary group of about eight Southern California dance companies. Its 11-member board of directors and roster of advisers include Jon Johnson, director of Repertory Dance Theater; William Couser, director of Jazz Dance Workshop; C. Bernard Jackson, director of Inner City Cultural Center; Lula Washington, director of Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, and veteran dancer Thelma Robinson. These individuals and companies make up most of the black dance community that the Dance Umbrella says was excluded.
Members of Dance Umbrella met with Los Angeles Festival officials about two weeks ago to “present their case,” Washington said.
“They said, ‘We don’t have any more money, we’re very sorry,’ ” Washington said. “So we went to the City Council.”
“At this point,” Washington said, “we’ve just been promised meetings” with Councilman Robert Farrell, whose 8th District encompasses South-Central Los Angeles, and Maureen Kindel, chairwoman of the Los Angeles Festival.
The assertion that local black dance has been excluded from the festival is “a heck of an allegation to make,” Councilman Farrell told The Times on Tuesday. “I’ve raised the question with my staff to look into the matter.”
Farrell stressed that he believed the council wanted to make sure that “the festival that (Los Angeles Festival director Robert) Fitzpatrick is putting together is the main ballgame.”
Fitzpatrick was not available for comment Tuesday, but Los Angeles Festival associate director Thomas Schumacher said “there has been no exclusion of minority artists” from the festival.
“The festival’s programming philosophy, as well as our obligation to audiences, is to represent a cross-section of work,” Schumacher said.
“We have presented a program that is multicultural--with Hispanic, Asian and black work,” Schumacher said.
There are black artists in the festival’s Evening of Classical Jazz and in such festival events as the Michael Clark & Company dance troupe and the nine-hour Mahabharata theatrical marathon, Schumacher said.
More to Read
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.