Spirit of Sankofa:
Bridging the Legacy of BCM and BCF
A Yearlong Tribute to Bay Area Black Choreographers
May 3 – June 21, 2025
SFArtsED gallery, 1275 Minnesota street.
Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century (BCM), a national dance initiative, began in 1989 and lasted until 1995. Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now (BCF) continued that legacy in 2005, bringing Black dance makers’ work to a younger audience, continuing to acknowledge the contributions of Black dance artists to the world concert stage. Dr. Halifu Osumare, Founder and Producer of BCM engaged presenters Theater Artaud (SF) and First Impressions Performances (LA) to present the first statewide dance performances. Laura Elaine Ellis and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, Founders and CoDirectors of BCF continue this dance legacy annually in the Bay Area. Sankofa (SAHN-koh-fah), A Twi word from the Akan ethnic group of Ghana loosely translates to, “go back and get it.” Sankofa encourages learning from the past to inform the future, reaching back to move forward, while collectively lifting the community.
As BCF continues the Bay Area’s Black choreographers’ dance legacy, it celebrates its 20th anniversary by recognizing the shoulders on whom we stand. Those shoulders embody a continuum from the potent African movement legacy to the contemporary concert dance Black artists help to forge. At BCF’s 20th year juncture we acknowledge this Sankofa Spirit as a bridge to the future that we ourselves will define and create through our empowered creative bodies and spirits. Sankofa is represented in the Asante Adinkra symbol of a mythical bird with its feet firmly planted forward while its head is effortlessly turned backwards to consume a futuristic egg. The past (head turned backward), informs the present (feet planted), as well as the future. As Osumare states in her 2024 memoir Dancing the Afrofuture, “The arc of mutual inspiration is indeed the foundational seed of the Sankofa Process—reinventing the past to move forward into a hopeful future—the basis of Afrofuturism.” This is the spirit in which BCF, remembering BCM, celebrates its 20th anniversary and dances toward an empowered future.
