Building Our Bridges

This year has been a call to action for the greater dance community to respond to and grow from its mistakes. Sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement, major prevalent issues in the greater dance community have come to light. Specifically, we see that Hip Hop culture has been constantly appropriated, commodified, and misrepresented by non-Black dancers, and our Berkeley Dance Community has been complicit in that.

As representatives of BDC, we acknowledge that we are a community that borrows from Black culture, specifically Hip Hop music and dance. However, we have unfortunately created an environment that lacks true inclusivity and perpetuates the cultural appropriation of Black culture, whether it be consciously or unconsciously.

We refuse to remain complacent and will continually, actively work towards creating a safe, inclusive community; however, this requires that our entire community comes together to learn together. To start this learning, we hosted a two-day virtual event — BDC: Building Our Bridges. Our intentions are to Build Knowledge and Build Community by learning from local Black educators and facilitating discussion between student leaders.

We believe that this event serves as a great first step towards growing and thus implore all dancers of BDC as well as all those who are interested to attend. Growth in our community starts with all of us.