By Norma Adams-Wade
Senior Correspondent
When two generations clash, you get the public discord that is broiling at Dallas Black Dance Theatre (DBDT), a revered local treasure that onlookers suggest does not deserve controversy. In a nutshell, 10 dancers, the entire staff, were fired. Part of the friction is a disagreement over why they were fired. Dancers say it was because they want to form a union. Management says it was because the dancers violated policy and the company’s traditional decorum.
But the firing is not the story. The story is how did we get to this point and why? And also, what’s in the mind of Ann Williams – the legendary DBDT founder who is witnessing the rumble as she looks back in order to move forward.
A recent interview with Williams gives insight into her mindset as she reviewed the company’s 48 years of existence. It seems obvious that a weaker founder likely would have folded under the obstacles that the iconic Ann Williams overcame. Thus, we would not have her commendable legacy of trial and triumph.
“Since we’ve been in operation, we’ve never had to close or miss a payroll,” Williams recalled in the interview with I Messenger Media that includes Texas Metro News and Garland Journal.
Life values learned while growing up
Williams is one of 12 close-knit children – six boys, six girls – of her parents, Lloyd Ferrell, a farmer in Coolidge, Texas, and Izora Ferrell, a homemaker and county home demonstration agent for gardening and homemaking.
Williams says she grew up in a safe, loving environment and learned many life lessons. “I always knew I was Black,” Williams recalls. “I came up like that, from a big family and I knew who I was. Some people want to become what they see. Later on, they learn they are still Black.”
Williams called off a slew of names of powerful Dallas leaders from whom she learned business techniques by being around them and watching them operate. These included former Dallas Mayor Annette Strauss, and the families of prominent commercial real estate developers Henry S. Miller and Raymond Nasher, the latter being a renowned sculpture art collector.
Williams also rubbed shoulders with national headliners including Maya Angelou, Alex Haley, Lou Rawls, and iconic choreographers and dance company founders Alvin Ailey and Arthur Mitchell. She said she often was the lone Black person or one of the few present among powerful White leaders. Concerning that dynamic, she said:
“I never wanted to be them, but I learned from them,” she said. “They admired me for staying in the community…for providing opportunities for minority kids …things they were interested in doing but were not going to do themselves.”
Career path through the years
Modern education has gone through phases of devaluing exposure to the arts in public education. But that exact exposure during her childhood lit the flame that created the Napoleonic Ann Williams we know today – small in body, powerful in impact.
To hear her describe her childhood reaction to seeing her first opera performance is gripping. A school field trip to a local opera performance at Fair Park mesmerized her mainly because of the eye-popping staging – music, dance, costumes, scenery, lighting. She remembers wanting to be a part of that.
Williams graduated from St. Anthony’s Catholic School and Lincoln High School in Dallas, Prairie View A&M University, Texas Woman’s University, did post-graduate studies, received two honorary doctorate degrees, and has numerous outstanding awards. She was also a high school cheerleader and became infatuated with a dance class. At PVAMU, she pursued dance.
After graduation, she choreographed dance at different schools in the Houston area before moving to Dallas, where she taught dance in elementary school and formed a youth dance group that performed around Dallas. While studying to receive her master’s degree in dance from TWU, Williams interacted with noted professional choreographers and dancers from around the nation. She was hired at Bishop College, started its dance department, and brought various prominent performing arts personalities to campus.
She and two arts cohorts wrote and received a $1 million, three-year Ford Foundation grant for their campus and community programs. In 1973, she formed the Dallas Black Dance Academy for college students and community youth.
“It was fantastic!” Williams said of the grant. “We were elated.”
DBDT moves around before permanent home
When the grant ended, Bishop College also had begun to struggle with financial and legal problems. Meanwhile, Williams had 300 dance academy students from the community still under her belt. So, she started a private dance training program on the old Hatcher Street in South Dallas/Fair Park. The company later moved back to Bishop College and operated again as a private dance program using space under a special arrangement with the college.
That is where Dallas Black Dance Theatre was born in 1976, the same year that the DISD Arts Magnet started in the old Booker T. Washington High School near downtown.
Williams maintained an ongoing professional relationship with a number of young dancers who enrolled at the Magnet School, and the dancers continued to dance in performances with students at Williams’ dance academy.
DBDT remained in a facility at Bishop College for 10 years, became a nonprofit, formed a board of directors, and became increasingly recognized around Dallas and the nation. Through grants, the company attracted choreographers and dancers from prominent dance companies from around the nation to come give workshops and performances through the early 1980s.
“Nobody else in Dallas was doing that, getting New York and Los Angeles professionals to come,” Williams said. “I say the 1980s were Dallas Black’s second level of growth.”
Meanwhile, Williams was successfully networking with prominent Dallas leaders in the arts and business. The company eventually acquired the old Moorland YMCA in the Dallas Arts District as its permanent home. The Street outside the facility was named Ann Williams Way in honor of the legendary founder and the company’s prominence soared to heights Williams once dreamed of as a youth.
The company performed in more than a dozen countries, at various national sites including Broadway and the Kennedy Center, and twice at the international Olympics in 1996 and 2012.
Overcoming serious car accident
Toughness has always been a trait of Ann Williams. That trait came in handy when she broke both legs in a serious car accident in 1986. She said that was the closest she ever came to despair. The accident came right at the juncture of an important performance funded by a new grant. Friends and associates stepped in to fill her role.
“At that point, yes, I was ready to give up,” Williams recalls. “But I didn’t.”
Zenetta Drew, a former corporate manager and SMU adjunct professor in arts planning, stepped in and became Dallas Black’s executive director and a loyal right arm for founder Williams who was artistic director.
In various media reports about the recent controversy, Drew has defended Dallas Black’s efforts to uphold the company’s integrity, legacy, and theme of “relentless excellence.”
Settles permanently at historic Moorland Branch Y
Dallas Black stayed at Bishop College until a few years before the college closed permanently in 1988. Providentially, the building the company occupied near downtown Dallas was across the street from the historic Moorland Branch YMCA that was steeped in local Black history and where Williams had fond memories of attending activities there as a youth and young adult.
Moorland closed its original 1930 building and moved to Oak Cliff in 1970. Then other businesses purchased the Moorland building.
Williams began toying with the idea of purchasing Moorland but encountered multiple barriers. The indomitable Williams kept plugging away, finally got financing to purchase, and moved the company into Moorland Y in 2007. That move became a landmark feat with much media coverage and community celebration.
Generation gap, lawsuit, where to from here?
Shock pretty well describes the public reaction when news broke that Dallas Black had fired its entire staff of 10 dancers — first one, then nine — on August 9 this year. Ongoing media reports continue. Underlying the dispute is strong indications of a generation gap between the two sides. The controversy comes across as the company, holding on to tradition vs the dancers seeking to modernize and loosen up the company. If a settlement is not reached soon, the dispute will be forced to go to court in Fort Worth on December 9.
The Dance company’s season opened with a Nov 8-9 performance. A free event is set for Nov. 25-26 at the DBDT site. A holiday performance is set for December 14 at the Majestic Theatre in downtown Dallas. To learn more, visit https://dbdt.com.
