Philadanco spends much of the year touring the globe but this weekend, they'll put on their fall performance at the Kimmel Center and it's a program founder Joan Myers Brown has dubbed 'back to black.'
"People always talk about black dance. This is black dance. And I always say well what is black dance? Dance done by black people? Dance by black choreographers? Dance to black music? So it's all that," said Myers.
The program includes a work by choreographer Milton Myers called Echoes, a tribute to Alvin Ailey. And the dancers will put on the Philadelphia premiere of a new ballet by Matthew Rushing and choreographed to the music of Nina Simone.
Myers added, "He called it moan. It's a lot of different episodes to her music. It's really, really interesting. The dancers love it."
Philadanco is also bringing back some audience favorites. Suite Otis, in homage to Otis Redding, was first introduced more than 30 years ago and has become an American classic and the ballet, Exotica.
"Exotica, has a lot of house movement in it, house music. So and it has also a lot of Africa movement. People just enjoy dance if it's good dance and joyous dance so people love the program so I'm just going to keep it going," said Myers.
Philadanco will put on 4 performances of back to black this Friday through Sunday. For tickets and show times, go to Kimmel Center.