Angela Andrew and Othella Dallas

RADICAL: forming the root, inherent

‘The work is about legacy, about the transmission of dance via DNA. It’s a political dance around the politics of dance. It’s about me doing applied mathematics on the radical of black dance.

Surrounded by originators of African-American Jazz dance, my training happened informally as I assisted the elders in and out of the teaching environment. The work is to develop the knowledge gained, to refine it and then to propagate it, NOT to share it.

The idea is that one can be ‘a part of the knowledge’ but one does not own it. Only a transient player. The definition of ‘it’ is the work/research.’

- Angela Andrew

Angela has been a Chisenhale Dance Member since 2015.

Othella Dallas was a principal dancer of the Katherine Dunham Dance Company in the early 1940s. 93 years young when she performed this work, she was a carrier of academic and corporal knowledge of the integration of African-centred dances.

Othella passed away on November 28, 2020, in Binningen, Switzerland. She was 95. New York Times obituary.