Mossa Dance

Meet the new love of our lives, Incandescent Dance!!! Since 2011, we have been touching the lives of others with the art of dance. Through the years, we have always felt a deep calling to create and perform original works that authentically connect with audiences through strong emotional storytelling. As Mossa School of Dance, our mission statement was, In Every Dancer is the Chance to Inspire. We have always held strong to that mission of cultivating an inclusive and safe... environment where young dancers could learn to freely express themselves and inspire others. In August 2019, we took our first steps to explore what is now our new company, Incandescent Dance. As we transition into a new era as a professional performance company, those values will remain with us even as our mission grows and evolves. With this change, we hope to expand our horizons and open up new opportunities to Connect, Cultivate and Explore Our mission is to: Connect with the audience through original, creative, storytelling. Cultivate a new dance culture. Explore what makes us human through art. Please check out our new website and like our new social media pages! Website: https://incandescentdance.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IncandescentDanceCompany Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/incandescentdancecompany/

Raven Wilkinson: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Wilkinson https://www.pointemagazine.com/remembering-raven-wilkinson-... Virginia Johnson: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Johnson_(dancer) https://dancetabs.com//virginia-johnson-artistic-director/ Pearl Primus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Primus https://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org//a/pearl-primus/ https://www.refinery29.com//black-ballerinas-dancers-misty Janet Collins: https://blackthen.com/decades-before-misty-copeland-there-/ https://www.blackpast.org/afr/collins-janet-faye-1917-2003/ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Janet-Collins

Janet Faye Collins (1917-2003) Janet Collins started dancing at age 10. Little did she know she would need to find instructors willing to give her private lessons, as she was not allowed to attend most of the white ballet schools in the U.S. Later she took dance classes at a Catholic Community Center where her mom sewed costumes as payment for the classes. After an exceptional audition for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Janet was accepted, with stipulations. The dance company ...would allow her to dance with them only if she painted her skin white with makeup. Collins was 15 at the time, she bravely took a stand and declined the offer. U.S. News and World Report quoted Collins response, I thought talent mattered, not color. Despite the walls she constantly encountered, she pursued her passion for dance and never compromised her morals or integrity. As a result she has been in a variety of musicals, film and has choreographed several of her own pieces. In 1949 she did her first solo. She received the Donaldson Award for best Broadway Dancer after her phenomenal performance in the musical Out of This World. In 1952 she became the Metropolitan Opera Company’s first African-American prima ballerina. With this accomplishment she broke barriers in the world of classical ballet. Collins continued performing at the Met through 1954. Soon after, she taught ballet and used it as a tool to rehabilitate others. In 1974 she retired from dance and with her final years she painted. Her story is an inspiration to many who have faced discrimination. Janet Faye Collins was a beautiful, bold, brilliant artist of many styles. #juneteenthdancebreak #nojusticenodance #balletrelevesforblacklives

Pearl Primus (1919-1994) As a a young woman at the start of the 40s, Primus caught on quick to the racial discrimination of her time. She had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and pre-medical science but soon realized she would not be able to pursue her dreams. Society at that time had very few Black, female scientists and she knew finding a job would be impossible. She went back and forth from various jobs until she started working backstage for a dance company. ...It was there that Primus felt the urgency to dance and was quickly recognized for her unique movement and intense presence on-stage. In 1941, she joined a dance company called New Dance Group and was their first Black student. Their motto was dance is a weapon of the class struggle and it was there she began her study of artistic activism. In her career, she performed various pieces calling out the poverty, racism, hunger and injustices of her time period. Over the course of her career, Primus studied under a variety of different modern dance teachers including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Ismay Andrews. Although modern dance was deeply rooted in her performing, she began to study different styles of dance. She didn’t take her research lightly and traveled the world observing the lives of various cultures in other countries and her own. Through this research she gained the inspiration for many amazing pieces such as Hard Time Blues, Dance of Beauty and Strange Fruit. Primus dedicated her life to educating people of the injustice in our world through the art of movement and was a pioneer of African dance in the United States. Her work to raise awareness of the oppression and racial prejudice of her time was acknowledged greatly in 1991 when president George H.W Bush honored her with the National Medal of Arts. "I dance not to entertain, but to help people to better understand each other," -Pearl Primus. #juneteenthdancebreak #nojusticenodance #balletrelevesforblacklives No copyright infringement intended

Virginia Johnson (born 1950) @virginia_johnsondth Virginia Johnson began her ballet training when she was three years old. Ten years later, she received a scholarship to dance at The Washington School of Ballet where she was the only black student in the school. Despite being told that she would not be successful as a ballerina and being advised to pursue modern dance instead, Johnson persisted and remained focused on her ballet training. After graduating in 1968, she moved... to New York City where she took classes with Arthur Mitchell and was soon invited to become a founding member of Dance Theatre of Harlem. @dancetheatreofharlem To her, being able to continue dancing was the most important thing. Over the twenty-eight years that she danced with the company, she performed principal roles in many shows, touring throughout the US. After retiring from DTH, Johnson enrolled at Fordham University to study communications. She founded Pointe magazine @pointemagazineofficial and worked as editor-in-chief from 2000-2009. One day she received a call from Arthur Mitchell who told her he was moving on and asked her to take over as artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, which she did starting in 2010. She says that DTH is "a diverse company. We're about changing people's perception of what this form is. ...It's about the human spirit and expressing it in its highest form." #juneteenthdancebreak #nojusticenodance #balletrelevesforblacklives No copyright infringement intended