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Biography

Dorian Byrd was born dancing and born to dance. A native of Detroit, she started her college career at Wayne State University before auditioning for, and winning a spot at Juilliard. She studied choreography as well as dance eventually took a management position with a Dance Theater 76 and Junior Theater in Omaha. She has danced with Dianne McIntyre’s Sounds in Motion, the Elizabeth Keen Dance Company, and Glenn Brooks Third World Movements. She earned her graduate degree from the University of Iowa. She has taught and performed internationally including her current position at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. She is the founder and director of the Imani! Dance Studio for Cultural Arts in the Quad Cities. She is active in the Siempre Fidelis Club helping abused women regain their lives.

Transcript

Date of Interview: 24 April 2010

Zack Conover: And your name is?

Dorian Byrd: Dorian Byrd

Zack: Now where are you from?

Dorian Byrd: I’m originally from Detroit, Michigan.

Zack: How’d you get to Iowa?

Dorian Byrd: (laughing) Well, it’s a long story! Actually, I had taken a job from, I was living in New York City and I took a job in Omaha, Nebraska, a residency there ended up staying there for four years. Then we had a performance, Dance Theatre 76 through the Omaha Junior Theatre that I was directing, we got a job in Waterloo, Iowa. While I was there I met this gentleman. (Laughing) Actually it’s a roundabout story; I ended up going to the University of Iowa, we got married and now I live here.

Zack: Awesome, what do you do now? What’s your job?

Dorian Byrd: Well, my job has been, and is, teaching dance and performing, I’m a performing artist .

Zack: Do you have a school? Or anything like that?

Dorian Byrd: Yes, I have the Imani Dancers Studio for Cultural Arts and we’ve been in existence, I’d say, about five or six years ; but the Imani Dancers, which is the company that I founded in the mid-eighties we’ve been around quite awhile, and we’ve had many different groups.

Zack: What’re your dancers…What are they like, are they guys and girls…?

Dorian Byrd: We have had some guys, right now we’re primarily a female company, seems like, especially out here, you find that there’s more women dancing than men, although when I went to school, most of my teachers were men.

Zack: Was there like a cultural clash when you came here from Detroit?

Dorian Byrd: A cultural class?

Zack: Clash, like was it, did it shock you, was there anything different from Detroit than it was here in Iowa?

Dorian Byrd: I wouldn’t call it a shock, because I’ve been in a lot of different types of environments, but it’s definitely a different kind of place. Everything is a lot more low key. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan and then moved to New York City to continue my dance education, and as I said, I got a job performing , not performing but running this dance company. It’s a much slower pace, but it’s not devoid of the arts here, there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of really talented people here so I have not been starving for the arts! (Laugh) By no means, there’s many places, the University of Iowa, where I did my graduate work; they have an excellent dance program there. There is right here in the Quad Cities, where I reside, there are many different schools here. You don’t get the variety of dance of course, but as more people are moving into the area, we have a lot more to offer now.

Zack: When did you start to dance?

Dorian Byrd: I believe that I started dancing before I was born, when I was in my mother’s womb. I like to think that all that reaching and stretching against the body, and that the rhythm of the heartbeat is our center. We already have that drumbeat inside and so I say that I was dancing before I was born. (laughing)

Zack: That’s cool.

Dorian Byrd: Then, when I was a little girl, I didn’t have formal dance classes until, I’d say about ten or eleven years old. We had a recreation center and I got my first classes there. I did a little bit of tap, a little bit of ballet, but I think that may have planted a seed. My dad, he was always playing the piano, he would play boogie-woogie music at home, and he loved music so he introduced us to all kinds of music, he had all kinds of music collections. He would put the music on and I would just improvise and dance (Laughs) around the house. My folks still have some footage of me dancing when I was real young, so I think it started way back then. Although my dad he h as two left feet, my mom, she could always dance. (Laughs)

Zack: Why did you choose to dance? Why dance?

Dorian Byrd: Because I knew that’s what I was supposed to do. I’ve always been interested in the arts, I’ve always drawn, but dancing, I just knew that that’s what I was supposed to do. I started teaching dance classes when I was about ten or eleven (laughs) in my neighborhood, we would put on shows and most of them were dance shows.

Zack: Did you ever go to school for dancing?

Dorian Byrd: Oh, you mean formal school, like college or local dance studios? Actually, in Detroit, Michigan it is really unique, because they were some of the first physical education departments to have dance as part of the curriculum. So in high school, all the high schools in Detroit had dance programs, and we had all city dance, just like we might have all city band, or orchestra, whatever like that. So those that were really into dance (laughs) you had to audition, we would have our all city dance club meetings. Then every high school had a dance club, and I was very active in that, so that’s where I really started dancing was in high school, and Berry Embry who was my teacher , and I would say my mentor, she was really inspiring to me because we would dance about anything, we would make up all kinds of dances, one year we made up our own musical. We wrote all the lyrics for the songs, so dancing was very much a part of my life in high school. I was president of the dance club.

Zack: What about after that? Did you follow through in dancing in any other college?

Dorian Byrd: Yes, I went to Wayne State University which was also real big in dance education. I was always doing art and dance together, in a real way I learned about more choreography through my art classes, how to look at the stage as a canvas. So that was very influential for me as an artist, as a choreographer.

Zack: Growing up weren’t your schools segregated at all, or integrated?

Dorian Byrd: They were supposed to be integrated, in reality they were segregated, we had one of the biggest high schools in Detroit, Central High School , where I went, at the time I graduated we only had four white students in the school. It was not any different, of course. (laughs) Many of the schools were like that, you know you went to school in your neighborhood and I grew up in a black neighborhood.

Zack: Do you have any stories, something that was just tough to go through any part of your life?

Dorian Byrd: Oh, well just being a dancer is tough because it’s really, really hard work, for most people it’s not exactly an accepted thing to go into per se.

Zack: What about your daughters or any children, do you have any children?

Dorian Byrd: Yes, I have one natural child, Brianna, she’s a student at the University of Iowa. She’s a lovely, lovely dancer. She’s a dance minor there. I have another daughter, actually she’s my second cousin, that we adopted when she was like around ten or eleven. She’s a beautiful singer and lovely child, too. She’s still here in the Quad Cities.

Zack: Was there any segregation, integration or semi-integration when they were going to school?

Dorian Byrd: No they went right here in the Quad Cities to Central High School, so it might appear that it was segregated, I mean, people see to, and I don’t even know you can say it’s segregated, but people kind of drift to, you know, people that are of like interest sometimes. I think in some of the activities that they were involved in, they found themselves being the only one, or maybe one of a few. But, some of that, I think, is because it’s so expensive to participate in some things and if your parents don’t go out of their way to expose you to certain things, then sometimes then that’s not what you’re about, unless you develop this special interest someone helps to cultivate, I’m talking in the arts in particular.

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Zack: You mentioned that you went to Juilliard, how’d you get there?

Dorian Byrd: Well, actually I’d always wanted to go to Juilliard because I’d always heard about this famous school of the arts, actually it was a music school, and they had an excellent dance department, many of the major choreographers were teachers there: José Limón, Martha Graham, even though she was before I came but many of the Martha Graham teachers and dancers were faculty at Juilliard School. So when I went to New York, when I left Detroit, I just knew if I was going to dance, then it was getting later and later, and I was already like seventeen, eighteen, so I was already kind of late getting into the dance, even though I had been dancing all around but as far as formal training and as far as being able to audition to get into companies and things like that. So, at the same time that I decided it’s time for me to go to New York if I’m going to dance for real, that I also auditioned for Juilliard, ’cause I wanted to go to college too, I wanted to finish my college. Of course, when I went to Juilliard, when you audition there, you start from scratch, doesn’t matter how much dance you had before or what other college classes you had in dance, when you go there you start from scratch. When I got there I made the audition! I was so excited! I’d already had been dancing somewhat, professionally, I’ve always been a performer and been able to get paid for some of my dancing, so I was dancing in a company, at the same time I was dancing at Juilliard, which was a little different because at Juilliard, a lot of times they don’t want you to be performing until after you have been through school. I was dancing with “Sounds and Motion”, Diane McIntyre’s company.

Zack: What was “Sounds and Motion”?

Dorian Byrd: It was a modern dance company, improvisational dance and regular choreographed pieces, but we did the works of Diane McIntyre who is now a very famous African American dance choreographer. You asked me earlier about some of the difficulties that I went through, I would say just getting through Juilliard was a real task. If you were sick, you did not miss class; and then if you weren’t dancing, like if you had strep throat or pneumonia, you’d be sitting on the side watching them, and you’d think I would’ve been doing that? It was that difficult, but I did it, I was there so I did it, and I ended up graduating. We studied primarily modern and ballet, those were the two areas. Although, I also had the opportunity to take flamenco dance there with Hector Zaraspe. Flamenco dance was early a love of mine so I was really excited to be able to get classes in that.

Zack: What’s flamingo dance?

Dorian Byrd: Flamenco.

Zack: Flamenco

Dorian Byrd: It’s uh, Spanish dancing (waves arms as a flamenco dancer, laughs) The dance of the gypsies! I’ve kind of continued to do that, off and on. It’s another love of mine, but when I went to Juilliard, also, it was during the late ’60s early ’70s, so I was also getting into my “blackness”, and there were many black dance companies going on at that time so I was doing more of that.

Zack: What about Omaha?

Dorian Byrd: Omaha? Well, I’ll tell you, I had a teacher at Juilliard who said if you ended up in Iowa, or anything out that way, then you became a failure in life! (Laughing) So, I don’t know if I want to put that down there or not! (Laughing) The way I got there was during my time dancing with “Sounds and Motions”, I’d also been on a spiritual search all of this time. I grow up in Detroit with Jewish kids as well, many of the dance kids that were in all city dance, they were Jewish and then I had some Jewish neighbors. I grew up in the AME Church, which is the African Methodist Episcopal Church and we always would recite the Ten Commandments as part of the liturgy. I knew that my Jewish friends, they all went to synagogue on Saturday, on the Sabbath, and that was always just a question to me, why do we do this, ’cause we recited the Ten Commandments all the time so I wondered why do we go to church on Sunday? My sister, she was introduced to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and she started sending me literature all the time so I would read it, but I really didn’t have time because I was dancing, but some of it started sinking in, and I was kind of getting dissatisfied with my life, with dancing I felt like there should be something more. As she started sending me these things, and I started studying the Bible, then I started questioning more, and then whenever I would go home for a visit to Michigan, I would go to church with my family who were starting to change from AME to Seventh Day Adventist. So whenever I would go to church, I would hear the different discussions and topics, and one time I felt the pastor was talking to me! (Laughs) The next thing I knew, when they had the call, the altar call, there I was up in the front, and it was like what am I doing up here? I am a dancer! I know that Seventh Day Adventist as a tradition, they don’t dance!

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Dorian Byrd: So when I went back home, it was like, well I’m going to keep the Sabbath, I’m going to observe the Seventh Day Sabbath that the Jews observed. That was really, really hard. So that was one of my biggest struggles I would say, in life, because at first the dance company “Sounds and Motion” that I was with they were trying to accommodate me, but as it was a rising company, they couldn’t turn down jobs and things that were on Saturday, and or Friday, actually, the Sabbath is from Friday night until Saturday at sundown. That’s like the biggest, those are the biggest times in show business.

Zack: Oh, wow.

Dorian Byrd: So that made it really hard. So I decided, well, OK, I’m not going to go to any auditions or anything, wouldn’t you know I started getting all these phone calls, “Would you like to have this job? Would you like to have that job?” I turned down those jobs down, you know, they’d say, “You don’t have to audition, we know your work.” So I turned them down. Then I got a call from my dance teacher in Detroit, Michigan, Berry Embry, and she had had a dancer that I knew from New York and he had gone to Omaha, Nebraska, (Laughing) on a residency, and then he just left! He started up all these little jobs, he had a job with the college, he started this dance company, Dance Theatre 76, that’s when it started, the year ’76, and he had a job with a junior theatre, all these different places and then he just upped and left. So she was trying to find somebody who might be able to fit in to those positions, and so I said, “Oh, I’ll do this, even if it is going out to the boonies, or what I thought was out west, Omaha, I never thought about Nebraska period. Only thing I thought Nebraska had was like ranches and cowboys! (Laughs) When I got there it was like the Lord took me and put me in a whole ’nother environment where I was with other Christian dancers, they were all different faiths, but they were doing Christian material. It was also an opportunity for me, to be able to make decisions, since I would be the director of the dance company now, I could decide what kind of work we were going to do, I could decide when we were going to do it and I didn’t have worry about renting rehearsal space, which in New York is really a big thing, if you want to be a choreographer you have to pay for just using a room to come up with ideas. My apartment in New York was so tiny; I didn’t have any room there to really move around like that. It was a just a lot of different things where I could see God working it out for me. In Omaha, I had dancers in the dance company already at my disposal to work with, and they were wonderful people, beautiful dancers and it just shows you, you don’t have to be from New York or Chicago or someplace like that, that there is talent everywhere. So I did a lot of chorography there; it was just a very rewarding experience. And, on one of those performances that Dance Theatre 76 was doing, we started touring around Nebraska and Iowa. On one of those tours we went to Waterloo, and that’s where I ended up meeting my husband, which is a whole ’nother story. (Laughs) I had actually come to Waterloo first on a residency, artist-in-residency. The people who picked me up at the airport we started talking and I found out they were Christians, and I was Christian and they said, “Why don’t you come with us to church on Sunday!” and so I said “OK!” and they said, “You can stay with us, you don’t need to stay in a hotel.” So I stayed with them. They took me over to this lady’s house for lunch and she happened to be my husband’s mother. I was looking around the house and I saw one of our Sabbath school books on the table and I said, “Oh, are you Seventh Day Adventist?” She said, “No, but my son is.” She says, “You have to meet my son!” (laughs) Then I met her son and it was just like we’d known each other all our lives! He’s extremely supportive, of me as a person, as a dancer, and a woman.

Zack: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Dorian Byrd: Well, I’d like to tell you a little bit about some of the things I’m involved in now. One of those things is the Siempre Fidelis Club which is associated with the Iowa Association of Women’s Clubs and Youth Affiliates. That’s a national organization; it is one of the oldest, it is the oldest black women’s organization in the country, before the sororities started and all. We have a chapter here in the Quad Cities, in Davenport. That is an opportunity for me to be involved in the community in another type of way. Also, one of the things that I’m doing now is “Interplay.” Which is, sometimes it’s really hard to describe interplay, but it combines movement, spiritual expression, drama, using your voice dramatically in singing. It’s something that everybody can do. Now that I’m getting older, I still want to be able to perform and to dance, and for a while I was not even calling myself a dancer anymore, because I had hip replacement, I had trouble with my knee, I still have trouble with my feet, and my body’s just not working like it used to, but despite all of that, I am a dancer! (Laughs) I can still dance. Even though I don’t do the stuff that my dance company does very much anymore, I’ll let them kick their legs up high and spin. But, as people we can express ourselves and we can do it in a beautiful way. This is an area that I really try to share with other people now and one of the areas that I’m hoping to do more of it with is with “Healing Waters Empowerment Project” which is a women’s organization and it helps women who have suffered abuse, domestic abuse. I think it would just be a wonderful way to be able to become whole in yourself and to know that you can do whatever you want to do in life, you don’t have to have anything holding you back, and with God’s help that’s definitely possible. The Healing Waters came out of several women sharing their stories, their actual experiences, and I’m part of that cast that Shelley Moore-Guy put together, who I hope you interview. (Laughs) We share our stories in a dramatic type of way. Hopefully it will touch people and let people know this is not something they have to go through. If they are going through it, they don’t have to go through it alone, that they can find help and strength in overcoming and being free.
Zack: Do you have any advice for the people watching this interview?

Dorian Byrd: In general? Do I have any advice for the people watching the interview?

Zack: Yes.

Dorian Byrd: It depends. Are they young people? Are they old people?

Zack: They’re young people

Dorian Byrd: OK, I would say to follow your dreams, follow your heart. If you have a dream, not to let it go, if you have a talent and you’ve discovered what your talent is, then you’ve got to put it to use. Don’t just talk about, well I want to be an artist or I want to be a dancer or actress and never audition for anything, you know it’s just a dream then. To make it come true you have to start doing what that is. Of course, I believe it’s God given, if you have it and so you should dedicate it to God. It doesn’t mean you have to do religious everything, but if you give it to God, then he will let it blossom!