NIU professor, dance company, invited to Kennedy Center

by Mark McGowan

When Charles Carter devised and choreographed "The AIDS Project: Straight Up, Straight Talk!" three years ago, he intended his modern dance ballet to address the continuing plague of HIV and AIDS among people of color.

Now Carter, a professor in the NIU Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, and the department's professional, in-residence Baltimore/Chicago Contemporary Dance Company, have been invited to spread their message before a global audience at the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C.

The company will perform an excerpt from "The AIDS Project" during a Friday, Jan. 17, salute to black choreographers. Kennedy Center staff made the invitation after adjudicating the dance.

"We're elated to be invited," said Carter, the company's artistic director and major choreographer. "It was an accomplishment for me, as a choreographer, as well as the dancers. It's difficult to get on this program, and the Kennedy Center is our national arts center, so it's very exciting."

Some others on the three-day "Celebration of Blacks in Dance" include the African Dance Ensemble, the Creative Outlet Theatre of Brooklyn, the Wild Zappers, the Arch Dance Company, Tania Isaac Hyman, the Harambee Dance Company and Smooth and Easy. The companies' performances are through the Kennedy Center's "Performing Arts for Everyone Initiative."

The Baltimore/Chicago dancers will perform "Deception," a cautionary piece reminding audiences that people who appear healthy might actually have and conceal HIV or AIDS. The work is loosely based on Eve's deception of Adam.

The full piece of spoken word and dance premiered on the stage of DeKalb's historic Egyptian Theatre and since has played to audiences in Baltimore, Chicago and Rockford.

It urges safe sex, especially among minorities.

At the time of the dance project's debut in 2000, more African-Americans were reported with AIDS than any other racial/ethnic group, according to the National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention. African-Americans accounted for nearly half of the 42,000 AIDS cases reported that year; almost two-thirds of the women reported with AIDS were African-American.

Meanwhile, the 2000 rate of reported AIDS cases among African-Americans was 58.1 per 100,000 population, more than twice the rate for Hispanics and eight times the rate for whites.

"When it comes to AIDS, of course, no group is exempt from it. Those people not of color have sort of taken care of the problem, but it still needs to be told to the African-American and Latino community. We have the highest incidence of AIDS and, as a population, we're small," Carter said.

"I've seen a lot of people die from AIDS in my lifetime, which I think a lot of students have not, which is probably why it's resurging," he added. "It brings back a lot of memories. It brings back a lot of mourning. Fortunately, through dancing itself, I am able to grieve."

Members of the company, founded in 1998, also will use the trip to the nation's capitol to perform at Dance Place and attend the conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance.

Carter said the trip should provide amazing exposure for the company and its home university. "Our university is leaning more toward diversity, and we represent that when we go around the country," he said. "We're also leaning toward becoming more internationally known, and we're getting that international recognition as a dance company. In turn, Northern gets that recognition."

The company features nine dancers - five NIU alumni currently living in Chicago, two from Baltimore and two apprentices who are NIU undergraduates. Carter, who has taught dance and creative movement for children at NIU for nine years, said, "my style, African-American dance, is rooted in the African tradition."

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