The 37th Annual International Conference and Festival of Blacks in Dance

The Third Coast, Our Community in Motion celebrates Black dance as a living archive of movement, migration, and collective possibility.

We continue the journey from From Soul to Sole: The Black Dance Family Reunion in Atlanta, tracing the path north, honoring the currents and legacy of the Great Migration. Generations of Black artists carried our culture and creativity in memory, rhythm and ritual, flowing along routes that led them into new communities and new futures. As families, traditions, and artistic practices traveled, they converged in Chicago and transformed the city into a thriving center for Black innovation, where dance became both a reflection of lived experience and a catalyst for cultural change.

This is the idea of Chicago as the Third Coast - a city built where waterways once met and became the routes that carried people, culture, and possibility. Here, Black dance is the current that still runs through every line: the tradition that keeps flowing, and the hub where every arrival leaves its mark.

We gather where those lines converge, a community that remains in motion, and together look at where the next current carries us.