Dance Lessons
Hill Dance Academy Theatre, moving in the right direction to teach and promote Black art and culture.
By Kara Henderson
Sitting in her Point Breeze childhood home, Ayisha Morgan-Lee looks through family photo albums that feature snapshots of her early years of dance. While gingerly tracing the laminated images of her 3-year-old self pliéing and posed in the first and fifth positions, she looks up.
“I used to tear out pages any time there were Black people in dance magazines and had notebooks of them that I kept,” said Dr. Morgan-Lee.
She glances back down to see herself smiling in a sparkling, sequined costume and crown — the standard recital attire for the Ruby Daugherty and Sherry’s School of Dance in South Hills — the first place she explored her fascination with movement.
As she turns to a photo of her entire ballet troupe, the pleasant nostalgia is replaced with another feeling.
“I am the only Black girl in the picture,” she said.
Her parents, who prioritized knowledge of Black culture and presence in the arts, became determined to ensure their daughter saw Black representation and educators moving forward.
Over the next 15 years, Dr. Morgan-Lee’s foundation and understanding of dance were refined through Point Park University courses and later the Civic Light Opera Academy (CLO), where she was taught and encouraged by Black teachers. Her college education at Howard University guaranteed continued representation in the dance studio.
“I fell in love with wanting to dance on stage because I saw people who look like me,” said Dr. Morgan-Lee. “This was my real-life experience — seeing and touching these people I’d seen and read about [all those years ago] in dance magazines.”
Hoping to replicate her later experiences for young dancers in Pittsburgh, she founded Hill Dance Academy Theatre (HDAT) in 2005. The academy champions equitable spaces and places for Black and brown dancers ages 3 to 18 years old. Through professional training in Black dance traditions, culture and history, the program gives students the skills necessary to pursue careers in dance.
“I say to students all the time, ‘look to your right, your left, look at the front of the classroom; you see people who look like you,’ ” said Dr. Morgan-Lee. “They can’t believe that wasn’t the case for me growing up. I didn’t have a HDAT.”
The organization’s emphasis on Black dance was intentional.
“Although African dance remains strong in Pittsburgh, there weren’t a lot of Black dance programs,” she said, adding that Black dance is a cultural link between traditions, movements and identities from Africa, the Diaspora and present-day Black America.
When she speaks of Black dance, Dr. Morgan-Lee is referencing artists such as Katherine Dunham, an American dancer-choreographer who, at the height of her career in the 1940s-50s, was best known for incorporating African American, Caribbean, African, and South American movement styles and traditions into her ballets. Her company continues her legacy today in East St. Louis, Ill. Ms. Dunham used dance as a way to reveal Black social life, history and customs and combat misrepresentation and stereotypes.
PHILADANCO, founded in 1970 by Joan Myers Brown, followed in this tradition. Ms. Brown used her company to not only teach the history and cultures in Black America and the Diaspora, but also to provide performance opportunities for Black dancers and to support the Black dance community. She believed that giving Black dancers a chance to perform was giving them a chance to educate.
In 1985, Ronald K. Brown founded the Black dance company EVIDENCE to build on these traditions. His mission is to use dance as storytelling, providing sensory connections to Black and Diasporic history and traditions through music, movement, and spoken word, highlighting spirituality, community responsibility and liberation.
Some 17 years ago, Dr. Morgan-Lee found herself embracing much of this same philosophy when she opened the doors to HDAT.
“Black dance is spiritual, educational, celebratory [and about] being able to tell stories of our culture, history, aesthetics on stage through movement,” she said.
In addition to drawing on traditional rhythms and dance styles of sub-Saharan Africa, she said Black dance fuses dance genres like ballet, Afro-Caribbean, jazz, modern, hip-hop, theater, tap, capoeira, liturgical movement, and dance composition with techniques and choreographic processes that point to the impact of Black artists on dance.
“[However, while] there are more opportunities now, particularly with African dance groups, it’s not the same [level of exposure] with Black concert dance,” she added.
But Dr. Morgan-Lee feels that is changing. The scholarship and discourse on Black dance are vast and, since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, it has grown.
“We’re at a place where Black dance is being owned and defined by Black dance artists, choreographers, students and owners of Black dance companies,” she said.
“We are beginning to own our creative dance history, traditions, culture and using dance and our organizations to address historical legacies of white supremacy that are deeply tied to colonialism and segregation, but also more current cultural inequities and injustices in philanthropy and in the arts and social institutions, too.”
Through a range of programs and curricula, HDAT is providing this kind of dance and education.
Each year the academy welcomes 5,000 students from Pittsburgh schools and youth organizations to participate in 780 after-school and weekend classes taught by experts in various genres.
“We have this cross-culture of communities that come together, celebrating the arts through dance,” said Dr. Morgan-Lee.
Training techniques are taught by guest instructors from national Black dance companies and local tenured faculty. Students put practice into action with seasonal performances at venues like the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.
“We do so much in the schools because the arts are [usually] the first to go,” said Dr. Morgan-Lee’s mother, Veronica Morgan-Lee, an educator who received her doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Pittsburgh and serves as HDAT’s Director of Fund Development.
“You can’t fully educate a child without the arts; they’re essential and enrich the lives of students,” Dr. Veronica Morgan-Lee said.
Outcomes for former students support her assertion.
One has performed on Broadway; one has been contracted by Lula Washington Dance Theatre and for cruise lines; and another has opted to share dance with others as a type of physical therapy.
“HDAT is where I found a passion for dancing and wanted to take technique seriously as an art,” said 17-year-old dancer DaLynn Moore, a senior at Oakland Catholic High School. She joined HDAT at age 10 after hearing from a friend about a predominantly Black dance academy that also was owned by a Black woman.
“I wanted to be a part of it,” said Ms. Moore, who, like Dr. Ayisha Morgan-Lee, was the only Black girl in her previous dance academy. She credited HDAT for many things, including her growth as a dancer and person and her exposure to inspiring Black women, which led her to want to attend an HBCU.
“Whether it’s social justice or activism, Black women have taken the lead in making our country better and trying to push us in the right direction,” said Ms. Moore. “Many women at the forefront of movements — Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris — are products of HBCUs.”
Jocelyn Michelle Stevens, 10, is a dancer who hopes to create a dance company like HDAT that welcomes global audiences. Her mother, Michelle Hoskey, said Jocelyn found sisters, friends and transformation through HDAT.
“Jocelyn started at a different studio where it was more about the costumes, but HDAT focuses on skills,” said Ms. Hoskey. “I’ve seen her self-confidence grow. We made the best decision.”
Both Jocelyn and Ms. Moore said HDAT offered lessons not taught elsewhere.
“I’ve learned a lot here that I wasn’t learning at my old dance academy or even in school,” Ms. Moore said. “HDAT is needed in our city and is a great place for those wanting to grow in dance or as a person, to build relationships and family.”
Even the choice of HDAT’s location was a way to guarantee community access and input.
In 2021, the organization acquired the former St. Benedict the Moor School on Bedford Avenue in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District, not far from the childhood home of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet August Wilson.
As one of 16 Pittsburgh’s Cultural Treasures, HDAT received a $500,000 grant from The Heinz Endowments and the Ford Foundation. The funding will support its 20-person faculty, and continue programming, while aiming to bring new ideas to fruition.
Despite HDAT’s many achievements, the organization isn’t immune to struggles faced by other Black dance academies.
The most challenging part of the work, said Dr. Veronica Morgan-Lee, is teaching the children and everyone else to understand that HDAT is preparing students for professional careers that demand a different kind of engagement.
“It’s about getting the rest of the world to value that,” she added, noting the prevalence and perpetuation of stereotypes and the often overlooked “tremendous contributions Black people and dancers have made to the world.”
Her daughter agreed and noted that she’s committed to furthering HDAT’s holistic approach to the arts and preparing the next generation of dancers for the concert stage.
“It’s beautiful and most rewarding to see when that light bulb goes off [for students] in their artistry on the stage, and their ability to be an artist off the stage — how they handle their peers, communicate and prepare,” said Dr. Ayisha Morgan-Lee. “It’s about where we came from and where we’re going.”
Kara Henderson is a freelance arts and culture writer. Twitter: @iamkaraelyse
Hill Dance Academy Theatre (HDAT): https://www.5678hdat.org/; https://www.instagram.com/5678hdat/; https://www.facebook.com/5678hdat; https://twitter.com/5678HDAT
