Founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown's personal and professional histories reflect both the hardships
and the accomplishments of African Americans in the artistic and social developments through the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Dixon Gottschild deftly uses Brown's career as
the fulcrum to leverage an exploration of the connection between performance, society, and race��eginning with Brown's predecessors in the 1920s��nd a concert dance tradition that has had no
previous voice to tell its story from the inside out. Augmented by interviews with a score of dance professionals, including Billy Wilson, Gene Hill Sagan, Rennie Harris, Milton Myers, Jawole
Willa Jo Zollar, and Ronald K. Brown, Joan Myers Brown's background and richly contoured biography are object lessons in survival�� true American narrative.
