Shawn Short’s founding of Black Dance Festival DMV in 2019 was not merely the launch of a performance platform—it was the culmination of over a decade of passionate historical preservation work that began during his MFA research in Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His thesis, “A Change Gon’ Come: A Text on Washington, D.C. African-American Dance History – Typology for Black Dance’s Reconstruction and Advancement in the New Millennium,” laid the intellectual and cultural foundation for what would become both a comprehensive historical archive and a living celebration of Black dance artistry.

Starting in 2009, Short embarked on an ambitious journey to document DC’s nearly century-long Black concert dance legacy, conducting extensive interviews with dance elders including Mike Malone, Bernice Hammond, Tyrone Murray, and other pioneering figures who generously shared their memories and opened their personal archives. He meticulously collected newspaper clippings from the historic U Street corridor’s golden age, examined news video media from DC’s local stations, gathered Scurlock Studio photographs from the Smithsonian archives, and documented contemporary artist contributions across multiple generations. This rigorous scholarly work revealed a painful truth: professional Black dance company activity in Washington, DC had drastically declined since its founding in 1932, and the stories of these transformative artists were at risk of being lost to time.

The Black Dance Festival DMV emerged directly from this research as Short’s answer to the question that drove his entire thesis—how could Black dance in DC not only be preserved but reconstructed and advanced for the new millennium?

By creating a festival that honored established choreographers while providing platforms for emerging voices, Short transformed his academic research into activist practice, ensuring that the legacy documented in his scholarship would continue to grow, evolve, and inspire future generations of Black dance artists in the nation’s capital.