About GUARDIAN

Our Vision

A professional dance company dedicated to the study, teaching, performance, and preservation of urban, Social and Folk Dance Forms which, in so doing, interrupts the cycles of violence, community disjuncture, and cultural deterioration at work locally by celebrating indigenous arts as a restorative and uniting force.

 

Our Mission

Guardian’s mission is to protect and contribute to the dignity, self-value, self-respect and cultural impact of disenfranchised people by initiating the conservatory study of the urban dances of people of color. Using self-knowledge as a primary tool, we are dedicated to promulgating the endangered cultures of urban, North America in order to enliven the will to choose success among our youth.

 

 

How We Have Accomplished This

By bringing together artists skilled in various Urban, African Diasporan Dance forms: African, Lindy Hop, Club, House and Hip-Hop (b-boying, b-girling, Popping, Locking), Guardian is in the process of building a repertoire which represents a broad, historical spectrum of Urban Dance in the “Up-South.” Exchange, in-house teaching, and rigorous training, make this company a fellowship of well-trained “keepers of culture” who fulfill their role by 1-learning the technical execution and history of the forms named above, 2-performing in professional settings, thereby exposing the public to historically professionally and institutionally marginalized dance in America, and 3- by teaching community dance classes which allow for the passing and preservation of culture.

Accomplishments

• Dance Baltimore! 2004 @ Mechanic Theatre
• Anything Goes: It’s the Spice of Life- The Essex Senior Center, 2004
• Let’s Get Loose with Mother Goose -The Murphy Fine Arts Center, Morgan University, 2004
• Artscape 2004 @ Value City Stage
• Culture Fest 2004 @ Shriver Theatre - @ Johns Hopkins University
• Tapestries of Dance 2005- Shriver Hall, Johns Hopkins University; Winner- Best Outside Group
• The Men’s Project: Thoughts Words, Dance and Deeds from the “He” Perspective- Theatre Project, 2005
• Dance Baltimore! 2005 @ The Hippodrome
• Artscape 2005 - Main Stage @ Univ. of Baltimore
• Reginal F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture Grand Opening in 2006
• Hip-Hop: The Evolution of a Movement- The Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 2006
• Save Our Schools Charity Event- New Song Academy, 2006
• The Hip-Hop Underground Movement- Artscape 25th Anniversary, 2006