Iconic BAM Artists

Dr. Charles "Chuck" Davis (1937—2017) was the founding artistic director of DanceAfrica, BAM’s longest running series, which he started in 1977. He was one of the foremost teachers and choreographers of traditional African dance in America and traveled extensively throughout Africa to study with leading artists. Davis founded the Chuck Davis Dance Company in New York in 1968 and the African American Dance Ensemble in Durham, North Carolina, in 1983. He was a panelist for several programs of the National Endowment for the Arts and a recipient of the AARP Certificate of Excellence, the North Carolina Dance Alliance Award, the 1990 North Carolina Artist Award, and the North Carolina Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He served on the board of the North Carolina Arts Council since 1991 and in 1992 he received the North Carolina Award in Fine Arts, the state's highest honor. In 1996, Davis and the African American Dance Ensemble were awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Dance Residency Program, a three-year initiative launched in 1994 by the New York Foundation for the Arts and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from Medgar Evers College and received many honorary doctorates from various universities. Davis and DanceAfrica were cited as one of America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100 by the Dance Heritage Coalition. In 2014 Davis received a Bessie Award for outstanding service to the field of dance.

In 2016, BAM established the Chuck Davis Emerging Choreographer Fellowship, an annual award in his honor, given to emerging choreographers to travel to Africa and study with one or more experts in African dance.