In the inaugural event of its 80th anniversary celebrations, Mills College's Dance and Theater Studies Department will host a second line parade on Friday, November 1 at 6:30 p.m. The event will honor the achievements of the department's many influential black alumnae. Admission is free, and the public is warmly invited to join students and faculty in procession. No previous dance experience is required to participate.
Second line is an improvisational dance form rooted in New Orleans' African American communities. Mills College's current and first-ever Artist-in-Residence, Latanya d. Tigner, who descends from a family of second liners in New Orleans, will lead the parade alongside members of Dimensions Dance Theater, the oldest continuously operating African American dance company on the West Coast, and MJ's Brass Boppers brass band. The parade will begin at the College's entrance gates, and proceed to Lisser Hall. A demonstration in basic second line footwork will follow inside Lisser Hall's Holland Theater.
Since 1939, Mills College's Dance and Theater Studies Department has welcomed generations of women to its campus in the Oakland hills. Over the next year the department will honor the achievements of its alumnae, including scores of renowned black artists and scholars, women who have helped to disseminate African diasporic movement throughout the country while creating or documenting new hybrid vocabularies of their own.
Following the parade, at 7 p.m., Mills' Dance and Theater Studies Department will sponsor a public lecture in Lisser Hall. Rachel Carrico, visiting from the University of Florida, will trace connections between Oakland and New Orleans as she explores the rich history of second line dance.