The Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, founded in 1968 by Dayton, Ohio native Jeraldyne Blunden, is a modern dance company rooted in the African-American experience and has the largest repertoire in the world of classic ballets created by African American choreographers. Known for powerful and artistic performances and virtuoso dancing, DCDC has performed across the country and around the world. The Company was prominently featured in the Emmy Award winning documentary Free to Dance, produced by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, PBS and the American Dance Festival. The mission of DCDC is to deliver contemporary dance of the highest quality to the broadest possible audience.

DCDC has two new works premiering this season. LyricFire, by the award-winning choreographer Dianne McIntyre, is set to 23 poems by Dayton's own Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar, was an African-American pioneer of arts and letters, a prolific novelist, essayist, songwriter and poet. LyricFire evokes the passion, innocence and delight of Dunbar's work.

DCDC has assembled four dynamic and very different choreographers to create, color-ography, The Dances of Jacob Lawrence. This evening-length program is based on the paintings of one of the great artists of the 20th century, Jacob Lawrence. Lawrence's narrative series "The Migration of the Negro," illuminated the history, joy and suffering of a people, from the social life of Harlem to the struggles of the civil rights era. Donald Byrd, Rennie Harris, Reggie Wilson and Kevin Ward have each created a section that will illuminate and comment on some of Lawrence's most famous paintings.