CHUCK DAVIS - January 1, 1937- May 14, 2017

Charles Rudolph Davis, also known as Baba Chuck Davis, was an American dancer and choreographer whose work focused on traditional African dance. He was the founder of DanceAfrica, the Chuck Davis Dance Company, and the African American Dance Ensemble.

Charles Rudolph Davis was born on January 1, 1937 in Raleigh, North Carolina to Tony and Ethel Watkins Davis.

Charles's father was a laborer that worked all around the state as a cement finisher. His mother died when he was just 4 years old. While his father worked, Charles was left at home with a nanny named Annie Dasher.

Charles attended Washington Graded and High School, a Raleigh segregated school for African Americans, up until the 10th grade, when John W. Ligon High School was completed.

Washington Graded and High School was the first public high school for African Americans in the city of Raleigh and continued as the only such school until 1953.
Many influential members of the Raleigh African American community were Washington High School graduates.
The building now houses the Washington Gifted and Talented Elementary Magnet School of the Wake County Public School System.

Chuck then transferred to Ligon High School in 1953 and graduated in 1955. After graduation, Charles entered military service by enlisting in the United States Navy for two years, also working as a hospital corpsman at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. He received nursing training at George Washington University Hospital.

Davis became inspired by African dance while working at the Naval Hospital, dancing to live Afro-Cuban mambo and salsa music at the Dunbar Hotel while he was off-duty.

He started attending a local dance group and learned cuban salsa at the Dunbar Hotel located on 15th Street in Washington D.C. The dance group would meet in the bar located in the hotel basement.

The hotel's booking manager asked him to join the hotel's nightclub revue, leading to him joining an African dance troop. When the Dunbar closed, Charles and the group moved to another club, The Casbah nightclub on U street.

Eventually, the group moved their show to the Jazz-o-Rama located right around the corner. One evening while performing at the Jazz-o-Rama,

Charles and his group were performing a Caribbean dance on stage, which included a machete and a live chicken, and he was promptly arrested by police for having a "concealed weapon" in the club. The case was later dismissed by the judge.

Charles then enrolled at Howard University and studied theater and dance. Along with African Dance, Charles learned Caribbean dance, ballet and tap. Charles also studied Caribbean dance technique with his mentors, Geoffrey Holder, and Lorna Hodges-Mafata.

In1963, he took part in the March on Washington.

In 1968, Charles founded the Chuck Davis Dance Company in New York City, and later, in 1977, he started DanceAfrica after a trip with his dance company to Sierra Leone.

DanceAfrica partnered with the Brooklyn Academy of Music's annual festival (and is still going strong after almost 50 years!)

In 1983, Charles returned to North Carolina and founded the African American Dance Ensemble in Durham.

The Ensemble's motto was "peace, love, and respect for everybody" and Charles lived up to this every single day.

Charles's dance career took him to the African continent over 50 times, where he studied traditional African Dance. It was about this time that Charles became known as "Baba Chuck" ("Baba" means "father" in the African tradition).

He received awards and accolades from North Carolina and around the country including honorary doctorate degrees from Medgar Evers College and Williams College. He even received the highest honor any citizen can receive in North Carolina: the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

Davis always referred to himself as an "edu-tainer" because he used his gift of dance to educate and entertain people from all races and cultures.
In his own way, Charles used his African dance to combat the violence from white supremacists and racism which oppressed the Black American citizens of the United States.

Chuck brought his dance troop on visits to his high school as well as visiting and performing at many schools throughout North Carolina. He was giving back to the children, teaching them about Black history and culture with his traditional African dance.

Along with the Durham dance scene, Davis was an instrumental leader in the African American community. He led the Hayti Heritage Center's annual celebration of Kwanzaa and served as the grand marshal of one of Durham's first Mardi Gras parades.

Davis also performed as a featured dancer for the Eleo Pomare Dance Company.

He served as a panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts and was a recipient of the AARP Certificate of Excellence, the North Carolina Dance Alliance Award, the North Carolina Artist Award, the North Carolina Award in Fine Arts.

He served on the board of the North Carolina Arts Council from 1991 until his death in 2017. Davis worked with the NC Arts Council to develop and launch the NC Black Folk Heritage Tour in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In 1996 he received a $100,000 grant from the National Dance Residency Program for the African American Dance Ensemble

Chuck Davis died of cancer on May 14, 2017 at the age of 80. His funeral was held on June 3 at the Union Baptist Church in Durham.
In July, 2019, Baba Chuck was posthumously inducted into the Wake County Public School's Hall of Fame.

In November 2019, Charles was posthumously recognized as the main honoree at the Sesquicentennial Honors Commission at the Durham 150 closing ceremony.

The recognition was bestowed upon 29 individuals, including Chuck, "whose dedication, accomplishments and passion have helped shape Durham in important ways."

In 2015, PBS produced an excellent interview with Baba Chuck entitled Biographical Conversations with Charles Davis.
Link to video here:
https://video.pbsnc.org/.../biographical-conversations.../
.

Sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Davis_(dancer)

https://www.wral.com/.../dance-master-chuck.../16710308/

https://www.dancemagazine.com/goodbye-baba-chuck/

https://www.bkreader.com/.../chuck-davis-beloved-african...

https://mshuntersela.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/ago-ame/

See other references from Wikipedia page.