The Central Avenue Dance Ensemble will participate in this year's Central Avenue Jazz Festival.  We will present a lecture / demonstration of vintage African-American dances danced on Central Avenue during it's heyday -- the first half of the 20th Century.  This program will take place in the historic Dunbar Hotel.  For those who don't know, the Dunbar was built n 1928, and was originally called the Hotel Somerville. It hosted the first national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to be held in the western United States. In 1930, the it was renamed the Dunbar, and it became the most prestigious hotel in LA's African-American community. In the early 1930s, a nightclub opened at the Dunbar, and it became the center of the Central Avenue jazz scene in the 1930s and 1940s. The Dunbar hosted Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Lena Horne, and many other jazz legends. **

Please join us at the Dunbar for this memorable event.  We will present our program on both Saturday (July 27th) and Sunday (July 28th) at 4:30pm. Admission is free.

Info on the Central Avenue Jazz Festival: https://www.centralavejazzfest.com/

** Credit to Wikipedia for this information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar_Hotel