#bobby fouther

“Mister Bobby was and is not only a dancer but a total artist,” says fellow choreographer Ruby Burns. “He is able to conceive and create from costumes, choreography, music, and most importantly, [he is able to] develop dancers.” And choreographer Josie Moseley describes one of his primary attributes: “He had a welcoming way, a disarming radar that pulled people into his concentric circle. It was really wonderful to see a MAN like that.” ​ Fouther has taught at Portland State University, served on the curriculum development committees for the Children’s Museum, The World Affairs Council of Oregon, and Portland Public Schools, and served as artist-in-residence in programs sponsored by the Oregon, Washington, and Idaho Arts Commissions and the National Endowment for the Arts, among many other credits. During the ‘70s, Fouther’s creative outlet was fashion. “I was making clothes. I was making fashion, doing fashion shows, and stuff like that. At this point in time, I got really frustrated with the cultural situation here, and so I was trying to figure out what can I do,where I can just visit schools and do something cultural?” So Fouther recruited some of the models from his fashion work and some local dancers and started a dance company, Herero Dancers [named after the Namibian tribe that was massacred by the Germans in a land grab in 1904], “to do the cultural stuff I thought should be here. And then we were getting these school gigs. We got put on Young Audiences. We were doing everything. That ended up being the professional piece of me, doing dance. It was really satisfying, going to schools and showing a different way of being to kids other than the stereotypical thing.”

A gifted group of African-American dancers organized around Fouther, Ruby Burns, and Bruce Smith, performing in Fouther’s Herero Dancers and Northwest Afrikan American Ballet directed by Smith. Instruction in various African dance forms was part of the program and so was the wide-ranging dance experience that Burns had before she came to Portland. Burns’ goal was to make African dance central to the story and lay everything else on top of that. Fouther also drew experience from his work with different dance artists that came through Portland to teach at Jefferson High School and through his regular attendance at the International Conference of Blacks in Dance. “I have always been the mountain comes to Mohammed type of person, ” he said and recounted meeting Katherine Dunham, Talley Beatty, and Alvin Ailey, among others. Today Mr. Bobby is busy painting and making art of all kinds, teaching AFRO/KIDWORKS Dance for Every Child, and piecing together his family’s history from a suitcase of old photos recently given to him by his cousin Arvoll Rae, passed down to them from their Great Aunt Della. These photos are a missing piece in understanding the breadth of his family’s history that began in the South, moved north with The Great Migration, and then farther north into Canada due to the Jim Crow laws in Tulsa, Oklahoma (Black Wall Street), ultimately separating him from his larger extended family. The genealogical work will culminate in a dance theatre work and gallery showing.