Between the 1980s and 1990s, forward-thinking arts and heritage units and organisations of dance in diasporic spaces transform the production and first-hand spectatorship of dance. Their mission has been to heighten the profile of dancers of colour in Britain, which means nonballetic dance emerges from the frontiers of arts to the forefront. The dance they produce - address the nexus of aesthetic, institutional, and conceptual problems that are pertinent to histories of the work of British-based dancers, which in turn feeds the kinds of discourses generated by the funding bodies and institutions that will come to support the dance sector.
Driven by strategy and clarity of purpose, a great many alliances and individuals from Birmingham, Leicester, Leeds, London, Manchester rise as catalysts of change. In these decades, the founding principles behind Association of Dance of the African Diaspora (ADAD), Black Dance Development Trust, Dance Umbrella, Independent Dance, One Dance UK, South Asian Dance Alliance (SADA) were set to motion. Phoenix Dance Company, Lanzel, Dagarti Arts, Dance de l’Afrique, Carol Straker Dance Foundation, esea contemporary, Northern School of Contemporary Dance under Nadine Senior MBE, Delado under Maxine Brown, Kompany Malakhi under Kwesi Johnson, Movement Angol Dance under Francis Angol, Adzido under George Dzikunu and Emmanuel Tagoe, Sakoba Company under Bode Lawal, Badejo Arts under Peter Badejo OBE, Bima Dance under Pit Fong Loh and Ming Low, Step Out Dance (Arts) under Jih-Wen Yeh, ADiTi (National Development Agency for South Asian Dance) under Shreela Ghosh, Sampad under Piali Ray OBE, Akademi: South Asian Dance under Mira Kaushik OBE, and many artists such as Brenda Edwards, Corrine Bougaard, Tetsuya Kumakawa, Bunty Matthias, Benji Reid, Cathy Lewis, Thea Barnes, Malachi Spaulding, Sheron Wray, Sushmita Ghosh commenced on new journeys making performances and festivals for ever-changing audiences.