DANE A.CAMPBELL

Artistic Director

Dane started his performance dance career on the south side of Chicago, having been in the Untouchable Unity Dance Troupe and House-O-Matic. As a Drama major in high school and lover of the arts, Dane led the FE dance troupe to reign supreme in every local talent show and competition, winning first place dance awards city-wide. At the close of 1997 Dane grew unsatisfied with the street vibe his dance squad conveyed. He knew the team needed a change in order to survive its sophomore year where must groups meet their demise due to dancer's change in interests. After a long talk with his newly appointed Vice President, Blair Cartlidge, he set out to implement more technical movement in the group’s choreography resulting in the loss of over eight dancers, leaving only him Blair and their willingness to go on. For the next year the dynamic duo would go on to win talent competitions and be hired to perform for an array of events, from banquets to cotillions. In 1999 Dane and Blair recruited former members and a host of new ones bringing the troupe to over twenty dancers. Incorporating more theatrics in their performance, Dane changed the team’s name to Full Effect Entertainment. In 2000, a special year for the visionary, Dane was afforded the opportunity to teach Hip-Hop after former Alvin Ailey dancer, Lisa Johnson-Willingham saw the team rip the stage at the Black Expo, opening up for Public Announcement. Johnson, head of the dance program at Young Magnet school, offered to pay Dane out of her pocket for his services, swearing that she had not been able to get her hands on someone who could teach such a unique style of Hip-Hop. What was meant to be just a summer workshop, ended up to be a three-year working relationship during which Johnson taught Dane fundamentals of ballet, modern, jazz, and concert staging in return for his services. Also in 2000, Dane accepted the offer to choreograph for Platinum So So Def recording artist, Latocha Scott of the R&B quartet Xscape, for a promotional concert in Atlanta. Though he loved the experience, it strengthened his belief that his place was in the arts and not in show business. That year ended with the completion of his stage play Inside of Me a musical drama, which brought together dance and theater and proved to be the blueprint to the future of his company. Though still not produced, Dane’s plans are to reconstruct the play and to one day have the company perform it on stages across the country. Among Dane’s accomplishments are master-minding the choreography and production of Full Effect World (2003), Boundaries (2004), Climax and Beyond (2005), Cultural Differences (2006), and Dejavu (2008). He also wrote, directed, and choreographed the company’s rendition of A Christmas Carol (2004), The Haunted House of Hip Hop (2006), and Da Grinch Dat Done Stole Christmas (2007). He has written two screenplays the hilarious Under Siege (2006) and has penned the morbid, To Die For, a horror dance film that comes alive on stage (2008). In 2004, Dane would top all of his accomplishments by completing his first novel, Here Before, a sociological thriller whose characters were drawn from a “mixture of many of the people I have met and worked with in dance” and earning his degree in Management/Marketing. On Friday, December 18, 2009 at a private reception for a selected group of choreographers who displayed notable works at this year's Dance Chicago festival, Dane A Campbell was awarded the 2009 Dance Chicago Choreographer of the Year Award. In an impromptu speech given before a little under two dozen guests the Artistic Director and founder of FEETDCo said, "...though I am given this award, I will say that my contribution was merely the skeleton, it was my dancers who fleshed it out and pumped the blood through my creative movement and without them, I wouldn't be standing here..." In the last fourteen years Dane Campbell has been responsible for inspiring the lives of many aspiring dancers, giving back the gift of performance to hundreds of youth, and orchestrating the theatrical dance movement in Chicago. When asked what one word he would use to describe himself, he replies, “underachiever”.