Choreographer-director-producer Otis Sallid has worn many hats in entertainment.
He’s created opening sequences on television shows like “It’s Showtime at the Apollo” and “Living Single”; choreographed Spike Lee films “School Daze,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Malcolm X;” and written music for television series “Suddenly Susan” and “The Jeff Foxworthy Show.”
Instead of dwelling on his five decades of success, Sallid continues creating and telling unapologetic stories about Black culture. It’s his way of acknowledging peers and pioneers in entertainment.
“They’re always present in the things I’m doing at the moment and will never go away. I’ve crossed genres and race a lot, but it’s all Black culture,” Sallid said.
Sallid was the founding creative director of Damsel Atlanta, a cabaret supper club located in Chattahoochee Works. The venue closed last week, six months after opening.
“It was a great run and good times,” he said of the experience.
He’s proud to have helped vet Damsel’s talent but said he regrets audiences not having a chance to experience upcoming performances he’d been working on.
“This was the first opportunity for people who wanted to be lighting directors and stage managers who (have) never done this before. It launched some careers. There was a lot more work that people have not seen. We were just getting started.”
He said he’s receiving numerous offers to take routines he created at Damsel to other establishments. “We’re looking for another way to exploit the great work because it needs to live on,” Sallid said.
Sallid, 75, grew up in Harlem, New York, at the height of segregation. He took pride in regularly interacting with his neighbors, many of whom were Black artists and scholars. “You would pass Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Carmen McRae, Gordon Parks, Nancy Wilson and McCoy Tyner, walking down the street. Artist Romare Bearden’s wife had a dance company, so we would see her all the time,” he said.
Regularly seeing dancer-choreographers like Geoffrey Holder, Louis Johnson, Thelma Hill, Alvin Ailey and Carmen de Lavallade led to Sallid enrolling into Juilliard School, where he met ballet professionals Martha Graham and Anthony Tudor. “They were sharing, giving and showing you how to have swagger in the art world,” he said.
He got into television when entertainer Debbie Allen joined “Fame” in 1982. A former member of Sallid’s New Art Ensemble dance company, she invited him to be her assistant choreographer.
Sallid compares the five years he spent working alongside Allen to his own personal film school. “We wanted to capture dance on camera, so we were doing preproduction, production and postproduction six days a week. We had to be ready for things to come fast, furious and make it happen,” he said.
He began regularly working with Lee in 1988, beginning with “School Daze.” The experience taught Sallid to be intuitive as a way of meeting the filmmaker’s demands and to exceed expectations when and wherever he could.
“Hear what the director is saying,” he offered as advice to other film choreographers, “but you have to feel what he or she is talking about in order to get it.”
Sallid, who also appeared on Broadway in “The Wiz” and “Purlie,” said choreography is about understanding a dancer’s character and humanity. “It’s not about steps. It’s people understanding the meaning of what they’re doing and what they want people to feel when they walk away.”
Sallid relocated to Atlanta from Los Angeles in 2010. He and his wife, actress-dancer Kyme Sallid, were searching for a more ethnically diverse private school for their daughter, Micah. Sallid’s cousin, an architect, convinced him to consider moving to the South.
Though his work required regular bicoastal travel to not only choreograph but direct episodes of TV shows like “Living Single,” Sallid said the move to Atlanta allowed him to become more family oriented. “It felt more like home. My quest was to be a good father, dad and successful husband,” he said.
Last year, Sallid began writing a musical about the life of boxer Joe Louis. The story is set in the 1930s and departs from Louis’ career as a heavyweight champion, focusing instead on how the pivotal sports figure navigated life as a Black man during the Great Depression.
“It’s about how do you love a country that doesn’t love you back,” he said.
In addition to choreographing the Nickelodeon comedy series “Tyler Perry’s Young Dylan,” he’s developing “Hidden Shange,” a theatrical production honoring Ntozake Shange, who wrote “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf.”
Sallid is also the executive director and founder of the Museum of African American Dance, a digital museum with online installations and archives that recognizes African American dancers and choreographers. He says he’s still looking for additional investors to help build out the concept to trace the history of Black dance.
”I did it because it doesn’t exist,” he said. “The works of African American dancers, choreographers and dancemakers is significant, and should have a place to live and be.”
Sallid says helping others become successful is what’s allowed him to move across entertainment and be selective about his artistry.
“I gave my talent away to other people that wanted it, and I’m having a great time. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. I’m still at it in a big way,” Sallid said.
When Sallid dances, he performs with a freedom of movement, gliding across dance floors. As a choreographer, however, he says paying close attention to detail gives his work a level of timelessness and repeatability. It’s a method that seems to match Sallid’s philosophy when he insists the dance didn’t end at Damsel.
“The story is not over,” he said. “It’s just beginning.”
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