Co-founded in 1998 in the historic Banknote Building in Hunts Point by the celebrated and award-winning dancer/choreographer Arthur Aviles and writer/activist/publicist Charles Rice-Gonzalez, BAAD! (The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance ) began as a home for Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre, a contemporary dance company that explores works on the margins of Latinx and queer cultures.

 

The programming grew from the community of artists that Aviles and Rice-Gonzalez had in their circles - dancers, queer artists, artists of color and women. With the support of the local Hunts Point community, dancers, a local gay organization and the partnership of sculptor Cassandra and performer/Drag King Elizabeth "Macha" Marrero, Aviles and Rice-Gonzalez first built a performance space by clearing and cleaning 3500 square feet of unused, abandoned warehouse space in Hunts Point's American Banknote for Aviles' dance company Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre (AATT). Then they began inviting artists to present work in the space and began hosting multi-disciplinary annual arts festivals (BAAD! Ass Women, Out Like That!, The BlakTino Performance Series, The Boogie Down Dance Series) and presenting the annual holiday play Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo. Those have all been vibrant and active since 2001. In 2010, they added a film and event series called Get Tough! Get BAAD! which was in response to a series of gay bashings around the city and the Bronx.

 

BAAD! continues to be the home of the award-winning contemporary dance company Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre and in 2002 formed the Bronx Dance Coalition to support professional Bronx dance and which published the Bronx Dance Magazine, which since 2002 has chronicled the history of dance in the Bronx. BAAD!'s newest program, the BAAD! Muse/Artist in Residency Project foster the development of artists who are creating challenging art, dance, and performance in the Bronx.