Mickey Davidson, frequently billed professionally as Mickey D

Mickey Davidson is a jazz-dance artist, choreographer, and educator whose six-decade practice centers on African American vernacular traditions, live music, and intergenerational teaching. Working alongside culture bearers including Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, Davidson learned rhythm and movement through direct collaboration rather than isolated technique—a philosophy that has shaped both her performance work and her approach to passing knowledge forward.

In the 1980s, Davidson formed Mickey D & Friends, an ensemble of dancers and musicians devoted to the interlocking structures of live jazz and movement. Productions including *Juba, Jukin and Jazzin* and *Swingin' in Time* brought vernacular practices to concert stages while preserving improvisation and musical exchange as central to the work.

Davidson was among three choreographers for the European tour of Broadway's *Black and Blue*. Beyond this collaboration, she inherited and maintained swing and blues choreography from Frankie Manning—work that required both fidelity to source material and the flexibility to adapt to new casts and theatrical conditions across different productions and venues.

Her artistic partnership with playwright and poet Ntozake Shange spanned more than two decades. For the twentieth-anniversary production of *for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf*, Davidson choreographed under Shange's direction and received an AUDELCO Award for that work.

As an educator and public voice, Davidson teaches authentic jazz and swing practices rooted in Black social history and musicality. She has spoken at major gatherings including the International Lindy Hop Championships, documented her travels and performances with Manning and Miller, and helped host the Norma Miller headstone unveiling with the Frankie Manning Foundation. Her insistence on attribution and historical context has shaped how swing vocabulary is taught and understood among new generations of dancers.