Straight from the hip: black men dance in first person.(Edgeworks Dance Theater)

SEE THE LILTING BLACK MAN. Watch his body articulate itself in space. ("He speaks so well!")

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Watch him sidestep assumptions, shrug off popular images of Black manhood that never fit him anyway. His choreographer could be Helanius Wilkins, founder and artistic director of the Washington, D.C.-based Edgeworks Dance Theater. Established in 2001, the theater is believed to be the only primarily Black male dance company in the United States. Wilkins positions the celebrated dance ensemble as a counterpoint to the media drones' pathology-obsessed portrayals of Black men.

Case in point: About three years ago, Wilkins came across an article in The Washington Post entitled "Black Men in Need of Civic Help." The thirty-something choreographer was exasperated to find the usual grim parade of statistics woven into the article, the same hopeless accounting of Black male possibilities. Incarceration. Endless cycles of violence. Abandoned children. Wilkins was compelled to write a letter to the editor detailing the positive contributions Black men were making in the local community, but it was never published. However Melting the Edges, his artistic response to the article, did make it to public view. In the trio dance work, Wilkins shows Black men relating to each other tenderly, literally supporting and lifting one another.