GEORGE FAISON is a stirring example of an artist who takes from the sometimes ugly and hateful world around him and creates beauty. Whether choreographing a dance about slavery or drug abuse, or creating a tornado with dancers in The Wiz, Faison stayed true to himself and the result is a career three decades long and counting. “I’ve wanted to do something positive, but people have felt I was a black activist when I recognized my roots,” he told Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times in 1977. “I was interested in pop music. That turned some people off, but I found beauty in the ordinary and everyday,” he added. For Faison, dance is for everyone whether its based on primitive movement, classical movement, or jazz movement. Or in Faison’s case, all three. “All kinds and classes of people will embrace dance when they see it in a context that relates to their own experience,” he proclaimed to Maurice Peterson of Essence in 1975. “Dance is not just for the elite, it is universal,” he continued.