Donald Byrd (choreographer)

Last updated

Donald Byrd
Born1949 (age 74–75)
New London, North Carolina
Occupation(s)Dancer, choreographer, director
Years active1974–
Awards Bessie Award
    (1992, for The Minstrel Show)

Donald Byrd (born 1949) is an American modern dance choreographer, known for themes relating to social justice, and in particular, racism.

Contents

Career

For 24 years, beginning 1978, Byrd was the founding artistic director of Donald Byrd/The Group, which toured extensively, nationally and internationally until 2002, when he suspended operations due to financial duress. The Group was based in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1983 and in New York City from 1983 to 2002. For 22 years, since 2002, Byrd has been artistic director of The Spectrum Dance Theater, based in Seattle. He is credited with having elevated Spectrum to a company of national rank. [1]

Byrd has choreographed more than 80 modern dance works for his own companies and other companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (for 35 years, since 1989), The Philadelphia Dance Company (Phildanco). Byrd also has choreographed for classical companies. He has worked with acclaimed theater and opera companies, including the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, the Intiman Theatre, the San Francisco Opera, the Seattle Opera, and the New York City Opera. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

2017 premier

Spectrum Dance Theater premiered Byrd's work Shot in January 2017, at the Seattle Repertory Theater. The performance included multimedia (video) and even a lecture in the middle in an acclaimed albeit visceral depiction of the 2016 fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the pleading of his wife, Reykia Scott – "Stop! Please don't shoot!" "Don't shoot him! Don't shoot him! He has no weapon! He has no weapon. Don't shoot him!" [14] Charlotte is about 49 miles (79 km) from New London, Byrd's place of birth.

2019 premier

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Byrd's work Greenwood on December 6, 2019, at City Center in New York City. Byrd described his work as "theater of disruption" ... "it disrupts our thinking about things, especially, in particular, things around race." The dance performance addresses a 1921 racist mob attack in Tulsa's segregated Greenwood District, which, at the time, was one of the country's most affluent African-American communities, known as "America's Black Wall Street." [2] [3] [4] Byrd uses the Rashomon method, depicting three scenarios of what might have happened in an elevator. [15]

As dancer and educator

Byrd, in 1972, was a member of the Twyla Tharp Dance Company; and in 1976, he was a member of Gus Solomons Jr.'s, Dance Company.

Byrd was dance instructor at the California Institute of the Arts from 1976 through 1982, a period when other notable colleagues taught there, including Cristyne Elizabeth Lawson (born 1935) (Dean), [i] Larry A. Attaway (né Larry Amos Attaway; born 1949), Rebecca Bobele (1946–1995), Gloria Bowen, [ii] Mia Slavenska (1916–2002), Tina Yuan (born 1947), [iii] and Sandra Neels. [iv] Byrd taught at University of California-Santa Cruz, Ohio University, and Wesleyan University. In 1993, he was Associate Artist at the Yale Repertory Theater.

Byrd has been member of board of directors for the Dance Theater Workshop and Dance USA in Washington, D.C., the national service organization for professional dance, established in 1982.

Awards

Special mention, 3rd Grand Prix International Video Dance Festival, 1990
Bessie Award, 1992, for The Minstrel Show
Emerging Dance Award, Metropolitan Life Foundation

Family and growing up

Byrd was born July 21, 1949, in New London, North Carolina, to Jeter Byrd Jr., and Emmarene Clark (maiden; 1928–1999). His parents divorced shortly after he was born; and soon after that, with his mother, he moved from New London to Clearwater, Florida. Donald's mother remarried and, around the time he was entering the fifth grade, she and her new husband moved to the Midwest. Donald stayed in Clearwater and was raised by his maternal grandmother, Willie Mae Clark (née Willie Mae Chester; 1910–1993), [v] through high school, until he graduated 1967 from Pinellas High, a bygone segregated school (closed after June 1968) in the Greenwood section of downtown Clearwater. [vi] Growing up, his first love, according to biographies, was music. To that end, Byrd studied classical flute; and as a flutist, he became a member of the Pinellas Youth Symphony. He was also a drum major with the Pinellas High School band – the Panthers Marching Band. In high school, Byrd participated in theatrical projects and the debate team.

Byrd's first exposure to dance came when he was 16 years old. Two dancers from Balanchine's New York City Ballet – Edward Villella and Patricia McBride – conducted a lecture-demonstration in Clearwater, which Byrd attended. The dancers left an impression on Byrd, though it was several years later before he began formal training in dance. [16]

Higher education

In 1967, Byrd attended Yale University, initially majoring in philosophy, though he had thoughts of becoming an actor. At Yale, Byrd attended every play produced by the School of Drama and the Long Wharf Theatre. Yale was also where Byrd experienced overt racism for the first time, in the form of slurs and insults, these contrasting with the institutionalized racism of segregation that he had encountered growing up in the South.

The summer after his first year, Byrd's prowess on the flute earned him the opportunity to join an ensemble that toured Europe. On his return from Europe, Byrd decided to leave Yale, where he did not feel entirely welcome, and enroll in Tufts University in Boston.

One of the first friends Byrd made at Tufts was William Hurt. By this time, Byrd had begun to study acting seriously. It was from Hurt that Byrd first heard about the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. On Hurt's suggestion, Byrd attended a performance of Ailey's signature work, Revelations. As put by his biography in Encyclopedia.com, "the performance was indeed a revelation for Byrd; for the first time in his life, he became aware of the theatrical power of dance." [3]

Higher education timeline

1967–1968: Attended Yale University for one year
1968–1974: Attended Tufts University and, in 1974, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree
Studied with Mia Slavenska for six years
1969–1973: Attended Cambridge School of Ballet, Cambridge, Massachusetts [vii]
Attended Harvard Summer Dance Center in the 1970s; he taught repertory dance classes there in the 1980s [17] [viii]
1972: Attended London School of Contemporary Dance
1976: Attended Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Center

Selected works

PremierWorkVenueRoleCompany
19??The RehearsalChoreographer
19??Speak EasyChoreographer
1978Brass OrchidChoreographer
March 6, 1981Hot Time/
A Minstrel Collage		 University of California, Santa Cruz Choreographer
1981Theme and VariationsChoreographer
1981Hot TimeChoreographer
November 3, 1983Low Down and Dirty Rag [18] [19]
featuring music of
Ford Dabney (1883–1958)		 Bessie Schönberg Theater at
the Dance Theater Workshop 		ChoreographerDonald Byrd/Group II
1983P-HP (Post-Holocaust Pop) or
Popular Dancing After the Bomb:
A Primer		 Bessie Schönberg Theater at
the Dance Theater Workshop 		Choreographer
March 12, 1986A Formal Response [ix] Japan America Theatre
Los Angeles		ChoreographerDonald Byrd/The Group
1988PartiteChoreographer
Music by Mio Morales		Donald Byrd/The Group
1988Enactments in Time of Plague Symphony Space
New York City		ChoreographerDonald Byrd/The Group
December 14, 1988Shards City Center
New York City		Choreographer Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
August 4, 1989Honey Chil' Milk Baltimore School for the Arts Choreographer
Director		Diverse Works '89
Maryland Art Place
(in collaboration with Baltimore artists)
1991The Minstrel ShowChoreographerSpectrum Dance Theater
December 4, 1991Dance at the Gym City Center
New York City		Choreographer Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
1992Drastic CutsChoreographer Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
1992A Folk DanceChoreographer Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
1993BristleChoreographer Boston Ballet II
1995Life Situations: Daydreams on GiselleChoreographer
1996EverybodyChoreographer Philadelphia Dance Company
1996The Beast
(The Domestic Violence Project)		Choreographer
1996Harlem NutcrackerChoreographer
2002
(workshop)		BurlesqueChoreographerDonald Byrd/The Group
2004
(workshop)		 The Color Purple
(musical)		 Alliance Theatre
Atlanta 		Choreographer
2005 The Color Purple
(musical)		 Broadway Theatre
Manhattan 		Choreographer
2009Sentimental CannibalismChoreographerSpectrum Dance Theater
Seattle
October 30, 2015Minstrel Show Revisited Skirball Center for the Performing Arts ChoreographerSpectrum Dance Theater
Seattle
January 2, 2017Shot Seattle Repertory Theater ChoreographerSpectrum Dance Theater
Seattle
December 6, 2019Greenwood City Center
New York City		Choreographer Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Collaborators

Among many others, Byrd has collaborated with composer Mio Morales on several works, including:

Organizations

The Donald Byrd Dance Foundation, Inc., a New York not-for-profit corporation established February 7, 1985

Quotes


I felt that something about the civil rights movement didn't take, that people didn't get it, that if these kids were behaving that way, it was a clear indication that something didn't work.

— Donald Byrd
Los Angeles Times – 1992 [20]
(commenting on the 1989 slaying of Yusef Hawkins, a 16-year-old African American, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, who was attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 white youths, beaten, and killed)

The most disturbing thing about Donald Byrd's Minstrel Show is this: that men and women in blackface, recreating racial parodies recognized by most people today to be unfair, can nonetheless make you laugh. And you laugh in perhaps exactly the way people laughed during those first 19th century sendups of (over and over) the same witless, clowning, superstitious black slave.

— Joan Katherine Smith
San Francisco Examiner – 1993

Videography

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ↑ Cristyne Lawson (née Christine Elizabeth Lawson; born 1935) was an early collaborator with Alvin Ailey. The two, in 1957, were cast in leading roles in Jamaica – "the Lena Horne musical."
  2. ↑ Gloria Bowen (Gloria Ann Bowen; born 1943) went on to teach at UCLA. She studied with Alexander Godunov and Pearl Lang. In 1990, Gloria relocated to Las Vegas and opened a studio for fencing and ballet with fencing master Mel North (né Melvyn Robert North; born 1924), who she married in 1990. Mel was Head Fencing Coach at UCLA for 10 years. Bowen, who is 5 feet 1 inch (155 cm), has been known as the "Petite Ballerina."
  3. ↑ Tina Yuan (née Wen-Shiu Yuan; born 1947) is most known as a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Yuan was born in Shanghai, but, when she was one, her parents fled to Taiwan, where she grew up. She was married to Richard Hanale Ornellas (born 1945) from 1971 to 1978. After her divorce, in the same year, 1978, she changed her legal name to Tina Wen-Shiu Yuan in a petition to become a United States naturalized citizen.
  4. ↑ Sandra Fawn Neels (born 1939) was, from 1963 to 1973, a dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. She went on to become a prolific choreographer. Since 1974, she has been a dance theater educator at colleges, universities, arts institutes, and pre-professional programs. Since about 1992, she has been on the faculty at Winthrop University.
  5. ↑ Byrd's Harlem Nutcracker, premiered 3 years after the death of his grandmother. His work prominently and lovingly features a grandmother.
  6. ↑ Pinellas High School, in Clearwater, served African-0American students from Largo, Clearwater, Dunedin, Safety Harbor, and Tarpon Springs from 1934 to 1968, when desegregation commenced. The school was originally on Madison Avenue, but in 1954, a new school was built on Palmetto Street, the current site of Clearwater Intermediate. ("Remembering Pinellas High School," by Valerie Kalfrin, February 28, 2012), Patch Media, February 28, 1928)
  7. ↑ Cambridge School of Ballet was founded in 1953 by Esther Brooks (née Esther Magruder; born 1925), in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Brooks had studied at the School of American Ballet. She was married to American poet Peter Chardon Brooks (1918–2000), who was a great-great grandson of Peter Chardon Brooks (1767–1849) and grandson of Shepherd Brook0s (1837–1922). Esther had previously been married to American violinist Paul Makanowitzky (1920–1998). By way of her sister, Agnes Ethel Magruder (maiden; 1921–2013), Esther was a sister-in-law of Armenian American painter Arshile Gorky (1904–1948).
  8. ↑ The Harvard Summer Dance Center was established in 1972 by Nelson Goodman (1906–1998) and Martha Armstrong Gray (née Martha Kneass Armstrong; born 1946) in collaboration with Harvard University. At Harvard, Goodman was producer of the Arts Orientation Series from 1969 to 1971, consultant in the Arts for Summer School from 1971 to 1977, and Director of the Dance Center. Gray served as Director of The Harvard Summer Dance Center for five years.
  9. ↑ A Formal Response was a Byrd production in reaction to various negative reviews in 1986. The production included a video Byrd reading and then burning the clippings. (The Boston Globe, July 5, 1955, p. 23)
  10. ↑ Marc Kirschner founded TenduTV, Inc., in 2008, in New York City. He is General Manager.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alvin Ailey</span> American dancer and activist (1931–1989)

Alvin Ailey Jr. was an American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). He created AAADT and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Center as havens for nurturing Black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance.

Lester Iradell Horton was an American dancer, choreographer, and teacher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lar Lubovitch</span> American choreographer (born 1943)

Lar Lubovitch is an American choreographer. He founded his own dance company, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968. Based in New York City, the company has performed in all 50 American states as well as in more than 30 countries. As of 2005, he had choreographed more than 100 dances for the company. In addition to the company, Lubovitch has also done creative work in ballet, ice-skating venues, and musical theater, notably Into the Woods. He has played a key role in raising funds to fight AIDS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald McKayle</span> American dancer and teacher (1930–2018)

Donald McKayle was an American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and writer best known for creating socially conscious concert works during the 1950s and '60s that focus on expressing the human condition and, more specifically, the black experience in America. He was "among the first black men to break the racial barrier by means of modern dance." His work for the concert stage, especially Games (1951) and Rainbow Round My Shoulder (1959), has been the recipient of widespread acclaim and critical attention. In addition, McKayle was the first black man to both direct and choreograph major Broadway musicals, including the Tony Award-winners Raisin (1973) and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and he worked extensively in television and film. As a young man he appeared with some of the twentieth century's most important choreographers, including Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, and Merce Cunningham, and in some of Broadway's landmark productions, including House of Flowers (1958) and West Side Story (1957), where he served for a time as the production's dance captain. A Tony Award and Emmy Award nominee, McKayle held an endowed chair for the last decades of his life in the Dance Department at UC Irvine, where he was the Claire Trevor Professor of Dance. He previously served on the faculties of Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Bennington College.

Gawain Garth Fagan, CD is a Jamaican modern dance choreographer. He is the founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance, a modern dance company based in Rochester, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mia Michaels</span> American choreographer and judge

Mia Michaels Melchiona is an American choreographer and judge on the television show So You Think You Can Dance. She has worked with Tom Cruise, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, Madonna, Ricky Martin, Prince, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. In 2005 she choreographed Cirque du Soleil's world tour Delirium and Celine Dion's A New Day..., for which she received an Emmy Award nomination. In 2007 she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography for her routine on "Calling You" during season two of So You Think You Can Dance. She won another Emmy Award during season five in 2010. She was a judge during season 7 with Adam Shankman and Nigel Lythgoe. She choreographed the dance sequence for "Get Happy" in the episode "Bombshells" of the television series House.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Jamison</span> American dancer and choreographer (1943–2024)

Judith Ann Jamison was an American dancer and choreographer. She danced with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1965 to 1980 and was Ailey's muse. She later returned to be the company's artistic director from 1989 until 2011, and then its artistic director emerita. She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, and the Handel Medallion, New York City's highest cultural honor, in 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater</span> Modern dance company based in New York City

Founded in 1958, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) is the largest modern dance company in the United States. Based in New York City, the company was founded by Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Alvin Ailey (1931-1989), a noted choreographer and dancer. The Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, which includes AAADT and Ailey II, the Ailey School, Ailey Extension, AileyCamp, and other operations, is housed in the 87,000 square-foot Joan Weill Center for Dance, one of the largest buildings dedicated exclusively to dance in the United States. AAADT is recognized as a vital American cultural ambassador, and has performed for diverse audiences in more than seventy countries around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dwight Rhoden</span>

Dwight Rhoden is an American choreographer and artistic director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet who began dancing at the age of 17 while studying acting. He has performed with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Les Ballet Jazz de Montréal and was a principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He has appeared in numerous television specials, documentaries and commercials throughout the United States, Canada and Europe and has been a featured performer on many PBS Great Performances specials.

Lynne Taylor-Corbett is a choreographer, director, lyricist, and composer. She was born in Denver, Colorado.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Garland (choreographer)</span>

Robert Garland is the artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, where he was a principal dancer and their first official resident choreographer. He has also choreographed for the New York City Ballet, The Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and the Oakland Ballet, among many others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camille A. Brown</span> American dancer

Camille A. Brown is an American dancer, choreographer, director, and dance educator. Four-time Tony Awards nominees, she started her career working as professional dancer with Ronald K. Brown's company in the early 2000s. In 2006 she founded her own dance company, the Camille A. Brown & Dancers, producing severals dance productions, winning a Princess Grace Awards and a Bessie Award.

Elisa Monte is an American artistic director, choreographer, and dancer who founded Elisa Monte Dance in New York City. Monte's first choreographic work, Treading (1979), defined her as an important innovator and contributor to contemporary dance. Her signature style, recognized as "daring, intense, and passionate, is classical and highly athletic."

Mary Anthony was an American choreographer, modern dancer, and dance teacher. Both her work as a dancer and choreographer were highly influenced by Martha Graham and Hanya Holm.

George W. Faison is an American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and theater producer, and winner of a 1975 Tony, a Drama Desk Award, and a 1991 nominee for the Emmy Award for choreography. He was a featured dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founder of the George Faison Universal Dance Experience, and co-founder/producing artistic director of the Faison Firehouse Theater.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonia Franceschi</span> American dancer, actor, choreographer

Antonia Franceschi is an American dancer, choreographer and actor.

Tracy Inman is an American dancer, choreographer, and educator who performed with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He is currently the co-director of The Ailey School and a choreographer & consultant for the television series Pose.

Melanie Person is an American dancer, choreographer, and educator who began her career at 14 as a "baby ballerina" with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She is currently the co-director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Ailey School, with Tracy Inman.

Troy Powell also known as Troy O'Neil Powell is an American dancer, choreographer, educator, and director. He is a former principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and former artistic director of AAADT's second company, Ailey 2. Powell was fired in July 2020 after an independent investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at the Ailey School concluded that he had engaged in "inappropriate communications" with students who were interested in joining the Ailey 2.

Jacqueline Green is an American ballet dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. She is noted for her elegant and commanding presence on stage as well as her unusually rapid ascent in being recognized as a great and powerful dancer.

References

  1. ↑ "Probing an Ugly Black Stereotype – Donald Byrd Brings Back the Minstrel Show," Joan Katherine Smith, San Francisco Examiner, May 19, 1993, p. C5 (accessible via newspapers.com ; subscription required)
  2. 1 2 "Donald Byrd's Theory of Disruption" (Richard Hake interviews Donald Byrd; audio and transcript), WNYC News (New York City), December 6, 2019
  3. 1 2 3 "Donald Byrd 1949–," by Robert R. Jacobson, encyclopedia.com (retrieved December 12, 2019)
  4. 1 2 "Can Dance Make a More Just America? Donald Byrd Is Working on It," by Siobhan Burke, The New York Times, November 28, 2019
  5. ↑ "Donald Byrd: Prodigal Talent," by Iris M. Fanger, Dance Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 7, July 1993, p. 42; ISSN   0011-6009 (accessible via ProQuest   223471938, Research Library database; subscription required)
  6. ↑ "Dance – Donald Byrd's Dance of Reality: The Choreographer's 'Minstrel Show' Will Bring Audiences Face to Face with Themselves on Issues of Race," by Chris Pasles, Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1993, Calendar, p. 5 (accessible via ProQuest   282068104, US Newsstream database; subscription required)
  7. ↑ "Review/Dance – Exploring the Somewhat Unknown," by Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times, February 20, 1992, p. C26
  8. ↑ "Dance – Creating a 'Folk Dance' for Friends of Long Standing," by Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times, December 13, 1992, p. H23
  9. ↑ "Dance View – Donald Byrd: An Unabashed Eclectic," by Jack Anderson, The New York Times, August 14, 1994, p. H24
  10. ↑ San Diego Reader, January 23, 1992
  11. ↑ "Dance – Donald Byrd's Ferocious 'Drastic Cuts,'" by Alan M. Kriegsman, The Washington Post, April 25, 1994 (accessible via ProQuest   307735894, US Newsstream database; subscription required)
  12. ↑ What's Up (Durham, North Carolina), January 28, 1994, p. 21
  13. ↑ The Oxford Dictionary of Dance (2nd ed.), Debra Craine, Judith Mackrell, "Byrd, Donald," Oxford University Press (2000, 2004, 2010), p. 83; LCCN   2010-930321, ISBN   978-0-19-956344-9
  14. ↑ "Dance – Donald Byrd's Shot: Compelling and Unforgettable – The show doesn't let the audience breathe, serving up round after round of ritual and repetition to drive home the point," by D. Scully, Seattle Magazine, updated April 25, 2019.
  15. ↑ "Review: At Alvin Ailey, Tragic Themes Overwhelm a Dance," by Gia Korlas, The New York Times, December 8, 2019
  16. ↑ "Choreographer Comes Home – Donald Byrd Says the World Opened up for Him in the Tampa Bay Area, Where He First Discovered Dance," by John Fleming, Tampa Bay Times, October 10, 1999, pps. 1F & 6F (accessible via Newspapers.com ; subscription required)
  17. ↑ "Arts & Films: Dance Notes – A Choreographer Simmers Down," by Christine Temin, The Boston Globe, July 5, 1988, p. 23 (accessible via newspapers.com ; subscription required)
  18. ↑ "Dance: Donald Byrd Troupe at Bessie Schönberg Theater, by Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times, November 7, 1983, p. C24 (accessible via New York Times ; subscription required)
  19. ↑ Low Down and Dirty Rag (videocassette 1 of 2), Donald Byrd/Group II; Video D Studios, Dance/Video Access Project, Bessie Schönberg Theater, New York, November 5, 1983; OCLC   80320928
  20. ↑ "Minstrel Show as Social Commentary – Dance: A Racially Motivated Slaying Prompted Choreographer Donald Byrd to Create a Satirical Look at the Often Derogatory Song-And-Dance Tradition," by Frankie Wright, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1992, Section F, pps. 1 (link) & 26 (link) (accessible via Newspapers.com ; subscription required)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.