Dancer #1 is a striking and significant painting by Charles Searles - the first in his important Dancer series of the mid-1970s. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Searles enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1967. He gained national attention with the inclusion of his 1970 painting, News, in the 1971 exhibition of Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1972, Searles graduated, following in the footsteps of his friends and fellow PAFA students Barkley Hendricks (1967) and James Brantley (1971). With his 1971 William Emlen Cresson Memorial European Traveling Scholarship award, Searles travelled to Nigeria, Ghana, and Morocco after graduation. After returning from Africa, Searles began teaching art at the Ile Ife Cultural Center in Germantown - where he also played percussion in the Afro-American Dance Ensemble. This series was inspired by the repetitive movements of the Ife Ife dancers and the bright mixture of patterns in their dress. Other paintings from this series are found in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, La Salle University and the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art.
