It's been a question on my mind since the announcement of next week's Black Choreographers Festival, which takes the stage at the Malonga Casquelourd Center in Oakland the first weekend in February and at Project Artaud in San Francisco the next weekend.

The two-week series of events -- which includes workshops, master classes and symposia, as well as performances -- is sponsored jointly by the African & African American Performing Arts Coalition, the Black Performing Artists Network and the ODC Theater, and the list of participants runs a gamut of backgrounds.

The balletic explorations of Alonzo King will be performed on the same program with the African dance-inspired works of the late Malonga Casquelourd. Joanna Haigood's airy flights will share space with Reginald Ray-Savage's earthy and kinetic jazz and the modern intellectualism of Robert Moses' Kin will find a meeting ground with the mad skillz of hip-hop crew Housin' Authority.

And although this festival focuses on Bay Area choreographers, it also takes advantage of a visit by Rennie Harris -- whose "Facing Mekka" opens at Yerba Buena Center next week -- to include a master class with the New York-based hip-hop b-boy.

Some 10 to 12 years ago, there were several similar festivals highlighting the contributions of a generation of black choreographers who could trace their inspiration back through the work of pioneers such as Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus. Indeed, the current series has been inspired by the Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century festivals of the early '90s, which Halifu Osumare, Kim Fowler and Dean Beck Stewart produced.

One emerging choreographer who got her start through those events was Laura Elaine Ellis, who never forgot the synergy she experienced working closely with other black choreographers. When the 2002 Quilt Project brought some of the alumni from the festival -- including Aisha Jenkins, Robert Moses and Robert Henry Johnson -- together again, she realized it was time to revive the festival, so Ellis and Angela Johnson, co-director of the African & African American Performing Arts Coalition, decided to organize anew.

"It felt like we were picking up where the last festival had left off, and I saw it was necessary for us to come back together again," she says, "We needed to continue that energy, stay connected, collaborate more."

For the purposes of the festival, Ellis and Johnson have limited participation to black choreographers, which seems a simpler categorization than "black dance" -- a phrase about which African-American dance critic Zita Allen pondered as far back in the 1970s. Writing in Dance Magazine, Allen discussed the meaning and relevance of such an amorphous term. Is it dance made by black choreographers? Is it dance made about the black experience? Is it dance that shows African stylistic roots? Is it dance performed primarily by black dancers?

When Ailey II (the young training company for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre) performed recently at the Stanford Lively Arts series, the evening opened with a ballet-based contemporary meditation by the New York-based Israeli choreographer Igal Perry, performed authoritatively by the primarily black ensemble. Do we put that piece into the same category as Alvin Ailey's "Revelations," which was also on the program?

Although it's human nature to want to pigeonhole and neatly label, perhaps instead of thinking of "black dance" as the category -- most categories have such blurry edges anyhow -- it would be more useful to think in terms of the overlaps. Much of the work of the next generation of black choreographers occurs at an intersection of genres and styles as well as subject matter. Recent works by Robert Henry Johnson, Robert Moses and Rennie Harris combine a variety of dance styles and themes of the black experience, creating a mixture of styles that connect classical ballet with Caribbean rhythms or hip-hop with modern dance technique.

Johnson, who will premiere a section from his latest work-in-progress at the festival, speaks in the ballet idiom, but relates his new piece to an almost anthropological inquiry into black cultural background.

"It's about the search for the black presence in Europe," he explains, though when you see it, "you will not get that at all," he adds quickly with a laugh.

Johnson concedes that ballet seems like an unlikely vehicle for an investigation into black history, given how few classically ballet-trained black dancers one sees onstage, even now. He hopes, though, to address African ties to classical formalism in the completed work.

"There's going to be something for everyone -- it's probably the most commercial idea of the festival," Ellis says with a laugh. "We're hoping young people might come for the hip-hop but get turned on by Alonzo King or Robert Moses. We want to build audiences for these choreographers, too.

"So many people in the community at large don't know these choreographers," she says. "They go to Ailey every year, but they don't even know the work that's being done by local choreographers like Robert Henry Johnson -- and that's a shame."

The Black Choreographers Festival begins at Oakland's Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts on Alice Street, Feb. 4-6, and then continues at the Project Artaud Theater in San Francisco, Feb. 11-13. For more information, contact www.bcfhereandnow.com or 415-699-2196. The show coincides with Rennie Harris Puremovement's performances of his hip-hop-based "Facing Mekka" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Feb. 3-5 (www.yerbabuenaarts.org).

In coming months, Robert Moses' Kin will present its season at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, Feb. 17-27 (www.robertmoseskin.org), Alvin Ailey makes its annual Cal Performances appearance, March 11-20 at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall (www.calperfs.berkeley.edu) and Alonzo King's LINES Ballet will perform at the Yerba Buena Center, April 14-17 (www.linesballet.org). Diamano Coura West African Dance Company (www.diamanocoura.org) and Savage Jazz (www.savagejazz.org) will also be performing in March. Check their Web sites for details.