Seabreeze is a new evening-length modern dance work rooted in the history of Freeman Beach-Seabreeze, one of only two beaches in North Carolina available to African Americans during segregation. This coastal haven, originally acquired in 1855 by Alexander and Charity Freeman—free people of African and American Indian heritage—grew into a thriving Black-owned resort by the 1920s. It became a treasured space for joy, creativity, and community gathering, where Black families from across the state came to dance, celebrate, and build lasting cultural traditions, even under the constraints of Jim Crow laws.

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Each summer, Seabreeze’s wooden dance floors pulsed with movement as jukeboxes blared the latest R&B hits, shaping a vibrant social dance culture. Black dancers here pioneered early forms of the Carolina Shag, a dance that would later be co-opted by white beachgoers. Malcolm Ray “Chicken” Hicks, a white teenager granted access to Seabreeze, studied these dance styles and carried them to Myrtle Beach, where the Shag was popularized as a white cultural phenomenon, erasing its Black origins. Hicks later became a member of the Shaggers Hall of Fame and helped introduce 1940s R&B music to white beach communities, while the Black dancers of Seabreeze who innovated the form remained largely uncredited.

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Seabreeze’s decline began in 1954 when Hurricane Hazel devastated the community, physically and economically displacing families. Beach erosion caused by the 1952 opening of the Carolina Beach Inlet further reduced the land, and desegregation in the 1960s drew Black visitors to previously restricted beaches. By the 1990s, many historic structures were gone, but the community’s spirit endured through oral histories and gatherings like the annual Freeman Beach Heritage Day.