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Mestre Preto Velho (Dennis Newsome) is the second guest artist in the African-American performing arts series Presented in conjunction with Anthropology 489 ("African-American Folklore") and funded by the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, the Departments of Anthropology, English, and Performance Studies and the College of Liberal Arts . The Head Instructor of Os Malandros de Mestre Touro, a San Diego-based school dedicated to the teaching of Capoeira and related martial dance arts, Mestre Newsome is the highest ranking master of Capoeira Angola Sao Bento Grande in North America.

He is also an accomplished professional dancer specializing in contemporary African-American urban traditions. In this role, he was one of the original Scooby Brothers, hip-hop dance performers who in the 1980s were billed as "The Undisputed Champions of Lockin', Poppin', Boogaloo, Modern Robot and Animation." He has served as an artist in residence sponsored by the California Arts Council seven times in the past ten years, and in 2002, he was nominated for a National Heritage Fellowship ("Master of the Traditional Arts") sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mestre Newsome has given lecture-demonstrations in contexts as diverse as the 2003 San Diego Natural History Museums Shona Art Exhibit, the University of California at San Diego, and the American Theater Association (San Francisco). In 1996, he gave a lecture-demonstration on "old school hip hop" at the International African Diaspora Conference held in San Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. His film credits include technical advisor-fight choreographer for Mel Gibson's "Lethal Weapon" (Warner Brothers, 1987).