BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Ninoska M’bewe Escobar is a dance scholar and Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance currently based at the University of New Mexico. Before joining the world of academia, she had a long career as a dancer and choreographer in New York City as well as a teacher and program director at The Ailey School. Here, she discusses her focus on bringing more attention and awareness to the legacy of Pearl Primus, as well as why it is important to teach the history of dance forms alongside technique in order to understand how cultural production functions.

This interview is part of Afro Diasporic Dance in College Settings, a series of interviews with dance professors who teach Afro diasporic dance forms in American college dance programs.

Photo courtesy Ninoska M’bewe Escobar

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What was your introduction to dance and what have been some highlights or pivotal moments in your dance career?

My first exposure to dance was in the context of my family’s attention to cultural practices. It was through dancing with elders in my family. I am an immigrant from Honduras, and I moved to the US as a young child. I understood then that if there was a birthday or baptism or even a death, it could be marked with music, singing, and dance combined with testimonies and prayers. Like a lot of African descended communities in Latin America, my acculturation was certainly influenced by Catholicism, but also by traditional African derived practices, which gave a great deal of attention to ancestors as well as a spirituality that derived from Yoruba culture. I had a great grandmother whom we called Yaya, a name I’ve found may indicate “elder,” “woman,” or “priestess.” So, my first introduction to dance was in the context of family cultural practices and Afro-Latin American identity.

I did not start professional dance training until I was much older. When I was in high school, I had a friend who studied modern dance with Rod Rodgers in New York City. I saw her perform and I was blown away. Early in my career, I engaged with Mr. Rodgers when I was transitioning from what was then called “ethnic” dance to modern and contemporary dance.

I began my formal dance training at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts in NYC in the late 1970s. My first teacher of modern dance was Marjorie Perces, an original dancer from Lester Horton’s company. I began dancing with Loremil Machado and Jelon Vieira, who are credited with introducing American audiences to capoeira. They were on the faculty at the Clark Center and had created a company, Capoeiras da Bahia. Later, Loremil formed his own company, the Loremil Machado Afro-Brazilian Dance Company. I danced with Loremil and Jelon until the mid-1980s.

It was Marjorie Perces who introduced me to Alvin Ailey. Marjorie felt I needed another kind of training, so I started studying at The Ailey School in the early 1980s. Mr. Ailey took an interest in me. I didn’t dance in his company, but he became a mentor. He introduced me to other choreographers including Alfred Gallman, whom he’d also mentored, and Louis Falco, who hired me to dance in the original Fame. Later, I danced with one of Falco’s principals, William Gornel, in his company for a couple years.

I worked in NYC for three decades. As I developed my career, I decided to focus on developing my own work as a choreographer. I had a couple companies in New York before disbanding them. I had young children at the time, and it was very difficult to keep a company supported while raising children.

I was also doing a lot of teaching and community engagement. I spent a good deal of time from the mid-1990s until about 2009 working for the Ailey organization, both as a teacher in the school and as a program director. I co-directed the Ailey/PPAS pre-professional program. I also directed AileyCamp in New York and Miami for several years. Then I became a national facilitator of the humanities curriculum Revelations: An Interdisciplinary Approach that used Mr. Ailey’s ballet Revelations to explore societal issues. I did that from the early 2000s until I made the decision to start graduate school in 2009.

Because of my involvement with the Ailey organization, my interest in Black dance history was broadened. In my own work as a choreographer, I found myself returning to topics and themes like the development of Black culture in the US, the problems of political and social oppression, the problem of racism, the problem of gender oppression, along with spiritual themes. Because of this expanding interest in dance history and theory, I began to think about obtaining graduate education. I felt it would be important for me to develop as an historian. The John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin gave me a generous fellowship, which enabled me to enter the Performance as Public Practice program in the Department of Theatre and Dance. I completed an MA and then went into the PhD program.

From 2016 to 2021, I worked at the Five Colleges in western Massachusetts. I spent two years at Amherst as a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Scholar. I then finished my dissertation and from 2019 until last spring I was teaching part-time at Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Amherst. Last spring, I accepted an opportunity to come to the University of New Mexico, which was very exciting. The Inclusive Excellence Fellowship, a two-year research appointment at UNM, supports my work on both sides of dance practice and theory.

Cut out from the New York Times

What is your current dance practice? How often do you teach, perform, and/or choreograph?

I no longer perform. Since I started my companies back in the late 1990s, my own performing career has been sporadic. Currently, my creative work is in training and choreographing for dancers at UNM. This semester I am teaching dance writing. Last semester, I worked with my department’s performing ensemble and created a work for them that was recently performed. Next semester in the fall, I will be teaching contemporary and modern technique with African diasporic impulses.

My approach to contemporary dance helps students acquire African diasporic dance vocabulary and aesthetics, increased rhythmic facility, musicality and grounding. When I teach technique, be it African-based dance or contemporary, I involve dance history. I want my students to have a sense of how dance forms come into being and that all dance is cultural dance, including ballet. I teach from a social and political perspective that recognizes dance as a cultural formation, and that it reflects the values and traditions of specific cultures. That includes the dominant Euro-American culture in dance education, through ballet and modern dance.

Do you have an upcoming project or research focus you’d like to share more about?

In the area of African American dance history, there has been some critical attention to Pearl Primus, the Caribbean American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist. However, Katherine Dunham is still much more well known. My engagement with Primus started when I was a child encountering her photograph in a who’s who encyclopedia of American woman. Her photograph was so striking I had to find out more about her.

Much later, when I began my decades of immersion into African derived dance forms and modern dance, I learned more about Primus and developed questions and curiosity about her that informed my graduate research project. I wrote a dissertation based on my research about her, and in my continued research, I am documenting the recent reconstruction of one her works that is rarely seen, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, by Paul Dennis who is now the Chair of Dance at Hunter College.

By focusing on Primus’ work and legacy, I’m attempting to expand her significance, not just at the point of her emergence in the 1940s and her work educating audiences and the American academy about African culture, history, and aesthetic practices, but also to connect her to the current moment in the US in the work of many artists who are making significant social and critical connections through art. Many choreographers have been inspired by the model she created for the solo dance form, by her approach to using research to create dance, and by her attention to Black experiences. She’s extremely relevant to the contemporary moment. Primus was clear she was not concerned with entertainment but rather with aligning herself with progressive politics. I’m working to create a portrait of her that centers her as a political artist and Black feminist icon.

Now I’d like to dive into your perspectives on academia. How long have you taught in academia? What courses have you most often taught?

I started teaching in academia in 2011 at UT. I developed a new course in African diasporic dance and theory. It included technique in the studio and history in the classroom. I did that for two or three semesters. When I started the heavy work of research for my dissertation, I stopped teaching.

In 2016, I moved to Amherst College and taught African American dance history, general dance history, and African American theater history. At Smtih and Mount Holyoke, I taught West African dance technique and African American dance history.

Since you started teaching in academia, have you seen more opportunities for students to study Afro diasporic dance forms? If so, what exactly has changed?

At UT, when I taught African diasporic dance and theory, I’m not sure how long it had been since the department had even offered a credited course such as mine. The course I taught was entirely new. There was African dance available in the Austin community, but not in the department at the time. Students and some faculty took this class.

When I moved to the Five Colleges, Theatre and Dance at Amherst was excited to have courses not regularly offered in the department. However, I regard practical and historical/theoretical courses in Black arts to be essential and it is hard to understand how any theatre and dance department can justify their absence.

If there’s been an expansion of attention and inclusion toward this kind of work in theater and dance departments, I think it’s been in direct response to the demands of students who want broad cultural diversity in curriculum as well as instruction and mentorship from more faculty of color. I think they go hand in hand, a result of that desire and demand by students of color and other students who are interested in the history of culturally derived dance forms besides ballet and modern. In most institutions where I’ve taught, ballet and modern are still considered the foundations of Western and American dance. I contest that as a historian and teacher.

Across the country, lots of students are aware of West African dance. It’s quite popular, both community-based instruction and in certain departments. The migration of African artists to the US since the 1970s has made dance from Africa more familiar. Before that, the main exposure was Afro Cuban or Afro Caribbean. But now, lots of students have been exposed to West African dance.

Photo courtesy Ninoska M’bewe Escobar

When I was at the Five Colleges, my courses were credited, of course. At Amherst, for example, the program is diverse, offers a “core,” and includes studio and historical/theoretical courses. Here at UNM, the concentration is either contemporary or flamenco, but students are exposed to other techniques and are required to take at least three credits in either jazz, hip hop, or West African dance. And it’s repeatable, so students can get more exposure if they’d like.

I think generally, dance forms beyond ballet and modern are not considered foundational, and that is a problem. These kinds of “extraneous” techniques have informed American dance to a great extent, and not just in the current moment, but historically. The gods of early 20th century American dance borrowed and appropriated “ethnic” forms that were foreign to their own cultural identities to create new work. Not considering them foundational to American dance ignores the potential that they offer to professional dance training.

Where you’ve taught, are Afrodiasporic dance forms treated as equally valuable as Western dance forms like ballet and modern? If not, what changes would you like to see in college dance curriculums?

As an example, West African dance training is considered significant in The Ailey School because the Ailey aesthetic quotes and relies on a multiplicity of techniques. Those students have to learn ballet, modern, jazz, African, etc., and they have to do them well.

But I wouldn’t say that’s the case in every conservatory. And in the case of higher education, it depends on the program and department whether other forms are treated equally.

Why is it important for dance students to be educated in Afro diasporic forms? How does it create a better or more well-rounded dancer?

African American culture is American culture. I am not the only historian or artist scholar or educator who recognizes this. African American cultural production has been investigated to a great extent, and it is concrete knowledge that African American culture has informed what has broadly come to be called American culture. Why then shouldn’t students study African American and Black diasporic dance, theater, literature and performance? I go into the history of African American performance by investigating the politics, the economic implications, and the social concerns of creating a theater of representation for a marginalized people. Students need to see that bigger picture of how cultural production functions and operates.

Any other thoughts?

I am really interested in connecting my work to communities outside the university. I am in the beginning stages of planning a small conference to commemorate the United Nations Declaration of the Decade of People of African Descent, which started in 2015 and is ending in 2024. So, we’re nearing the end of the commemorative decade. According to the resolution, the International Decade aims to recognize the important contributions of people of African descent worldwide, is positioned against racism and intolerance, and promotes human rights and social justice and inclusion policies. This conference would focus on the importance of the arts and diverse cultural participation to the advancement of global human rights and environmentalism, and aims to build greater connection to communities beyond the university by dialoguing what it means to produce art in connection with people’s everyday lives and their human rights.

Photo courtesy Ninoska M’bewe Escobar

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To learn more, www.ninoskamescobar.com.

Ninoska M’bewe Escobar is an artist‐scholar and Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in Black diasporic theater, dance, and performance, and investigates how bodies carry history and memory and how cultural heritage and social experiences shape identities and artistic practices. Escobar is documenting the work and legacy of Caribbean American dance pioneer Pearl Primus (1919-1994), a seminal figure in the development of American modern dance, the solo dance form, and the use of dance to promote social justice. Her current project examines the recent reconstruction of the rarely seen dance work, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, created by Primus in 1979 as she reflected upon the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Escobar was a guest panelist for “Celebrating Pearl Primus” at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center in October 2021. The “Celebrating Pearl Primus” conversation may be viewed here.

From 2016 to 2021, Escobar was affiliated with the Five College Dance Department in western Massachusetts where she taught African American and world dance history, African American theater history, and West African dance at Amherst College, Smith College, and Mount Holyoke College. In 2018, she organized the dance symposium African American Dance: Form, Function, and Style! which explored the history and practice of African American dance through public talks, master dance classes, performances, and films, with a keynote address presented at Amherst College by preeminent dance scholar Dr. Yvonne Daniel. Previously, she co-directed the Ailey/Pre-Professional Performing Arts School Program in New York and directed AileyCamp in New York and Miami. She was a lead facilitator of the humanities curriculum Revelations: An Interdisciplinary Approach, which utilizes Alvin Ailey’s signature ballet Revelations to engage students and educators in examining societal issues impacting their lives and communities.

Escobar has a professional background as a performer and choreographer, creating original works for the all-female New York-based performance groups Life Force Dance and M’word!, presented at the Joyce Soho, the Theater of the Riverside Church, the Neuberger Museum of Art, and The Knitting Factory in New York, among others. She was a principal dancer in the companies of legendary Brazilian capoeiristas Loremil Machado and Jelon Vieira, performed with Nigerian Jùjú music trailblazer King Sunny Adé, with Le Ballet National Djoliba, and with Jamaican reggae superstars Third World during their 1980s tours of the US. Her film and theater work include performing in the original cast of MGM’s Fame (1980), the Brooklyn Academy of Music Nextwave Festival production of Njinga the Queen King (1993), and in numerous concert stage productions and venues including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, and the Santa Fe Dance Festival. As a choreographer, she created the dances for Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains (1992) and the Nuyorican Poets Café production of Pepe Carril’s Shango de Ima (1994), which won an Audelco award for Outstanding Black Theater Choreography.

The post How Cultural Production Functions appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Maguette Camara is a globally recognized West African dancer, choreographer, teacher, and drummer who is based in New York City. Maguette began his career at a young age with The Ballet Bougarabou Dance Company in Dakar, Senegal. Today, he teaches at Barnard College, The Ailey School, The Ailey Extension, and Djoniba at Peridance Capezio Center. Here, Maguette shares how African dance is at the root of most dance forms and thus benefits any dancer to train in, and how New York City has a flourishing African dance scene.

This interview is part of Afro Diasporic Dance in College Settings, a series of interviews with dance professors who teach Afro Diasporic dance forms in American college dance programs.

Photo by Kyle Froman

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What was your introduction to dance and what have been some highlights or pivotal moments in your dance career?

I am from Senegal, which is where I learned to dance. My dancing happened by accident. A good neighborhood friend’s parent had a dance school and company, The Ballet Bougarabou Dance Company. It was where we went to play, and we would watch the adults. I started dancing by mimicking the adults at age eight or nine. I started loving it and getting serious about my dancing. They were seeing me and my friends dance, and they started putting us into little roles in performances. That really touched me, and that’s how I got into the dance.

From there, I started learning the choreography and repertoire of the dance company. Though Ballet Bougarabou was in Senegal, the type of dances the company did were not just Senegalese, but from throughout West Africa: Guinea, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire. At the same time, we learned the history of the dances, the ethnic groups that do the dances, why they do the dances, and the story behind the movements.

When I became a teenager, age 17 or 18, I started venturing out and learning other dances from other companies in the area. I came to the US at age 23 with a dance company while on tour.

Photo courtesy Maguette Camara

The pivotal moment in my life was in Senegal. When I was at a young age, Ballet Bougarabou brought me in to be a part of a performance that was the opening for a Senegalese singer called Baba Maal. He was performing at a stadium in Dakar. They put me into the group of people who would perform for the opening of that singer. It was a big moment for me. In Senegal we say, “You’re not a dancer until the snake bites you.” That was the moment when the snake bit me.

Ballet Bougarabou had a second company. The first company was based in another region, Mbour, and the director created a second company in Dakar and made me the artistic director. That was another important moment for me. I was responsible for choreographing and teaching newcomers.

What is your current dance practice? How often do you teach, perform, and/or choreograph?

I teach six days a week. I’m not doing that many performances these days because of COVID, but I teach six days a week, which I’ve been doing for a long time. It’s a mixture of colleges and studios. I teach at Barnard College, at The Ailey School, at Ailey’s second site called The Ailey Extension, and at Djoniba at Peridance Capezio Center.

Photo by Kyle Froman

Do you have an upcoming project or focus you’d like to share more about?

Every year, I organize a trip back to Senegal to visit and do dancing, drumming, and singing. Information about it is on my website.

Now I’d like to dive into your perspectives on academia. How long have you taught in academia? What courses have you most often taught?

I’ve been teaching at The Ailey School and at Barnard College since 1997. I teach West African.

Since you started teaching in academia, have you seen more opportunities for students to study Afro diasporic dance forms? If so, what exactly has changed?

I don’t think there’s been a change. It depends where I’m teaching. At Barnard, I’m not sure I would call it change. Some students take my classes as a PE requirement, some take it as a dance major or minor. Some want to take it for fun, some want to take it to fulfill a requirement.

Whatever steps I’m teaching, a dancer will use them in whatever types of dances they do. You always find the same ideas and steps. I tell my students, “Whatever I’m teaching you as a modern dancer, I’m teaching you the African part.” My students come from a lot of different styles of dance, but mostly modern. Whatever I’m teaching them, it’s for them to use and have more vocabulary. Modern dance is a mixture of a lot of dance forms, including many African forms.

Photo courtesy Maguette Camara

Where you’ve taught, are Afro diasporic dance forms treated as equally valuable as Western dance forms like ballet and modern? If not, what changes would you like to see in college dance curriculums?

I think I’m valued the same as every other teacher. A lot of the dance schools are really big in ballet or Limón technique, for example. They are adding something like African dance or Afro Caribbean dance to the curriculum. There is Ballet 1, Ballet 2, Ballet 3, and Ballet 4. And where I teach there’s African Dance 1 and African Dance 2. There are opportunities to become advanced in African dance. I have trained dancers who end up in professional African dance companies, but most are in modern dance.

Why is it important for dance students to be educated in Afro diasporic forms? How does it create a better or more well-rounded dancer?

It makes them better because the dances they do almost always originated from African dance. I see a lot of African dance in other dance forms. The technique might be different, like the way dancers carry their bodies. We tend to be a little lower in African dance. But African dance is the base of many other dance forms. It always comes back to African dance.

Any other thoughts?

Around New York, there are a lot of African dance companies and schools that are really big and have been around for more than 30 years: Maimouna Keita Dance School, Kotchegna Dance Company, Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation, and my company Manékadang Dance & Drum Company. They’re not as big as a lot of the modern dance companies, but they do exist. As a result, there’s more awareness and training in African dance in New York. It might be that in other areas of the US there aren’t as many opportunities to study African dance.

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To learn more about Maguette, visit www.maguettecamara.com.

Photo courtesy Maguette Camara

The post “It Always Comes Back to African Dance” appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Momar Ndiaye is an internationally recognized dance artist from Senegal who has taught and toured his work both in the US and abroad. He is currently on faculty at the American Dance Festival, and assistant professor at Ohio State University. He has also been developing work with his own company, Cadanses, which is based in Senegal, since 2004. Here, Momar talks about the political, technical, and social aspects of why Afro diasporic dance forms deserve equal footing with European classical dance forms in American college dance programs, and why he is interested in creating more opportunities to support emerging artists in his home country.

This interview is part of Afro Diasporic Dance in College Settings, a series of interviews with dance professors who teach Afro diasporic dance forms in American college dance programs.

Photo by Felix Burkel

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What was your introduction to dance and what have been some highlights or pivotal moments in your dance career?

You can tell from my last name, Ndiaye, that I’m from Africa, and to be specific, Senegal. It is a majority Black country and is divided into six major linguistic groups. I belong to the largest, Wolof. I was born and raised around dance and music. Our society is divided into castes, and each caste has somewhat of a function. I am not a griot. Griot, or “Guewël” in Wolof, are in charge of history, culture, and arts. The caste system is disappearing because modernity and Western culture is taking over, but it is still anchored in some communities. Regardless, I’ve always been around dance because African society is shaped that way: If you’re happy, you dance. If you’re sad, you dance. It’s a way of expressing emotion. You dance through rites of passage such as circumcision, etc.

My dad is a music collector; everything from Latino music like salsa and bachata to R&B, international music, and local music have always been a part of my life because of his record collection. And then on TV every Saturday night were variety music and dance shows. I fell in love with Michael Jackson when I was a kid. I happen to be talented in terms of looking at movement once and reproducing it, so I would imitate his dance moves for my dad’s friends. I would also do this with a local singer who was pretty famous, Moussa Ngom. He was a fervent advocate for the confederation of Senegal and Gambia. He always wore two different colored socks, one color for each country. My dad’s friends would ask me to imitate him singing and dancing.

In middle school, I joined the school theater group. We would rehearse after classes. Because it was a school theater company, everything we did was connected to history or education. With friends, we started a b-boy group. I actively started dancing onstage using hip-hop styles when I was 15. This was a group we created with friends from the neighborhood.

In Senegal, there was a national dance competition. We auditioned and passed. That’s how my national career started as someone actively rehearsing and performing. My parents allowed me to dance recreationally as long as it was not interfering with my studies. This competition was over the summers, so we’re talking about 14-15 hours of rehearsals every day spread over two months. I did that dance competition for five years. It was a space where I learned most of the African dances that I’m able to perform right now. Because it was a national dance competition, we would have to research the dances and the music. Sometimes it was easy, but sometimes we would have to go seek help from folks immersed in those dances.

One of those mentors asked if I wanted to dance more seriously. He helped me join a private dance team where I learned jazz and Afro jazz. It was more Western. It escalated until I founded my own dance company in 2004.

My company, Cadanses, got funded to work with the International Research and Development NGO, which worked with communities in developing countries. They had a program called Scientific Culture and I got support from them to make work that was directly speaking to environmental issues. As a choreographer, I was immersed in the research environment. Scientists would explain things to me and have me look through the microscope to see how elements interact. And then I would make a version of what I learned using dance and music, so when illiterate people watched the piece, they would understand the mechanics. I did this for about three years before diving into contemporary dance.

Photo by Elise Fitt-Duval

I joined an international dance company based in Senegal called “Premier Temps.” Through their program AEx-Corps, I had opportunities to train more. To me, training is very important. I don’t see dance as something rigid; it always evolves. That program was to prepare me to join the company while at the same time developing a choreographic vision and a more diverse and open technical background. For about three years, I was always immersed in a creative environment, working with choreographers from different countries.

That’s when the problems with my family started. I have a dual degree in Quantitative Techniques of Management-Economics, and Marketing: Commercial Action. My family was upset I wasn’t using my degrees. Eventually I came to the US and got my MFA in Dance, which was another important highlight of my career.

In 2012, I got the chance to go to ImpulseTanz and be part of what they call danceWEB, a selective and competitive program. Thousands apply from all over the world and that year I was one of four Africans selected. It was an opportunity to interact with 60 other young international choreographers in one place, dancing and talking about dance every day. It was an important moment in my career in terms of learning about European aesthetics and how they can coexist or be in tandem with African aesthetics.

I developed professional relationships and kept networking. Before I got my MFA, I would be invited to teach master classes. But I started teaching semester-based classes when I started my MFA in 2014.

Photo by Katia

What is your current dance practice? How often do you teach, perform, and/or choreograph?

I teach every day basically. In a normal semester, I have three to four courses: a contemporary course, an African/traditional course, and a repertoire course which is teaching technique and choreography with an expected performance. Basically, I am a studio-based professor, whether it’s teaching how to make work or teaching technique.

Can you share more about your company Cadanses?

Cadanses was initially created as an association, meaning a nonprofit. Last year I created an annex of it because an association status doesn’t allow certain activities. Now there is Cadanses and Lacadanses. Lacadanses is now an official company that is separate from the association, but they are still interconnected.

Cadanses is an acronym in French for “company African de danses.” The idea was to provide support and training to folks who may not have access to training in dance and related fields that gravitate around dance, like sound design, theater, and lighting. Cadanses offers a space for training and supporting folks who are trying to make it as artists. The other side of Cadanses is creating dance and performing, so there is a community side and a performance side.

Photo by Andreya Ouamba

The idea behind Lacadanses was to create an annex that would handle the business side of the creative industry, so the community aspect could remain in the nonprofit side. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, I needed to create a separate but related organization that has its own legal registration, recognized by the Senegalese government. Everything I do in this way is still based in Senegal. In the US, I do things as freelance or officially connected to Cadanses. One of the goals of coming to the US was to build a bridge between artists. I’m still very attached to that idea, and it is happening slowly.

I have not had much time to create work with my company recently, but my dancers have been making, and I’ve been supporting them. I haven’t had time to choreograph for Cadanses because I’ve been developing a bigger training program with partners from Europe which is called Share/Creative Africa. It started from an idea that is very simple: When I am in Senegal and I make work, I need to go to Europe to find a lighting designer. I can make the dance in Senegal, but everything related to production has to come from Europe or the US. We have very few lighting designers in Senegal, and they don’t have the resources to do the job. The idea is to train folks to create, hoping they will be mentors for future generations. Looking at it from a longer perspective, we will not need to go to Europe for relevant sound or lighting design. I also want to create a space where we can talk about dance as a creative industry, not necessarily needing the French institute in order to have a platform to perform. Everything can be produced and showed locally. That’s the idea behind Share/Creative Africa. I have partners from Burkina Faso, Slovenia, Cameroon, and other places. That and my other professional obligation in the US are why I have not had time to choreograph for Cadanses. It’s a lot to manage.

Now I’d like to dive into your perspectives on academia. How long have you taught in academia? And what courses have you most often taught?

I’ve taught dance for film and dance documentation, traditional African and African urban forms, as well as contemporary and Afro-contemporary, improvisation, and composition. I have taught at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Denison University, University of North Carolina at Asheville, and Ohio Wesleyan University. I have also been on faculty at American Dance Festival since 2018 teaching in both professional and pre-professional programs.

Since you started teaching in academia, have you seen more opportunities for students to study Afro diasporic dance forms?

There are more and more opportunities for people to be immersed in the world of Afro diasporic dance forms. Universities are revising their curriculum to make it a little more diverse and inclusive, as well as trying to treat equally all the forms that used to be under the umbrella of world dance. It is time to pay tribute to the contribution of Black dance forms. We cannot talk about contemporary or modern dance without talking about what Black people have contributed. Even ballet. I don’t believe there’s a form in this world that has not been influenced by Africa. It is time and it is happening gradually and broadly. By allowing a space to be carved into institutions for students to be trained in traditional African dance and African vernacular dances, we’re mirroring what we could qualify as an ethical globalization. We are starting to be more inclusive in our practices and in our curriculums. It’s happening in many major universities.

Photo by Andrew

Where you’ve taught, are Afro diasporic dance forms treated as equally valuable as Western dance forms like ballet and modern? If not, what changes would you like to see in college dance curriculums?

Before, all these forms were put under the umbrella of world dance. And then you’d have ballet level 1, 2 and 3 that are required courses. Now what’s happening, at least here at Ohio State, is our students must have four semesters of African dance. That’s equal to the requirements for ballet. And they can elect to take extra. There is at least a trial of equalizing or offering more space for these forms to exist.

There are difficulties. We are carving a space for this form to exist, which means we must have resources like people who can teach and make sure those forms are taught effectively. There are not many of us right now doing it, but at least we’re opening the space more and more. As a result, there are more international students who were fearful before of not getting the support they’d needed in researching traditional African dance or African American vernacular. The more we train people, the more we open the field, and more people will teach later.

It’s a system inside of a system that is learning how to coexist. In order to be a teacher at a university, there are requirements. Most people who live in the US who are dancers and want to teach get an MFA. Getting the degree is a necessity. I came into the US as someone who was already making my way in the international community. Getting my MFA in dance was a necessity to learn about American college dance culture. It doesn’t mean I consider myself a master in African dance or any dance. I know enough to understand that a dancer must be humble, since dance in general is a living and breathing being that evolves constantly.

Photo by Andrew

In the African world, the idea of “master” is very tricky. How can we be a master in dance? If you ask that to an African, they will tell you it’s impossible. We are talking about thousands of dances. You can only aim to be a master of one or two dances. We discern the diversity and multiplicity of dances within Africa. Each dance represents something that’s attached to a community. As a Wolof, I can talk about my culture’s dances. I can learn other dances, but then my connection to the dance and culture would be different. I consider myself someone who knows and is still learning. There’s a humility that African dance requires. You know what you know, and you acknowledge that it changes. There are areas you may not know, and these are areas of research.

Why is it important for dance students to be educated in Afro diasporic forms? How does it create a better or more well-rounded dancer?

There’s the political side: When we talk about modern dance, what do we mean? Are we qualifying only Western forms of modern dance? Can we at least sit down and say there are so many elements in European modern dance that come from Black communities? Can we talk about nuances and acknowledge places of origin? Can we pay tribute to the origins of those that were deported and chained by learning their actual dances?

The other side is technical. I train dancers to operate in multiple spaces. Learning dances from Africa reinforces everything a dancer needs to be relevant in 2022, like the nuances in footwork, polyrhythms, polycenter-ness, speed, resilience, respect, and humanism.

Photo by Natalie Fiol

I’m no longer going to make the case for African dance. Using Eurocentric dances as comparative reference is a passive way of placing African forms under Eurocentric forms. Someone asked me once in an interview what would be the benefit of teaching African dance in an institution. I said I did not understand the question. He said that in modern dance, there are progressions to see concepts such as body halves. I said that the most basic motion in African dance would encapsulate all those elements. Many dances from Africa are polyrhythmic; the feet, torso, and arms are all marking specific rhythms. Three rhythms existing in one body in motion – tell me that’s not a relevant skill for a dancer. We as instructors of African forms see our students struggle in our classes and face the difficulties of finding strong dancers from here capable of dancing in our choreographic work, which undeniably means there is a technical gap that needs to be filled. I was trained as a polyvalent dancer and that is what I want for my students.

The other side is the social aspect and the community reinforcement. This includes the social justice and equalizing space we always talk about. This is all stuff that’s inherently in every African dance class you find. We start in a circle in the beginning. We acknowledge each other. We celebrate each other. We cannot operate without acknowledging ourselves and others. In African dance classes, we’re already doing what we are trying to do right now in the US, which is undoing racism.

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To learn more, visit www.momarkndiaye.com.

The post Discerning The Diversity and Multiplicity of Dances within Africa appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Etienne Cakpo is a dancer, choreographer, and musician originally from Benin, West Africa, as well as the director and lead choreographer of Gansango Music and Dance Company in Seattle, WA. He teaches and performs traditional African dance from Benin as well as contemporary African dance styles and has been building his dance repertoire for more than 30 years. He is currently on faculty at the University of Washington in Seattle where he teaches African dance technique. Here, Etienne reflects on how college dance programs are becoming more open to including Afro diasporic dance in their curriculums, but there is still not parity. He also shares how his classes have positively affected many of his students and how there is abundant cultural value in learning the dances of Africa.

This interview is part of Afro Diasporic Dance in College Settings, a series of interviews with dance professors who teach Afro diasporic dance forms in American college dance programs.

Photo by Siri Wood

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What was your introduction to dance and what have been some highlights or pivotal moments in your dance career?

I have been dancing since I was very young. Dance is an integral part of life in Africa. My family is animist; the dances they do are very spiritual. Going to the village with my mom and dad to be part of the ceremonies and feeling the connection between the drummers and dancers was so powerful. I was brought into it and wanted to learn. When I was seven years old, my friends and I created a group that performed around the neighborhood every December before Christmas for a holiday kind of like Halloween that we call Kaleta. We performed masked dances around the neighborhood to collect coins.

As I got older, people encouraged me by saying I was a good dancer, and I was drawn to it. I remember being mesmerized the first time I saw a video of Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing ballet. I got more serious about dance in my teen years, and when out of school I began performing for singers and performers who were well-known locally. I decided to pursue dance professionally when I was 20 years old and started teaching and collaborating with friends from Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria. Each person would present their style and we would teach together. We would teach three to four classes a week and I would also dance by myself every day. I eventually performed at the French Cultural Center in Cotonou and worked with visiting choreographers such as Kettly Noel from Haiti and Nicole Ponzo from France, so those were important points in my early career.

I began teaching at the University of Washington (UW) in 2017 and have continued since. I was invited several times before that to teach a one-off course before teaching regularly.

What is your current dance practice? How often do you teach, perform, and/or choreograph?

Over the past nearly two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve continued to teach public classes, but I shifted to online instruction for many months. Now there is more work back in the classroom, although some events and classes are still online. I teach public classes for all levels, and I teach in the UW’s Department of Dance program. I do a lot of residencies in elementary and middle schools as well. Performing with my company also gives me a lot of energy; we get small local arts grants to produce large public shows and we also present multicultural school assemblies and events at public libraries and community centers. I try to dance every day in any case!

Photo by Siri Wood

Can you share more about Gansango Music and Dance Company? What kind of work does the company create?

My company Gansango Music and Dance was formed in 2001 after I arrived in Seattle. We have a core of around four to five artists from West Africa and the US who are master dancers and drummers, and we often expand the group to include additional artists depending on the type of event or client seeking our services. I create a lot of new contemporary choreography, some of which is purely modern, but much of which also draws from the vast repertoire of traditional rhythms and movements found across West African dance traditions, especially from my home country of Benin. We also present purely traditional dances from Benin and sometimes other countries. When we have resources to do so, we invite guest dancers from other countries to come and work with us, and that provides a lot of energy and inspiration when we can co-create in a multicultural group. Our work is diverse and wide-ranging, as can be gleaned from our more than 100 videos on YouTube found on the Gansango Dance channel.

Do you have an upcoming project or performance with Gansango you’d like to share more about?

Currently we don’t have large upcoming performance projects. The pandemic has forced us to focus more on basic teaching and smaller performance events. We certainly hope to identify grant funding to revive our Africa Remix performance series.

We produced the Africa Remix series in 2017 and 2019. We brought different groups of African dancers and performers together to share and co-create a multi-faceted show over a few weeks’ time. We organized a public dance workshop and then two nights of performances. We received a small grant from a local arts agency and collaborated with Langston, a nonprofit housed in Seattle’s Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. They contributed the theater space and helped with promotion. For the performance, our company invited Ida Faho, a guest artist from Burkina Faso. We also had local performers who were from Brazil, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal.  A lot of them are regular collaborators. Langston really liked it and so we produced Africa Remix 2 in 2019 and brought the same artist over from Burkina Faso. Our aspiration is to make it an annual tradition and perhaps turn it into a contemporary African dance festival at some point.

Photo by Siri Wood

Now I’d like to dive into your perspectives on academia. How long have you taught in academia? And what courses have you most often taught?

I have taught at the University of Washington since 2017, and I usually teach dance at the 200 or 300 level – beginning or intermediate African technique – a mixture of traditional and modern. I’ve taught two quarters that were classes in preparation for big performances, and those were really rewarding because the students worked hard at the choreographies, and they got to dance onstage in costumes for large audiences.

I primarily teach dances from Benin and dances from the West Africa region: Togo, Guinea, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Senegal. And then I create my own technique by mixing a little bit of modern dance to make the movement a little easier for people here in the US. At UW, I teach a mixture of contemporary and traditional in the same class. I work with my students first on the rhythms and tempos and how to respond to the drum call. I teach them some basic traditional movements, but if I start teaching traditional dance without modifications, they get confused right away. Traditional Beninese dance is complex and polyrhythmic. You’ll see deeply bent knees, the ripple movement of the arms, the undulation of the back, opposing arm-leg movements, and close contact with the earth. If you try to teach that to a beginner, it’s too much at once. I take different aspects of the dance and teach them in isolation.

Since you started teaching in academia, have you seen more opportunities for students to study Afro diasporic dance forms?

Yes, especially over the past year or two with the increased emphasis on equity, diversity, and inclusion. UW has offered more classes taught by African instructors and focused on different styles from Africa and the diaspora. But it’s still not mainstream by any means.

Currently I am adjunct faculty. UW wants to hire someone fulltime, but they want someone with a masters or PhD in dance and with a background in African dance. The problem is you cannot go to school for two or four years and really know African dance. You find this with a lot of ethnic dance forms where the tradition has evolved from the culture, not from an academic standpoint. It can be analyzed from an academic standpoint, but it emerges from the tradition. In the US, a lot of African immigrants teach dance not from an academic perspective but from their traditional roots. That has a lot of value. But it doesn’t have as much credibility in the academic world; it’s like trying to fit a square pin in a round hole.

Photo by Erik Stuhaug

Where you’ve taught, are Afro diasporic dance forms treated as equally valuable as Western dance forms like ballet and modern? If not, what changes would you like to see in college dance curriculums?

No, I definitely feel that Afro-centric dance is not respected in the same way or on the same level as more classical Western styles. It’s less well-known and is viewed as not having as much philosophy, technique, or academic research behind it. For sure, Western forms such as ballet have vast literary and academic foundations underpinning them, and even forms such as tango or salsa are more well-known than dances from Africa and the African diaspora. But there is scholarship out there by African dance instructors, some of it limited to the French language. I do think African dance merits greater consideration and should be made more accessible for people to try. Many of my students at UW try my class as their first experience with African dance, and they are blown away – they love it and embrace it wholeheartedly!

The same is true of dance forms from Asia and Latin America for that matter; mainstream college curricula would benefit from offering more ethnic-based dance classes. And not just as a token offering, but with real consideration for what students are interested in, lack exposure to, or would find most enlightening. With 54 countries in Africa and more than 3,000 distinct ethnic groups speaking more than 2,000 languages across this vast continent, there is so much depth and breadth of culture to be explored through African dance!

While the culture-based dance traditions in Africa are strong and distinct, they are also evolving with younger generations. For example, you find very interesting forms such as Urban African/Afro/Afrobeat that are coming to the surface now and allowing for a lot of creativity and fusion of styles. A woman from Senegal/US is teaching Afro dance at UW this quarter. There are usually at least two Afrodiasporic dance classes offered each quarter – Capoeira, salsa, African technique, Afro, Tango, etc.

Why is it important for dance students to be educated in Afro diasporic forms? How does it create a better or more well-rounded dancer?

African dance has so much to teach us! There are dances that are ceremonial, social, religious, historical. Some tell stories, some teach us, some put us in closer contact with the elements of nature, many express joy through myriad movements. Most African dance is polyrhythmic and helps hone a dancer’s timing and tempo. Much of African and Afro-centric dance employs the ‘dooplé’ stance of bent knees and practices connection with the earth. This is immediately noticeable in traditional dance from Benin.  This rooted stance contrasts starkly with the airiness and flight of ballet. And yet the jumps and leaps in African dance are remarkable because the movement springs up through the lower stance and can really articulate explosive joy. Dance from Guinea offers an excellent example of this.

Photo by Siri Wood

During my classes, I build community. I encourage the students to not overthink and just feel their movements in relation to the live drumming. Many students experience a profound connection through this environment – the competitive edge of their Western dance classes falls to the wayside, and they let go of self-judgment and fear of moving “the wrong way,” and that’s a liberating experience. I know this because they share a lot of feedback with me, especially through journal/self-reflection writing assignments. Last quarter one student of mine from Japan submitted an essay that included this passage:

“When I was in elementary school, I took ballet classes, and when I was in junior-high and high school, I took jazz and hip-hop classes as well. I really enjoyed those classes, but nobody told me how dance is connected to mother nature. Nobody showed me what exactly dance is. They only told me techniques or rules. So, everything you told me in this class fascinates me and it feels like this is the first class that I felt I want to dance more and more from the very bottom of my heart… To tell the truth, I was about to shut down the eyes of my heart and stop dancing. [Through this course] I realized that my love and passion towards live performances has even gotten bigger and bigger!”

Many students, especially those from non-Western countries, also write about how the African dance classes help take them back to the joy they felt as a child dancing in their family circles or during their cultural festivals and rites. I love that African dance can put people in touch with that part of their identity, even when they are from North or South America, Asia, or other regions.

Any other thoughts?

I traveled to Colombia three years ago and went to a school to teach African dance. The way the Colombians picked up the dance was so natural. I only showed them the movement one time and they got it. A lot of them were Afro-Colombians. When African slaves were brought to Colombia, a lot of them ended up in the region called Chocó. When I heard the music they played, I thought I was in Benin. It’s the same with Brazil. Dancing, drumming, and singing are every day and everywhere. If we could have that here in the U.S., it would change people’s lives. At UW, I emphasize community building in my classes. I want the community to work together more and grow. The strength of dance in Africa is that it’s not done in isolation; it’s done in community.

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To learn more, visit gansango.com.

Photo by Erik Stuhaug

The post Sown from Culture, Flourishing in Community appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Rujeko Dumbutshena is a Zimbabwean-born dancer, pedagogue and performer who focuses her practice in neo-traditional and contemporary African dance. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Florida where she teaches courses in Contemporary African and African Diasporic Dance Practices. Here, Rujeko shares how teaching at the university level has always been a facet of her dance career, and how she has seen major shifts in how Afro diasporic dance is valued within college dance curriculums over the past couple years since the Black Lives Matter protests.

This interview is part of Afro Diasporic Dance in College Settings, a series of interviews with dance professors who teach Afro diasporic dance forms in American college dance programs.

Photo by Gregory L Evans

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What was your introduction to dance and what have been some highlights or pivotal moments in your dance career?

I was introduced to dance when I was six years old and living in what was Rhodesia at the time and is now Zimbabwe. It was still Apartheid. My parents sent me to a private elementary school. Integration in schools had just started, so I was the only Black student in an otherwise all white elementary school. It was challenging to say the least; most of my teachers were very racist. However, the school offered ballet classes and my ballet teacher accepted me. She allowed me to excel and gave me the encouragement to keep going. It was really enjoyable for me. That was the beginning of my dancing.

I didn’t dance through high school because I was told it wasn’t something viable to do with my time. I moved to the United States to go to college and that’s where I saw examples of people with careers in dance. My BA was going to be in Visual Art, but dance started taking over. I was introduced to West African dance and Congolese dance. And then when I went home, I would practice and study Zimbabwean styles of dance. I got to go to Congo Camp, which was in California in the early 90s, where I was introduced to my mentors Mabiba Bagnae and Titos Sompa. In DC, there’s a lot of West African dance, so I was taking those classes. Eventually, I started dancing with a company called Wosa.

Years later I started teaching. I moved to New Mexico where I started teaching at the College of Santa Fe and then at the University of New Mexico. That’s where I started my drum and dance camps that ran for 16 years. That was a big part of my dance story.

New York was also pivotal. I taught in New York, specifically at after school programs and dance elective courses in public schools and at Sarah Lawrence College. I performed off-Broadway and on Broadway in Fela! The Musical. I came back to New Mexico and kept teaching and choreographing.

Then I decided to do my MFA. I had intended to get my MFA at Sarah Lawrence, but I have two children who were young at that point. I ended up dropping out. When I came back to New Mexico, my children were older. I also felt at that point like I needed more structure. I felt drained from the independent artist life and career. You really have to motivate and drive your career on your own. Getting an MFA offered the potential to be a fulltime professor.

That’s one of those stories where timing is everything; the timing of finishing my MFA when many dance programs across the country were looking to diversify their programs and were looking for Afro Diasporic forms was just right.

Photo by Audrey Derell

What is your current dance practice? How often do you teach, perform, and/or choreograph?

It has varied a lot. Because I started full time work in universities during the pandemic, it’s been weird. I taught for a year at the University of Washington, mostly online, and I’m now at the University of Florida. It’s really evolving because programs are figuring out what to do with my position. I started teaching level one technique class, and then with curriculum revisions there’s a need to introduce more levels, so at UW I taught level two. I also taught a number of dance studies courses at UW that focused on African dance. Now that I’ve moved to UF, there’s a big annual production that I’m responsible for being the artistic director and one of the choreographers for. That’s one of the big differences between a BA that focuses on dance studies and a BFA that focuses on performance.

Do you have an upcoming project or focus you’d like to share more about?

I am part of the Afro-Feminist Performance Routes cohort, a cohort that Duke University hosts every other year. About six Black women dance artists from all over the world come together every other year to teach workshops, do panel discussions, and build our relationships. We’ve been doing this for some years now.

Now I’d like to dive into your perspectives on academia. How long have you taught in academia? And what courses have you most often taught?

I started as adjunct faculty in 1994. I teach African dance technique, primarily Guinea, a little bit of Congolese, and Zimbabwean. I’ve had an adjunct faculty position consistently in addition to my many other teaching positions. I’ve always felt like that was a stabilizing thing for my career. I started at the College of Santa Fe, moved to the University of New Mexico where I was for a long time, then I was at Sarah Lawrence in New York, then I came back to New Mexico. And then since getting my MFA I’ve taught at the University of Washington and am now at the University of Florida. All that experience has made me competitive, although there’s a big difference between adjunct and full time. When you move into full time positions, you have to commit to more meetings and service, and you do research.

Photo by Audrey Derell

Since you started teaching in academia, have you seen more opportunities for students to study Afro diasporic dance forms?

For sure, Afro diasporic dance has always been at the bottom along with other “world dance” or “ethnic dance” forms. Just recently with the Black Lives Matter movement making people realize how racist practices exist in institutions, everyone is having this “ah ha” moment. African dance is not seen as equal to ballet or contemporary. It’s always offered in the evening times so people don’t access it or see it on the same level as other forms. There are multiple ways it’s not supported or recognized.

Where you’ve taught, are Afro diasporic dance forms treated as equally valuable as Western dance forms like ballet and modern? If not, what changes would you like to see in college dance curriculums?

In the past two institutions I’ve worked in, African dance technique is a requirement, not an elective. That’s one of the first steps in decentering Eurocentric forms is moving cultural dance forms out of electives and into requirements.

Institutions need to think about timing as well. If an African dance class is offered at 5 p.m. or 3 p.m. at the end of the day, especially if it is required and students have been dancing all day, we need to question why it is always offered at the end of the day. Why is ballet the first technique students need at 10 a.m.? It’s privileging and not diversifying the ways time is allocated for these dance forms.

Most of my students haven’t had experiences in African dance prior to my class. Maybe some have had a little bit, but most are steeped in ballet, contemporary, jazz, and sometimes competition dance. They are far removed from what African dance has to offer or knowing much about it. They are beginning their knowledge with my class.

Change takes a long time. It takes a long time to sense the changes and see the effects. I would say that the changes I’ve seen made is in the requirements, in hiring faculty that is diverse both in race and form, and in seeing how students access each form. It ends up being about people’s personal growth, recognizing their racial biases, and working continuously on creating spaces that are inviting for students of color, as well as making space for people of color to be on the faculty and in leadership positions. The gatekeeping can be subtle, especially the reasons why not. Because you have an excuse for having institutions set up a certain way doesn’t mean you should continue.

Why is it important for dance students to be educated in Afro diasporic forms? How does it create a better or more well-rounded dancer?

In order to function in a world where the culture is changing and we’re influenced by globalization, it’s important for dancers to be smart and educated. Thinking about dance purely as entertainment or as something disconnected from the rest of the world is a detriment. If you connect dance historically and culturally, you learn about the lineage of the dance you’re practicing. The majority of the time, you will learn that the dance form you are practicing is somehow related to the African continent or the African diaspora. It’s important for students to be respectful of cultural dance forms. There is a technique; it takes training. It’s a discipline like any other discipline, and it has a depth of knowledge. It can teach you a lot about the world. Growing an appreciation of different forms can also help avoid the sticky places of appropriation. Appreciating the depth offered through the practice of cultural dance forms is important.

Photo by Pat Berrett

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Learn more about Rujeko here.

The post “It’s A Discipline Like Any Other Discipline” appeared first on Stance on Dance.

When I went to college for a BFA in Ballet at the University of Utah from 2004 to 2007, my technique requirements (to the best of my memory) were the following: ballet and pointe every day for every semester, modern dance twice a week for two semesters, jazz dance twice a week for two semesters, and character dance twice a week for two semesters. While my BFA was specifically in Ballet and not in Dance more generally, the same basic recipe for training dancers has continued in many of the elite dance programs around the country for decades.

While in college, I also discovered an Afro Brazilian dance class at a community center downtown. I’d take it once every few weeks when I wasn’t too bogged down with homework or too busy rehearsing for a show. I loved it. Aside from the atmosphere being a complete inverse from the strict hierarchical environment in the dance department, it was also a fun challenge to attempt the complex rhythms and very different ways of moving my body. And as much as I loved the ballet class accompanists with their piano riffs on musicals and ballet variations, the drumming was a more visceral throb than the calm chords in ballet class.

I’m not saying that ballet is ethereal and African forms are of-the-earth, because I think that’s an oversimplification that does neither justice. What I am saying is the community Afro Brazilian class complemented and augmented my training in ways I didn’t know how to appreciate at the time.

Fast forward about 10 years, I moved to Santa Fe in late 2014 after years of pursuing contemporary dance in the Bay Area. I heard about a Haitian/West African class in town and was immediately excited to give it a try. I ended up loving it. Attending the class two to three times a week became as much a part of my weekly dance regimen as going to ballet class. To this day, I find myself joyfully returning as often as possible to the Haitian/West African class.

I fell in love with ballet early and deeply, and I still love it, though of course that love has evolved. But growing up in the ballet world isn’t the most joyful of experiences. That’s not to say that other dance forms aren’t highly competitive and rigorous, but there’s a specific culture in ballet of restraint and austerity that does not lend itself to loving one’s body or feeling encouraged toward confidence. I’m sure the culture around other dance forms – including non-Western dance forms – isn’t perfect, but wouldn’t a young dancer benefit from having exposure to many modes of expression in order to explore what forms they feel most empowered and excited by? What are young dancers training for if not to find a range of expression and agency?

The other, and perhaps more important, reason young dancers should be exposed to and required to train in multiple forms from many areas of the globe is for the simple reason that the Western focused training I underwent is problematic. There is no objective argument that ballet or modern dance trains pre-professional dancers better than any other form. This division of Western forms versus “ethnic forms” has an air of racism to it. Ballet and modern dance are as much a product of society, history, and culture as any other dance form, as has long been researched and documented. However, it is only in the past few years that some college dance programs have begun to rethink their curriculums and hire tenure-track dance teachers who specialize in dance forms other than ballet and modern. Why are these college dance programs changing their tune now?

From my perspective, the short answer is George Floyd. The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 made institutions take a hard look at their programming, resulting in several dance programs seeking to hire tenure-track Afro diasporic and other previously considered “ethnic” dance teachers. These same teachers are now teaching required courses, as opposed to electives. Of course, there are plenty of dance training programs still entrenched in Western preeminence, but I wanted to take a close look at this opening of college dance curriculum, particularly toward Afro diasporic dance forms, and to talk to those who are at the forefront of making this shift.

Over the next several weeks, Stance on Dance is publishing interviews with Afro diasporic dance professors in colleges across the US. Their perspectives make clear that while some college dance programs are initiating curriculum requirements other than Western classical dance, there are still cultural and institutional hurdles in achieving equity.

I get excited when I see dance institutions questioning rather than reinforcing the status quo. Though I sometimes lament what my dance training could have been had I grown up 20 years later, I’m glad to see these shifts happen, and I am thankful for the small exposures I have had in other dance forms. It continues to enrich and excite me. I hope the dancers of tomorrow persist in fueling this more equitable approach toward dance education and scholarship, and in doing so, I look forward to watching the dance world reshape itself globally and culturally.

Illustration by Camille Taft

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The post Rethinking My Dance Education appeared first on Stance on Dance.