By Ansley Keane ‘23
Staff Writer
On Friday, Feb. 12, Five College Dance and Mount Holyoke College’s Division of Student Life hosted the final session of RACE AND...Dance, a six-session series that began in October 2020 and was designed to teach Five College students about a variety of forms of African diasporic dance and culture. RACE AND...Dance was curated by Five College Joint Lecturer of African Diasporic Dance Shakia Barron.
According to the Five College Dance webpage, “RACE AND...Dance allows students, regardless of their dance experience or training, a creative mode by which to learn about and appreciate these diverse cultures, whose contributions to contemporary dance are often underexplored.” The RACE AND...Dance series was co-sponsored by Five College Dance; the dance departments of Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, Hampshire College, Amherst College and UMass Amherst; Mount Holyoke’s Division of Student Life; Mount Holyoke’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; and Mount Holyoke’s cultural centers. The sixth session was also part of Mount Holyoke’s Black History Month series.
“The vision [for RACE AND...Dance] was to look at ways to incorporate different styles of dance, particularly related to Black identity; intersecting both Black art and dance together,” Associate Dean of Students for Community and Inclusion Latrina Denson explained. Denson also noted that the event’s title emphasized the intersectionality of the program.
In sharing how RACE AND...Dance came to fruition, Denson explained that during the summer of 2020, Barron provided a couple of small workshops for students of African and Caribbean descent who had previously been in her classes. Denson noted that these workshops served as a healing and learning space for students after the murder of George Floyd. At the same time Barron was holding these workshops, Denson befriended Five College Dance Director Alex Ripp.
Denson told Ripp about the success of Barron’s workshops, and they looked to see how they could collaborate with Barron and the Five College and Mount Holyoke dance departments to offer similar opportunities in the academic year. Despite the challenges of teaching dance online, the online format of RACE AND...Dance created some new possibilities.
“We would not have been able to afford the caliber of artists that we provided. The people we got were from all over the country,” Denson said. From African folkloric dance to jazz to East Coast hip-hop, RACE AND...Dance represented a diverse selection of styles.
The sixth session focused on contemporary African dance and featured Ronald K. Brown. Brown is an award-winning choreographer and the founder and artistic director of EVIDENCE, A Dance Company. Over the course of his career, he has taught in 11 countries and at several United States universities.
The contemporary African dance session was structured as a dance workshop during which attendees had the opportunity to learn three phrases, or short dance sequences, followed by a Q&A session with Brown. The workshop began with warm-up exercises that went along with the tempo and pace of three different songs. During the warm-up, the choreography was fairly simple, and Brown demonstrated each step to ensure that experienced and inexperienced dancers alike would be able to participate. Brown also provided coaching and advice to participants. At multiple points throughout the workshop, Brown reached out to individual attendees to coach them on different steps and provide feedback on how they could perform the phrases better.
In addition to teaching the phrases, Brown wove information about contemporary African dance into the workshop. He explained that, in communities with traditional dances, elements of those dances appear in that community’s contemporary and social dances.
Denson emphasized the value of having arts-based events, like RACE AND...Dance. “Some of them would do a mini-lecture before, some of them would go into the history. The majority of the sessions were about workshopping how to dance,” Denson said. “It’s a lot better [to include a workshop], because it’s interactive.”
She continued, “Art provides the opportunity for healing. It’s a form of expressing who you are … [and] what you’re celebrating.”
Denson sees RACE AND...Dance as an overall positive experience. “It definitely was a success, particularly in a pandemic. We always had at least 30 people. I would have loved to engage more, particularly new, students of color, but we always had good numbers,” Denson said.
RACE AND...Dance offered participants from all the Five Colleges to engage with an interactive format that provided them with the opportunity to learn not only about the historical significance of these dance styles, which has frequently been overlooked, but also the dances themselves.