CARNIVAL PARADES ARE INTENSIVE, ORCHESTRATED PRODUCTIONS, but they are also verymuch about the spontaneity of dancing and playing music in the streets for the pure joy of performance.
Before the pandemic, I knew that many of my students weren’t aware of the Afro-Diasporic roots of the art forms we studied, but I only pro- vided historical context to supple- ment a focus on technique and phys- ical fitness. I didn’t feel the urgency to explore these aspects in-depth because when we were together in person they could experience first- hand the qualities of Afro-Diasporic dances that make them so powerful and special. Whether it was the Hip-Hop cyphers of the Bronx, the capoeira and samba rodas of Bra- zil, or the Second Line parades of New Orleans, these practices inher- ently cultivated rituals of community exploration, competition, coopera- tion, and social/emotional awareness through self-expression. During vir- tual learning, I realized how import- ant it is to explicitly articulate our dance practices’ shared histories and legacies through play. For my stu- dents to see the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual benefits of learning culturally responsive arts education, I had to forsake linear, regimented, Westernized pedagogical structures in favor of a circular, holistic, experience that more accu- rately reflected the Afro-diasporic communities from which these art forms originated. O ver 365 days later, the country is slowly emerging from its solitary confine- ment. As I reflect on this year of virtual dance learn- ing, one thing has become strikingly
the Transatlantic Slave Trade or the Afro-Diasporic origins of Hip-Hop dance before taking my class. Second, the lack of comprehen- sive, culturally responsive arts edu- cation in our public schools deprives the students of valuable context to understand and navigate their expe- riences as children of color in Amer- ica. In other words, the dances they see on TikTok and other social media platforms are part of a history that they are not aware of and our public schools are not filling the gaps. With- out that crucial context, under-re- sourced teaching artists are left with the herculean task of teaching the content in a way that is engaging enough to bridge the knowledge gap while also providing social, emo- tional, and/or physical wellness. And this was before introducing the myr- iad technological barriers that arose during virtual learning. In the absence of that reciprocal relationship, the pandemic forced me to adapt in order to recreate that space of connection at the intersection of dance practice, art history, and tech- nology. One way that I did this was through teaching about Carnival. Car- nival’s vibrant, multicultural festival of food, music, dance, and pageantry is coded with both joyful liberation and subversive resistance. It inherited the subversiveness from its European roots as a Pre-Lenten festival of excess but gained new meaning as an eman- cipation tradition through the African, Asian, and Indigenous practices that were infused into the parades, perfor- mances, and parties. It is also one of
clear: not only are many of our young students tragically estranged from their cultural and artistic her- itage, but this estrangement nega- tively affects their social, emotional, and intellectual development. More than any other performing art form, Afro-diasporic dances come from traditions built within the safety and power of the drum circle, the roda, the cypher. These dance rituals thrive in spaces of physical contact and connection between performers, musicians, and the audience. Without those spaces, students are left with nowhere to go but social media and video games for connection. The problem is that these cyber- spaces are often unprotected social spaces where concepts of dance as an art form are oversaturated with decontextualized viral dances like Fortnite “emotes” and any number of dance challenges on TikTok. Emotes, short, downloadable inter- actions like taunts, poses, and dances, are based on real dances taken from popular trends and Afro-Diasporic culture and renamed without attribution or context. Nota- ble diasporic dance additions to Fort- nite include the “Conga” of Afro- Cuban origin; the comedic, Carlton Banks-inspired “Fresh” dance; and “Breakneck,” an acrobatic move orig- inally known in Hip-Hop circles as the “Windmill.” Out of the 45 stu- dents that I taught this year between ages 8-15, 75% of them actively use TikTok and 50% of them play Fort- nite. Out of those same 45 students, only 5 of them knew anything about
16
in dance SUMMER 2021 16
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker