Pictured in Picture: Naomi Gedo Johnson-Diouf, and Zakarya Diouf
When y’all are not dancing. What are y’all doing? KINE: We go out. When we’re all in the Bay Area, we do brunch at home on Sundays and cook together. Watch our different shows together, and come up with new dance ideas or come up with new drum breaks. Go on trips, take the kids places. Bond together. Since, some of us are not with the rest, try to find that time. We talk on the phone every day. We have a sibling group chat. We are very family-oriented, so we’re going to find ways. What does home mean to you? ESAILAMA: There’s a man named Baba Bill Summers, who was a very good friend of Papa’s. He said to me that the world is your house and these places that you are from are the many rooms in your house. So as we think about our house, and our house being the world, and our rooms being Senegal, Liberia, California, Atlanta, Cuba, wher- ever it is that we have planted seeds, those are the rooms in our house. When I think about home, I think about that. I think about my home being expansive and me hav- ing multiple rooms in that house that are various parts of the world.
KINE: Mmhmm I agree.
You can’t take Esailama’s answer. SAKEENAH: I can’t take her answer, but it’s funny because we call the house that our mother dwells at as ‘The House.’ Our parents’ house. “I’m at ‘the’ house” not “I’m at my house.” That’s the phrase for home. I won’t call it the foundation because of course we’ve lived in differ- ent places, but, this was the last home that, you know, that our parents shared. 20 years. I don’t want to be cli- che. Home is where the heart is. Home is where the love is. There are many aspects of what is home and what feels like home. And it’s multiple physical spaces. We all have our individual spaces and places. The space where I come in and out, it’s home for me. It’s home for my son. NKEIRUKA ORUCHE is a cultural organizer, multimedia creative of Igbo descent, who specializes in Afro-Urban culture and its intersections with social issues. She is a co-founder of BoomShake, a social justice and music education organization, and founder and executive artistic director of Afro Urban Society, an incubator and presenter of Pan Afro-Urban arts, cul- ture, and social discourse. In 2022, she created and directed ‘Mixtape of the Dead & Gone #1’– Ahamefula’, a shit-just-got-real dance-theater piece about life, death, and what the fuck comes next. She is a 2022 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, a Kikwetu Honors Awardee, a 2018 NYFA Immigrant Artist Fellow, YBCA 100 Honoree, and recipient of awards from Creative Work Fund, MAP Fund, New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, California Arts Council, among others.
IBRAHIMA: Love that! Love that explanation. I’m with you 100%.
SAKEENAH: I was just about to say what you just said.
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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