Ohio State Dance’s Dance Notation Bureau Extension Center for Education and Research, The Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s Frank W. Hale, Jr. Black Cultural Center; and the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center received a $100,000 Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme (GAHDT) Centers Grant, for its project: Archiving Black Performance: Memory, Embodiment, and Stages of Being. The collaborative project establishes a vision for the transmission of identity and race through the embodiment of dance repertory acquisition of internationally acclaimed black women dance performers. Partners across the university and the community will come together to support a holistic approach to filling the gap of information regarding black women choreographers and their legacies within American concert dance during the 2021-23 academic years. Collaborators include Assistant Professor Crystal Perkins, a nationally recognized performer; Professor Valarie Williams a certified professional notator who is reinvigorating the DNBExt and leads its mission of the preservation of dance through multiple media; former Professor Nadine George-Graves, nationally recognized for her leadership in advancing dance studies; Director Larry Williamson, Jr. bringing perspective and nationally recognized strategies for promoting and organizing black cultural artifacts; Distinguished Humanities Professor Adélékè Adéèkó bringing the lived experience of the cultural context surrounding some of the global dances and leadership of the AAAS Community Extension Center.
The team aims to elevate, via performance, oral history, archival research, summer workshops, digital preservation and communication methods, and publication, historic dances of black women performers as represented through black lives and black bodies. The focus is on solo, duet, and small group works staged, performed, or choreographed by/for black women early in the creation process. Faculty and students will engage through performing the dances, participating in symposia and lecture-demonstrations, conducting interviews about the historic nature of the dance’s performances, and teaching what they’ve learned in a community-focused summer workshop. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s Frank W. Hale, Jr. Black Cultural Center; the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center; and the Dance Notation Bureau Extension Center for Education and Research will partner with Mara Frazier, Ohio State Dance Alumna and Curator of Dance for University Libraries on design and implementation of presenting, programming and outcomes.
As the academy reframes its connection to local communities and supports a new generation of diverse scholars, this project importantly designs and develops easily accessible scholarship that will support future research. Intersecting disciplines of dance studies, black studies, preservation and archival research, aligned and useful to interdisciplinary public-facing activity, will impact the development and accessibility of intellectually responsive creative activity across the globe. One outcome is the creation of an oral history archive — At the Feet of The Elders – podcasts from the Hale Center. African Diaspora communities hold a deep connection to elder wisdom and ancestral legacy, and this audio archive invites the black women performers and scholars to discuss the futures and histories of black women in performance. It does the necessary work of cataloguing their stories, memories, and vantage points on equitable human existence through the arts. The final recordings will be available through the DNBExt website where many of its hallmark research projects reside.
Three women will be in residence during 2021-2022 : Ohio State Dance Alumna, Professor of Dance at Slippery Rock University and Director of the Frederick Douglass Institute Ursula Payne is workshopping the late Dr. Pearl Primus’ “Bushasche Etude.” Students have an opportunity to contribute to an improvisation workshop on movement generation shaped and based on the “Bushasche Etude.” Multiple podcast interviews will be recorded to preserve Payne’s story and Payne’s story of working with Primus. A public Lecture-Demonstration is planned for October 11, 2021, 5:30 p.m. Emerita Professor Bebe Miller is workshopping thematic phrases from “Vespers” (1982) and “Rain” (1989), along with participating in interviews. Finally, a residency with Carolyn Adams of Paul Taylor Dance Company and assisted by Michelle Fleet of the Paul Taylor Dance Company culminates the year. For this work students will be joined by members of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and a public Lecture-Demonstration is planned for Saturday, April 23, 2022, 5 p.m.
Next phases of the project are supported through funding from the Social Justice Seed Grant from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and from the Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls.
Archiving Black Performance
Bushasche Etude (1948)
choreographed by Dr. Pearl Primus
with traditional drumming
Join us for a Free and Open Community Performance and Conversation of the dance Bushasche Etude with Ursula Payne, Professor of Dance, Slippery Rock University and Director of the Frederick Douglass Institute and The Ohio State University Dancers.
Monday, October 11, 2021
5:30-6:30PM
African American and African Studies
Community Extension Center
905 Mt Vernon Ave
Columbus, OH 43203
Based on a traditional dance from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bushasche Etude is based on Primus' reimaging Bushasche, War Dance, A Dance for Peace in which the participants call up the gods of war and defeat them.
