Shola Ok. Roberts is an award-winning dancer and educator who now teaches within the College of Music, Dance and Theatre at Arizona State College (ASU). She all the time envisioned bringing college students and school to expertise these Caribbean and African kinds firsthand.
“Caribbean dance and Caribbean tradition is one thing international to my learners,” Roberts says.
Dance Grenada. Photograph courtesy of Shola Ok. Roberts.
This yr, ASU dance college students had the chance to journey to Roberts’ group in Grenada. College students practiced and carried out with Caribbean practitioners and native studio dancers at Dance Grenada, the nationwide pageant Roberts based in 2019.
“The truth that I’m in my second yr instructing right here and capable of mobilize school members and college students to journey and create a cross-cultural, cross-institutional trade between [ASU] and on the island is essential,” Roberts says.
She plans for the pageant to proceed to develop, having extra college students expertise the island as a part of their dance training. Bringing individuals collectively to expertise her tradition and share experiences in Grenada is a big a part of why she based the pageant.
ASU college students Alecea Housworth (third-year Dance MFA pupil), Shayla Eshelman (Dance ‘24) and Cherish Hayes (Dance ‘25) had been capable of attend the cross-institutional journey by way of grants offered by the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
“I didn’t ever anticipate to have the ability to go to a unique nation and examine African kinds,” Eshelman shares. “I’ve all the time mentioned I wished to go someplace that’s not right here and study a unique tradition and magnificence. She actually made certainly one of my needs come true.”
They had been thrilled about this chance to observe dance on location. It was the primary time most of them had traveled outdoors the US.
Opening Ceremony of Dance Grenada. Photograph courtesy of Shola Ok. Roberts.
“It was so brilliant and heat, and the individuals had been so heat and welcoming,” Housworth remembers.
Housworth, Eshelman and Hayes had been coaching and working towards with Roberts to carry out at Dance Grenada’s welcome ceremony. This could kick off the collaboration between ASU college students and Caribbean dancers all through the pageant.
A part of the expertise was touring native dance studios like Conception Dance Theatre on the island to see how they observe. Collectively, dancing with educators and college students, they traded strategies and swapped kinds.
“When somebody is obvious about their historical past and identification, they’re all the time higher capable of navigate the world round them,” Roberts says. “They know easy methods to transfer in areas that won’t essentially seem like them or communicate like them.”
The three recounted their experiences.
“We’re right here to work. We’re right here to coach. We’re right here to develop collectively, and that’s precisely what we did on the primary day,” Eshelman says. “Every instructor introduced their very own depth, and it’s just like the academics knew what we wanted.”
“I bought to see all these individuals who have been working towards these motion kinds for years and working towards them with the individuals who have handed them on by way of generations,” Hayes provides. “You possibly can simply see trying on the form of their our bodies they’re simply so sturdy.”
“We had been there for like eight-plus hours sooner or later and we’re drenching, pouring in sweat,” Housworth remembers. “You possibly can ring out our t-shirts and our shorts. I do know it’s gross, however that’s how exhausting we had been dancing.”
Dance Grenada pageant members. Photograph courtesy of Shola Ok. Roberts.
Throughout these courses, native distributors stood on the aspect promoting handmade crafts. Roberts remembers pleasure as dancers supported the distributors making a dwelling. Nevertheless it went each methods, based on Roberts.
“Seeing among the distributors eager to rise up and dance, feeling compelled to maneuver as a result of they felt the vitality,” Roberts explains.
The pageant was a approach to carry the entire group collectively and train how essential dance must be taken as critically as different professions.
“Constructive vitality is so contagious that typically individuals can’t run away from it,” Roberts says.
The cross-cultural trade wasn’t a one-sided journey for ASU college students to find out about Grenadian tradition. Roberts wanted group members on the island and dancers to see what’s doable in dance.
“They’re doing dance as a interest. It was one thing they’re really enthusiastic about, however they produce other jobs and will not be capable of discover it,” Housworth notes.
Dance in Grenada traditionally lacks the funding and assist wanted. The pageant is a key approach to present individuals that is one thing that must be taken critically.
“All of them had been just about saying the identical factor, that we’d like extra entry,” Hayes says. “We want extra advocacy, and we’d like individuals outdoors of the dance world to see dance for what it’s and to understand it.”
Eshelman was taking a break throughout a category when a lady approached and instructed her how impressed she was. She requested Eshelman, “I used to be questioning, the way you do this? I need to proceed to bounce, however I’ve lots of people telling me it’s a waste of time.”
“I’ve been coping with these very same issues,” Eshelman instructed the lady. “And I proceed to cope with them even now, however have a look at the place I’ve been. I had the chance to come back and dance with you in Grenada. These items are doable. You simply have to determine what you’re centered on and what you need and simply hold working.”
Housworth, Eshelman and Hayes had been capable of construct conversations with different passionate, younger dancers to indicate them that dance as a profession is a chance; it doesn’t simply must be a interest to them.
“We often don’t see one thing as being attainable except we see another person doing it,” Roberts explains as being an essential motive for ASU college students finding out dance to attend.
Roberts hopes coverage modifications and advocacy will emerge from the pageant sooner or later. Vital figures in attendance had been the Grenadian Minister of Youth, Sports activities and Tradition, the Honorable Ron Redhead; and the Grenadian Advisor for the Ministry of Financial Improvement and Planning, Orlando Romaine.
“That is one thing of worth; that is academia,” Roberts says. “In different components of the world, people are having conferences and panel discussions.”
Dance must be a device to advertise the empowerment of Grenadian individuals; it isn’t one thing that’s purely performative, Roberts emphasizes. It’s a approach of preserving historical past and tradition, selling economics and selling self-identity.
Grenada values its traditions, Roberts factors out; for the deeper worth to be understood, dance must be positioned on the identical degree as different scholarly topics.
Dance Grenada. Photograph courtesy of Shola Ok. Roberts.
Roberts is aware of the pageant goes to proceed to develop because it enters its fifth yr and shall be a part of Grenada’s official 50 years of independence celebration. With the varsity’s collaboration, they’ll be capable to carry extra college students and proceed to develop the cross-institutional conversations to assist ASU college students and future dancers in Grenada.
“Even when individuals aren’t from Grenada, it nonetheless seems like a house and homecoming,” Roberts says.
When Roberts spoke, she had simply returned from the pageant, desirous to share together with her college students once more at ASU.
“At this time was my first day again lecturing,” Roberts shares. “I had a second the place I assumed we are able to’t afford to take breaks. We will’t afford to dismiss or let go of what we’ve already attained. We have now to carry on to it as a result of then we’re working backward. Take your breaks, do what it is advisable do; however don’t let go of this data as a result of we now have to maintain progressing ahead.”
