Strong in Our Reclaimed Culture

For over a decade Talise Campbell, visiting assistant professor of Africana Studies and Dance, has choreographed, costumed, and staged Juneteenth performances in Cleveland. Using her platform, Djapo Cultural Arts Institute, Campbell has taught generations of dancers around the world — both professionals and community members of the greater Cleveland area. While creating a network of artists between the Afrikan continent and the United States, Talise extends her community of Black Arts practitioners into Oberlin College. Most recently her daughter, Inaya Carrington who’s been dancing since she was 5 years old, has been helping Campbell teach her West Afrikan Dance II Class here at Oberlin College.

How did you find dance, or rather, how did dance find you?

Inaya Carrington: I kind of grew up in it. My mom has always been instrumental in introducing me to Afrikan culture from an early age. I grew up with a lot of Senegalese people — people in my house from a lot of different places speaking different languages. I would always go with my brother to my mother’s dance classes. I would never dance at first, but one day I started, and I’ve been dancing ever since about 5 or 6 years old. It wasn’t until I took my first trip to Senegal, West Afrika when I was 15 that I started taking dance more seriously; it was more of a spiritual thing for me. It changed my life. 

Talise Cambell: I went to babysit one of my cousins’ kids and a lady just walked up and said, “Put the baby down and dance.” Prior to that I was always doing the Janet Jackson talent shows and New Edition — I was jammin’. I was dancing all of the time, I just loved dancing. Dancing has always been a part of me, but in terms of Folkloric dance and Afrikan dance it wasn’t until that lady caught me at 11 years old. 

At that time I started taking a class, and they asked if I wanted to be in a show, and from there I’ve never stopped. I’ve gone so far in my studies to have surpassed my teachers. 

What was it about West Afrikan Dance that made you want to pass it down to your kids?

TC: First, it was the drum. There was something that was magnetic about the drum that just moved my spirit. Whatever it was that was inside that drum, I wanted more of it. I wanted to experience it every day — every moment. 

When I went to spend the night at my friend’s house, there were all of these things that intrigued me, from candy and coconuts on the floor to a goat that was being fed. They would have these parties where people would sing all night, and I was probably the youngest person in there just learning all of the songs and picking things up. That was the beginning, and then I went to New York to study. When I went there I began to look for the same things I found in Cleveland, and it was on a whole other level in New York. I began traveling to take classes in different places and eventually Afrika came. Everything I was doing, I was exposing my children to as well.

IC: For me, it was the community aspect too. Myself and some friends have been doing it for a long time. We all grew up together doing the same thing, having the same Afrikan people come to our house, eating on the floor, being around people who spoke different languages. We all went through that together. Having that community made us recognize what we wanted for our kids. We’re asking the question of how we can better immerse ourselves now and learn more about it so we can teach our children. 

TC: That’s a really big part of all this, the communal aspect. Inaya brought up a really great point. When you get a chance to grow up with individuals who are the same age and have the same experiences, it’s something really wonderful. You end up having multiple mothers, multiple sisters, uncles, babas, and fathers. People who are around are like family; it’s Afrikan culture. It’s about the culture; it’s not just dance, because it’s so much bigger in the sense that the culture encompasses everything that comes with the dance. 

IC: To me, the culture was way bigger than the dance, because we have this whole group of people that doesn’t necessarily know where we’re from, but, because we can work towards learning about where we come from, we construct our identity through our practice.

TC: It’s us reconnecting to our past as well. All of these things have been lost in the West; we didn’t grow up in Afrikan culture. We are Afrikan people, but a lot was lost and us being able to reconnect to our past makes us feel like we’re home here. We can still create that same feeling of home right here. 

How has your practice developed your mind-body-spirit connection?

IC: It has made me become aware of who I am in relation to not only Afrika, but the whole Afrikan diaspora. It’s given me a chance to see who I am as an Afrikan living in [The United States of] America — being a part of that whole diaspora. If we think about that in its entirety, then it’s so deep. Because then we have to ask ourselves these questions of: What does it mean to be Afrikan? I think I was searching for those answers only to realize that I am Afrika. It’s not about where you’re from or where you were raised, but about how can you create this within your community, in your home, and in yourself. 

TC: I think it enables you to have a value system. It’s an ingrained value system of support and culture. I think part of the problem with the Afrikan-American community here in the West is that we don’t know who we are — those things were stripped from us, they were taken away. As we begin to develop the “I AM,” it gives us a focal point of what’s going on with my past. You can’t possibly know your journey and your direction if you don’t know where you come from. Having these cultural experiences begins to ground an individual to know that “I AM.” We can stand strong in our reclaimed culture. 

IC: It has also made me more secure in who I am and where I come from. Even though I don’t know exactly where I come from, I feel like it doesn’t matter. This whole dancing process and traveling has made me claim all of the Afrikan diaspora. Why would I just claim one part of it when Afrika has influenced so many people all over the world? Even if I don’t have a certain flag to represent, that doesn’t matter, because I’m secure in who I am and how this makes me feel spiritually, mentally, and physically. 

What does your practice mean to you, in a diasporic context and an American context?

TC: I’m going to go back to Inaya’s statement: We see Afrika all around the world. When you’re able to identify all of those aspects, coming from experience, research, and exposure, all of those things allow you to look at these various elements with more of a microscopic eye. It allows you to be able to dissect culture — to see the effects of the transatlantic slave trade across the diaspora. 

IC: I took a class called Disfiguring Black Bodies that talked about a lot of different topics including Black identity, why Black people are perceived the way they are, and medical apartheid. We went into the history of how the perception of Black people has manifested up until now. The class was so powerful.

What we’re doing right here with Afrikan dance, Afrikan culture — it’s revolutionary. If every Afrikan American at least took a class or participated in what we did, I feel like we would be unstoppable. We would have all of these people who aren’t scared of where we’re from — that know the real truth about Afrika. The more people that start to dance, that start to connect, and start to travel, it’ll be more people that are just like us, and that’s the part I’m excited for.