Last weekend, Oberlin Dance Company presented “Laugh and Cry Can Live Same House,” a 70-minute piece directed and choreographed by Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance and Africana Studies Talawa Prestø. I came in with high expectations — built up by comments from friends who had either watched it already or taken part — and the performance exceeded them. 

Submerged in smoky purple light, Prestø opened the performance with a dedication to those who walked the Underground Railroad, explaining that he choreographed the performance in such a way as to incite motion in the faces of those who remain stagnant. “Laugh and Cry Can Live Same House” would be a call-and-response performance, he said; the audience practiced their claps, oohs, and ahs. Then, the show began.

I was immediately gripped. Three dancers emerged from the wings, dressed in lavender, yellow, and blue. Their movements were so deliberate and mesmerizing that it took me a moment to notice the three dancers dipping and spinning behind them, veiled by a foggy screen. They resembled an underwater reflection, mimicking the aquatic lyrics of the music.

Once I emerged from my spellbound fascination, I realized that music was not emanating from speakers: Onstage, Sidiki Camara, one of the world’s leading percussionists from Mali, kept a beat going alongside a group of other musicians. Singers appeared to stand on the left and right sides of the stage; they sang powerfully, enriching the dancers’ movements, sometimes joyfully and other times with resonant pain. Their voices overlapped with wailing melodies as bodies strewn across the stage made slow, anguished movements. Together, the singers, musicians, and dancers evoked a wordless pain.

ODC hosted several guests, part of why the piece was so impressive. Shemic St Hillaire, one of the guest dancers, put on an unforgettable performance to the song “Strange Fruit.”

The lead-up to Hillaire’s solo built considerable tension. Streaks of light formed a cone center stage, transforming the large group of dancers into silhouettes as they spun downstage. Hillaire tumbled to the floor, curled up in pain. The group left him alone. Sweat glistened on his back as he breathed heavily. “Strange Fruit” started to play, with an eerie minor note resounding across the auditorium.

The desolation evoked by the song’s imagery of lynching was not only visible in his face, but throughout his entire body as he grunted, wailed, stomped, and banged on the floor. Hillaire fell and stood up over and over again in fluid movements as the audience looked on in silence.

ODC did not only showcase suffering. I was delighted to see joyful pieces in which dancers leap-frogged and bounded across the stage. They made playful scooping movements as the audience laughed and cheered.

There were also several hilarious interludes with a maternal figure, played by the guest performer Shirley Mado Langhelle. She reprimanded a dancer for not knowing how to hold a jug of water on her head. Langhelle said she was “arguing with gravity.” Although silly, the sentiment was also thought-provoking. One should learn to befriend gravity to find grace.

The choreography was rife with emotional symbolism. Prestø’s choreographer’s note explained that Black history is “engaged as a living condition.” This was poignantly visible in the performance, with dancers often trembling their hands as if the air was hard to push — as if it were heavy with ghosts. They would drag their hands out from their chests as if they were pulling out the pain from their depths. All movement was bound to ancestral history, pain, and joy.

Throughout my four years here, I’ve watched many contemporary dances that feature mostly white people. In a stark contrast, ODC highlighted Africana dance and its undervalued forms. The performance explicitly drew attention to the predominance of ballet in the Western world with humorous dialogue and lighthearted teasing. It was refreshing to witness a different style of dance than is normally presented at Oberlin and to see a group of talented dancers who are often less visible in the College’s dance world.

Prestø closed off “Laugh and Cry Can Live Same House” with a poem. A line stuck with me: “Dance so they see nothing else.” Prestø’s piece made many laugh and many cry. Dance has a powerful ability to engage an audience with stories that don’t often get told. In this way, movement is a powerful form of resistance. I’m grateful that I was able to witness such a prominent production, and I’m excited to see what work Prestø will produce in the future.