ayowalker

9th Annual "We Create" Festival Fellowship

Sat, 12 Feb 2022 20:47:45 GMT

We Create! 2022 BIPOC Legacy in the Arts

We Create! 2022 Artist Cohort

Ayo Walker
(dance)

Black Pruitt
(anti/interdisciplinary performing arts)

Cassandre Charles
(dance, mixed media, film)

Clara Auguste Mohagen
(dance)

Danza Orgánica
(dance theater)

Kera Washington
(music)

María Servellón
(film, video installation, video projection, video performance)

Yaraní del Valle Piñero
(dance, music and theater performance)

Zahra A. Belyea / Alia Croley
(spoken word and dance/movement)

Guest Artist: Isaura Oliveira
(dance theater)

Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival

ayojoywalker@gmail.com (Ayo Walker) — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 20:36:06 GMT

The Bluest Eye adapted by Lydia Diamond from Toni Morrison’s 1970 book.

Co-created and directed by Margaret Laurena Kemp and Janni Younge.

Innovative puppetry brings Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s coming of age novel into a contemporary context. Pecola is a black girl caught in tragic circumstances. Her best friend narrates her search for the source of responsibility and for an understanding of her own part in the story. The production interrogates how identity is shaped, using a synthesis of puppets, puppeteers and actors. Celebrated South African artist Janni Younge’s puppetry highlights the formation and fragility of self, literally building the self as it is held and supported (or not supported) by a community at large.

With special support from the Paul M. Angell Foundation, Cheryl Lynn Bruce & Kerry James Marshall, Kristy & Brandon Moran. Co-produced by UC Davis & Janni Younge Productions.

Produced by special arrangement with THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY of Woodstock, Illinois

https://chicagopuppetfest.org/event/margaret-laurena-kemp-janni-younge/

Rennie Harris University Presents

ayojoywalker@gmail.com (Ayo Walker) — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 20:27:10 GMT

Unearthing the Phenomena of Hip Hop Lecture Series

Lecture: Decolonizing the Black Dancing Body: Is Your Freestyle “Free”
Instructor: Dr. Ayo Walker
Dates: March 17th-April 7th
Times: Thursdays 7-pm-8pm CST
Individual Session $75

The Black dancing body in Western societies have been historically oppressed by white/Eurocentric aesthetic ideologies that sought to correct and sanitize the culturally-othered-marked dancing body by way of ethnocentric and monocultural indoctrination. Decolonizing the Black dancing body in this course acts as a method of deprogramming monocultural and ethnocentric indoctrination while decoding and de(cipher)ing bodily oppression. Understanding how bodily autonomy vs bodily indoctrination affects dancers’ embodied cognitive development will become the essence for freeing the student’s groove (the default movement style of your body’s rhythmic interpretation) and personalizing their movement identity. The dancing body should not be expected to apply the same movement principles and qualities across all dance forms. Through online cipher sessions this course will engage with movement principles and qualities that invite students to explore movement possibilities beyond those indoctrinated in their bodies. In the cipher is where the dancer will discover their FREEDOM.

Leading in Black Excellence at APSU

ayojoywalker@gmail.com (Ayo Walker) — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 05:20:43 GMT

Leading Through Black Excellence is a new Black History Month series, presented by the Austin Peay State University African American Employee Council. Throughout February, we will highlight examples of “Leading Through Black Excellence,” both on and off our campus. Individuals and organizations were nominated, and we are pleased to share their incredible stories through this new venture. For more information, please visit our website. www.apsu.edu/aaec .

Dr. Ayo Walker is in her first year at APSU. In that short time she has become a leading voice on anti-racism and racial honesty and accountability on campus. In addition, her level of professional work and output has been above and beyond. In the world of theatre and dance, COVID-19 has been a difficult time to find opportunities for research and performance, but Dr. Walker has created opportunities and continued her stellar academic work.

In her first semester, Dr. Walker has set previous choreography on students, set new choreography on students, is planning on using those students as dance captains at a professional company where her work is being staged, had an article published in the Journal of Dance Education – the leading educational dance publication in the country ("Traditional White Spaces: Why All Inclusive Representation Matters") –, served as a manuscript reviewer ("Jazz Dance and African Roots"), and has been commissioned to write two chapters for an upcoming dance textbook ("Milestones in Dance History"). In addition, Dr. Walker has revamped the way Dance History is being taught at APSU, focusing on traditional dance spaces, their exclusion and "othering" of non-white innovators, and teaching the class in a non-linear format. This has changed the students approach to dance history and taught them important critical thinking skills, allowing them to investigate history through a wider lens and to make their own decisions based on research.

Since her arrival, Dr. Walker has modeled what it means to seek equity and inclusion. She understands and practices the need for her new generative pedagogical praxis that she calls “Entercultural Engaged Pedagogy,” which specifically involves a theoretical discourse in dance via the study of “othered” and marginalized dance histories. Acting as historical intervention in dance studies, she seeks to rectify the cultural racism often repressing higher education dance curricula. In addition, she has modeled academic excellence to her Intro classes. Arts intro classes are often treated as "easy A's" by students. However, Dr. Walker has introduced the idea of respect and academic rigor into her "Intro to Dance" class that requires students to treat the subject of dance with respect, academic integrity and honesty.

You can watch some of Dr. Walker's work in the next few months as the Spring Virtual Faculty Dance Concert will be streaming on the APSU Theatre & Dance Website: theatredance.apsu.edu. You can read her article, "Traditional White Spaces: Why All Inclusive Representation Matters," at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15290824.2020.1795179 . Finally, her new work will be presented from May 20-22 at the Southern Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. More information is available at https://rhythmicallyspeakingdance.org/the-cohort/ .

We salute you Dr. Walker for your creativity, passion and rigor you bring to the classroom and the Arts.

- APSU African American Employee Council

Rhythmically Speaking The Cohort 2020/2021

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 05:59:43 GMT

Visiting Choreographer: Ayo Walker's "The Boom Boom Room in Tunisia"

https://rhythmicallyspeakingdance.org/the-cohort-20-21-jazz-on-tap/

Rhythmically Speaking is thrilled to be producing “Jazz on Tap,” this series of LIVE, OUTDOOR jazz and tap dance show on May 22 and 23! Held at The Shed @ The Lab Brewery in conjunction with beloved local tap company Keane Sense of Rhythm (KSR), we’re calling it “Jazz on Tap” – get it?! For our shows on the series, we are presenting The Cohort 20/21, our reimagining of works by local choreographers Erinn Liebhard (RS Artistic Director) and Kayla Schiltgen and visiting choreographers Dougie Robbins (NY) and Dr. Ayo Walker (TN) originally selected for our postposed August 2020 production. KSR is presenting Mirror and Fission, featuring works by choreographer Davon Suttles. As if LIVE DANCE (with proper pandemic safety protocols) isn’t enough, there will also be live music, open jams, food trucks and great drinks!

Would streaming the show at home work better for you? No problem!
The Saturday, May 22nd 2pm (RS) and 4pm (KSR) shows will be live-streamed!

Purchase Tickets Here:
https://www.ticketleap.com/events/
https://www.ticketleap.com/events/?q=jazz+on+tap

About The Boom Boom Room in Tunisia:

Ayo’s work explores Katherine Dunham’s Research-to-Performance method as a mode of
choreographic inquiry and intention. While developing her upcoming publication (a book chapter
for a new dance history textbook) “Slavery, Resistance and Resilience: Tap, Jazz and Social
Dances of America,” The Boom Boom Room in Tunisia was simultaneously manifesting. In
this chapter, “plantation dances, tap, jazz and social dances are all traced to three traditional
West African dances, Manjani, Sunu, and Wolosodon. By identifying the related movement
qualities between form, function, and shared aesthetics between the styles of pre-colonial West
African dances, plantation dances, tap, jazz and social dances, observable node clusters
emerge. Thus, creating a paradigm for the concept of evidencing the offspring of interethnic
assimilation and the arc of mutual inspiration. … and evidencing how African diasporic blood
memories have shaped the legacy of the Americanization of dance.”

My choreography much like my chapter tells the story of African people’s history through the
lineage of their dances. “Social dancing is the first form of dance humans practiced for
socialization through the art of dance not for spectatorship” and it is this principle that became
the premise for The Boom Boom Room in Tunisia. A narrative work recounting the individual
memories of five visitors (the ensemble) night out on the town at a juke joint—The Boom Boom
Room—in Tunisia where the music, dancing and romance create the memories of the night.
While we often share similar memories of a place, event, or moment in time, we also recount
those memories from different vantage points. In this piece each dancer will illustrate a night out
in Tunisia at The Boom Boom Room based on the way they remember it. And each memory will
represent a different version of the song, Night in Tunisia. Despite the varying memories of The
Boom Boom Room in Tunisia, one tale is true for all its visitors:

Each wonderful night in Tunisia is a deeper night in a world ages old
The cares of the day seem to vanish
You live in a dream for a moment
The magic is unsurpassed too good to last
You’ll find the love you long for under a Tunisia sky
The moon is the same moon above you, its cool evening light shines so bright
This night in Tunisia is a swinging good tune
The melody remains the same lingering on
Bap ba ba da da da da da da
Baaa da da da da da da
Baaa da da da da da da
Baaa da da da da da da
Baaa da da da da da da
Baaa da da da da da da

The nature of this work is driven by the Cipher Session premise adapted from the Big Apple
where all the members of the ensemble take turns performing improvised (later set for this work)
dance phrases culled from jazz/swing dance steps such as the Shorty George, the Black
Bottom, the Shim Sham, the Boogie Woogie, Truckin, Falling Off the Log, the Drop Charleston,
Lindy Hop and many more. The Big Apple and Cipher Session share the same plantation dance
origin of ring dances, particularly the Ring Shout. “The heritage of West Africa found perhaps its
fullest expression in the spiritual form called the ring shout, which seemed to thrive on the sea
islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The ring shout combines singing or shouting
stories from the Bible with a religious form of dance that resembles shuffling. In a religious
setting, the shouters shuffle and stomp in a counterclockwise motion while clapping their hands
to the shout’s rhythm. Some African American slaves believed the ring shout was a central part
of worship, often a prerequisite to receiving the spirit or having a conversion experience. The
ring shout, argues Raboteau, was thus a ‘two-way bridge connecting the core of West African
religions—possession by the gods—to the core of evangelical Protestantism—experience of
conversion’.” [1] Configuration is the result of how and why the communal space promotes
inclusivity and protection. According to Rennie Harris, “The circle is just handed down from one
traditional culture. The circle is protection. From that circle you can see your enemies coming
from any side. From that circle comes a spirit of love and support, which means that you’re all
facing each other, and you have to look each other dead in the eye... and you see the souls of
people in that way. When a person is in the center, they’re supported by everybody’s love...
there’s no hierarchy in the circle.” [2] The Boom Boom Room in Tunisia’s cipher session is not for
the typical western concept of spectatorship that demarcates the observers from the participants
for the purposes of worshipping the spectacle. Instead it is for a shared performative experience
with the audience as participant observers via call and response evidenced in African diasporic
dance forms. So, we invite you to share in the nostalgic experience of this night in Tunisia at
The Boom Boom Room by reminiscing with us on one of your most memorable nights out on
the town.

___________________________
1 “Performing Culture in Music and Dance,” African American History and Culture, lumencandela. Accessed April 17, 2021.

2 Moncell Durden, “Hip Hop Dance: The Street Culture That Became a Global Expression,” DVD, 43, Dancetime Publications, 2009, 35:20-36:21.

Show & Prove Hip Hop Conference 2018

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Interrogating Black Minstrelsy in 21st Century HIP HOP "RAP": Misuse of the M-Word?

Here are a few highlights from my paper presentation at the Show & Prove 2018 Conference

Whether or not we like it or agree with it, this particular performance of Blackness is arguably a new subgenre of hip hop music. “Decades after Zip Coon and Sambo shuffled, jived, and bug-eyed on the minstrel stage, hip-hop has once again made black face caricature a popular mode of American entertainment. Spinning car rims, ‘pimps and hoes,’ and ‘bling-bling’ jewelry have replaced the chicken and watermelon...” argues Travis L. Gosa. This subgenre of hip hop music fuels the momentum of tanning America, which I’ve interpreted as all-inclusive branding and marketing for the polyethnic consumer base it serves. Consider for a moment the urgency of all-inclusivity particularly when it seemingly excludes whiteness and its simultaneous snail’s pace towards equitable representation. I argue that all-inclusivity for the purposes of circumventing the decentering of whiteness is one reason for some performances of Hip Hop shifting from celebration to entertainment, which inadvertently contributed to the appropriation of a cultural movement now reduced to a minstrel show. Dr. Halifu Osumare states, “there’s a thin line between appropriation and celebration. Because while we were celebrating, they were appropriating.” Still, white’s cultural appropriation of black performances of celebration afforded us some agency when reproducing our images from the perspectives of the white gaze. For their entertainment, and our access to some agency and financial upward mobility, our self-exploitation and subsequent commodification became our way of achieving a piece of the “American Dream”. This reality complicates both 19th -20th century minstrelsy representations and 21st century re-presentations of minstrelsy. While a painful echo emanates from the legacy of Black minstrelsy, it also resonates, at its core a historic innovation and a means of resistance to the misrepresentations of Black culture by whites.

Hip hop artists who are embracing black progress by any means necessary are “changing what it means to be black and middle class in ways that make our proponents of traditional values cringe because they refuse to be disciplined into puritan characterizations of normative middle-class behavior” argues Davarian Baldwin. While minstrel-like elements in Hip Hop may be evident, I believe generalizing 21st century hip-hop rap as the latest form of minstrelsy is a risky supposition simply because it doesn’t represent, nor does it re-present a singular model. According to my investigation of the manifestation of Hip Hop’s rap music of the 21st century, the genre as a whole is being held accountable for portraying modern day blackface minstrelsy. While my research reveals that many Hip Hop artists are the targets of ridicule for performing as contemporary coons, rap music in general is suffering from the accusation of “buffoonery.” I argue that if today’s image of rap music is going to be labeled as a minstrel show, the history of the genre needs reevaluation, and a deeper investigation of its performative roots is crucial. There are various aspects of historical blackface minstrelsy and it is important to know what aspect of these performative utterances you are dealing with in order appropriately to label them. My sources (Austen and Taylor, 2012; Johnson, 2012; Lhamon, 2000; Lott, 1993) reveal that the performance choices and actions of minstrel artists were often purely practical in the process of accessing agency in the entertainment industry of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Sometimes those choices consisted of a method for negating the caricature depictions of Blacks and liberating the culture by creating performative counter-narratives. It could also serve as a medium for presenting parody, satire, and fiction via a “double-consciousness” approach. Still, Brenda Dixon-Gottschild argues that while “Minstrelsy was good in providing legitimate, paid work for black performers and preserving black plantation forms that might have otherwise disappeared, it was bad in etching a dire stereotype.”

My initial research question was: When being personally subjected to Hip Hop performance in a Black minstrel-like manner that may potentially garner financial gain and recognition, how should rap artists negotiate their performance choices? Now I ask, is there a non-stereotypical performance mode for repurposing the historical caricaturing of blacks for sport and profit by white men?

In Raising Cain Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop W.T. Lhamon (2000) notes, “the blackface figure always resisted, or did not easily fit into other peoples’ forms-and so gradually forced a form that gave it room of its own” (p.59). Then is this new subgenre of hip hop music a forced form that has established a space of its own, or will it always be under the weight of Blaxploitation?

The struggle with changing the joke and slipping the yoke is that the true self has been so distorted by, “the images produced by and for whites to justify Blacks’ oppression…that black people are trying to stay true to imagined identities that they’ve accepted and internalized and even reproduced… It’s startling that today, more than eighty-five years later, we are dealing with the same shadow…” says M. K. Asante Jr. in It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation.

What about the black caricaturing and minstrel-like performances by white rappers, such as Iggy Azalea, Tekashi 69, and Post Malone? Even if black rappers ceased their minstrel-like performances, would the representations of black minstrelsy in rap die in the 21st century where is was birthed or as Travis L. Gosa predicts, will we be “stuck lamenting the blackface tradition in the twenty-second century due to a lack of pragmatic advice” and or due to “this fantasy about the disposability of black life [which] is a constant in American history” as Teju Cole states. So, I’m concerned that like Gosa suggests, since “mainstream radio and music channels are saturated with dumbed-down rap lyrics and thug buffoonery, while political acts remain marginalized in the underground,” conscious rap may not prevail because it won’t be produced at the rate minstrelsy rap will, and even if we dead our own subversive caricatures will they finally be extinct?