Welcome

By Nkeiruka Oruche

April 24, 2023, PUBLISHED BY IN DANCE
Nkeiruka Oruche squatting and looking into the camera feeling like a baddest babe.
Photo by Kanukai Chigamba
[ID: Nkeiruka Oruche in a highlighter yellow Akwaete wrapped dress squatting and looking into the camera feeling like a baddest babe. There’s a red wall with the edge of a steel water fountain peeking through, a white banister with clear glass on the other side. She has black leather sandals on her feet.]

Home is Where The Dance Is

When I was 8, my claim to fame was ‘best dancer’ champion at family friends’ birthday parties. Yet, at that age, I never imagined that the at-home dance sessions and “Nkay, oya come and dance for us” my young adult aunties would demand, would materialize as a career largely based in dance. I knew I was magnetized by dance, and dancers. Yet, I didn’t have the ‘when I grow up I want to be a dancer’ ambition. I never imagined it was something a person could be.

Typically for people of African descent, dance is in the fabric of our being. It’s a core part of our social environment. It’s how we pass time. How we survive. How we show love. Most of our introduction to dance was ‘informal’. You didn’t need permission, or second-by-second instruction of what and how you moved.

When I got this opportunity to Guest Edit, I knew that I wanted to start from ‘the beginning’. The home. I was excited about exploring how dance shows up for us without the barriers of institutions, without the constraints of capitalism, and without the judgment of society.

This issue explores our intimate and informal connections to dance. Even though the feature articles focus on ‘dancer-dancers’, I wanted to know more than what we see on stage, or in classes or at events. You get to explore how traditional dance practice in diaspora connects back to the places of origin via three Bay Area multi-generational African Dance families; Dioufs (Diamano Coura), Muisi-kongo & Kiazi Malonga (Fua Dia Congo), and Kanukai Chigamba (Chinyakare Ensemble).

‘Ancestral Re-memberance’ employs prayer and a playlist to connect to our roots. ‘Uninterrupted Refuge’, and ‘Wash Spin Repeat’ poetically express emotions associated with dance at home. ‘1st Dance Party’ and ‘The Do’s and Don’ts of the Soul Train Line’ are hilarious takes on our connections to dance in social environments. In ‘How We Danced At Home’, we see regular folk who don’t consider themselves dancers share memories.  ‘The Conga will set you free’, and ‘Discarding our Dance means Defacing Ourselves’ are willful reflections on tradition in the face of societal erasure.

As we continue to emerge from isolation I invite you to dance with 8 year-old me, through this issue.

—Nkeiruka


This article appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of In Dance.


Nkeiruka Oruche (https://www.nkeirukaoruche.com/) is a cultural organizer, multimedia creative of Igbo descent, who specializes in Afro-Urban culture and its intersections with social issues. She is a co-founder of BoomShake, a social justice and music education organization, and founder and executive artistic director of Afro Urban Society, an incubator and presenter of Pan Afro-Urban arts, culture, and social discourse. In 2022, she created and directed ‘Mixtape of the Dead & Gone #1’- Ahamefula’, a shit-just-got-real dance-theater piece about life, death, and what the fuck comes next. She is a 2022 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, a Kikwetu Honors Awardee, a 2018 NYFA Immigrant Artist Fellow, YBCA 100 Honoree, and recipient of awards from Creative Work Fund, MAP Fund, New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, California Arts Council, among others.

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