Brenda: 0:10
Hello and welcome to Kiss My Black Side with me, Brenda Emmanus. This is a celebratory look at art from a Black perspective. In this show, we talk to some brilliantly talented creatives who have made their mark in the world of dance film, fashion, music, theatre, and the visual arts. We discuss their work and inspiration, and then we get to do a little deep dive on issues related to their specific artform.

And as we’re talking, we figured it would be nice to end each programme with a specially commissioned spoken-word tribute to our chosen topic, which in this episode is Dance. This podcast is produced by Free Spirit Productions Ltd and brought to you by Sadler’s Wells. Sadler’s Wells is one of the world’s leading dance organisations and in 2022 they’re celebrating work by Black dance artists with Well Seasoned, a year long programme of live performances, dance films and more from Black choreographers, dancers and artists of colour.

My guest for this episode of Kiss My Black Side includes Sadler’s Wells, associate artist and founder of the amazing International Festival of hip hop dance theatre, Breakin’ Convention. He’s a choreographer, dancer, producer and all-round nice guy, Jonzi D. I’m also joined by an incredible talent who I find as addictive to watch as some people find ASMR to listen to. She’s a World-Class ballet dancer from Michigan who has spent the last eight years in the UK dancing for English National Ballet. Her name, Precious Adams, and our final and equally awesome guest is currently the fourth principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Prior to this, she was the longest standing artistic director of Phoenix Dance Theatre. Welcome. Sharon Watson, MBE.

Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for joining me. I feel truly honoured to have you all here. How are we?

All: 02:19
Hi.

Brenda: 02:20
Precious, I would love to start with you because every little girl’s dream is to be a ballet dancer. But then reality bites. I know they certainly did for me. I just didn’t have the talent, but why ballet for you, over any other dance form?

Precious: 02:34
It might sound cliche, but I really think it was perhaps like my life’s calling. I’ve been obsessed with ballet since I was about eight years old. And when I say obsessed, I mean, like, very obsessed. I would just go to the library and rent every book and every DVD. It was what I wanted to spend all of my time doing, like living, breathing, sleeping. Since I was around eight or nine years old, but I think with anything you choose to do in life, you have to pick something that you’re just incredibly passionate about. So, for me, it just happened to be dance above anything else. Like, nothing else has ever sparked my interest to that degree.

Brenda: 03:18
Now, I know I got into television because there were certain journalists, I saw on screen that looked like me and made me feel it was possible. Did you have that or were there any Black ballet dancers? Or were you aware that it was an arena in which there were very few Black women?

Precious: 03:34
Um, I think I really only became aware of that probably when I was around 11 or 12. I think I was quite naive and was perhaps in my own little bubble where it made me happy. And there is something very welcoming about the dance community anyways in general, especially when it’s recreational. So, it just never really occurred to me. I think I was just so in love with the art form and then I also think that, you know, this is like right before YouTube, so I just wasn’t exposed too much. I also didn’t know that it was a possibility to become a professional ballet dancer. I’ve never seen an actual ballet production live until I was about eight or nine, so I didn’t even know that there was really the profession of becoming a ballerina. And I think just from lack of exposure and culture, I thought I was like the only Black kid in the world doing ballet, which was kind of silly and stupid, but I think that’s what I thought for a few years.

Brenda: 04:42
I can understand why. So, Jonzi, did dance find you, or did you find dance?

Jonzi D: 04:48
I was dancing way before I was born. I think that my mum, her heartbeat, I think I was jammin to that while I was still there, do you know what I mean? Seriously, because for me, I don’t remember not dancing ever. You know, I grew up in a family of six kids, and all of them danced. So, I just immediately appeared just doing the Dougie already. So, yeah, the dance was always in my life.

Brenda: 05:26
Was that the same for you, Sharon?

Sharon: 05:29 It was a little bit, slightly different. I can’t really answer that, whether who found who because it was in my middle school, and middle schools don’t exist anymore. But at the age of nine, I had my first dance lesson, and I knew then, it was my calling. And that was quite incredible because I knew nothing about it. I literally had my sister, who was my example of what dance was about, and she had two years ahead of me doing dance. By the time I got to my first year in secondary school, I had one lesson and it was for me. I came home and told my parents `that’s good’, at 16 I’m going to train to be a professional dancer. 16 came and I was off. So, everything was a cacophony of ideas, emotions, feelings, expressions that just collided and made it all possible. So yeah, it happened in that one moment.

Brenda: 06:22
Now, I can only assume for all three of you to get to the stage where you have in your careers, it’s taken some resilience, some challenge to overcome and obviously a phenomenal amount of talent. For you Precious, what would you say got you to where are? What was it that helped you to navigate and steer your way to this level of your career?

Precious: 06:42
I think it was just the initial passion I had for the art form and my love of dancing. There’s kind of I mean, you know, I think it was when I was ten years old, but I figured out, oh, you can have a career as a ballet dancer and do that as a profession. And from that moment on, there was there was just nothing that could possibly happen that was going to stop me.
Like, if I had to walk to ballet lessons because there was no one there to drive me, then I was going to walk to ballet lessons. That’s just the level of, I don’t know if you would use the word insanity or obsession, but I’d like to use the word passionate.

Brenda: 07:15
I call that commitment.

Precious: 07:19
And I think that’s also what I think my parents saw. And they were like, okay, well, there’s nothing holding her back. She’s obviously going to give this 100% of her energy and effort. And so I don’t think they ever doubted that I would find a way to make a living or find some form of success down this path, whether that was, you know, working at a big ballet company or not, whether that was Harvard or you wanted to find success or whatever. I think they were just sort of like, she’s obviously working so hard. It’s going to pay off in some kind of way. And I think I believe that as well.

Brenda: 07:57
I mean, it may or may not have, but when did or did it ever; being a Black woman in the ballet world become an issue or a talking point or something that you thought you had to think about?

Precious: 08:11
I would say it was probably after like 15, it just never came up. I mean, I remember my cousin once asking me when I was like nine years old or something, she saw a picture of my dance troupe, and she was like, how come you’re the only Black one? And it just never crossed my mind, and I was like, I don’t know. And like, literally, I wasn’t thinking about anything. You know, you’re a kid, you’re nine years old. You don’t really think about stuff so deeply. But then it was when I was around, I would say like 15 or 16, I think when you’re kind of getting closer to that age, when you really need to start thinking about what are my professional prospects, what are my professional possibilities? Where could I really see like my career going? Where could I dance? Where could I really have a career based on my physique? My capabilities? All of those things. And then when opportunities started to come about to perform on stage, that’s when I think I started to become a little bit more aware of… Okay, like things might be a little bit different for me. Oh, certain things aren’t as straightforward for me. Oh, I need to sort my hair out for this. And I would kind of just deal with it or sort it out on my own. But yeah, I would say it was in my mid-teens when the conversation started to come up.

Brenda: 09:33
I remember when I started my career, I remember thinking I would never apply to the BBC because there’s no one at the BBC that looked like me and I did it privately, but once in there you realise that you can’t change anything from the outside. You have to be in it and what’s been really inspiring about watching you is that you’ve kind of taken that responsibility and made changes, albeit because they were personal to you. Do you feel that sense of responsibility? Did you feel, for example, when you demanded to wear brown tights as opposed to pink, that this change was not just for you?

Precious: 10:01
Well, OK, I didn’t like demand to like wear brown tights. I have to be so clear about that because I think people really want to depict me as this rebel and as this, you know, as like a difficult person, which I think is what really stinks about trying to be progressive or even just like, have a conversation or bring something up is, you’re instantly seen as a troublemaker.

Brenda: 10:25
Of course.

Precious: 10:28
And that’s so not the case. I waited until my first promotion when I was going to be doing more soloist work. So, when I was going to be lifted out of the corps de ballet, when I felt like it was an appropriate time for me to bring up the subject and like, mind you, brown tights also wasn’t something that ever really crossed my mind as well, until pretty close to when I was 18 years old. It didn’t cross my mind until I was 18 years old. Like, that’s literally how I mean, you could say it’s perhaps because I’ve been wired, perhaps brainwashed, perhaps naive would be the word, like, how come it never crossed my mind? I don’t know, but it was because one of my ex-teachers was at the ballet competition, and I did the first round of the competition wearing pink tights, and they just came up to me and they were like, you should wear brown tights, it will look so much better. And I was like, Oh, okay. And then it did, and it looked amazing. And I was like, Oh!, it was like a light bulb went off in my head.

But then you join a company and you just kind of go with the flow. So, when the time was right, I had, had a promotion and so I asked my director for a meeting, and we had a conversation, and I actually started a conversation with `Why are tights pink?’ and she didn’t have an answer. So, then I went on to explain to her, I was like, you know, my colleagues look one way, I look another way. From the outside looking in, I see them, they look so aesthetically pleasing because it’s all coherent and then there’s me and it’s like colour blocking. And I was like, What do you think about me wearing tights more often on stage? I’ve started to do it more in rehearsals because you’re allowed to wear what you want in rehearsals in a ballet company. If purple tights are required in rehearsal, then you wear purple tights. You can wear whatever you want, as long as your physique can be seen kind of thing.

And she was like, Okay, well, that’s a good idea, we’ll consider and look at which parts and which costumes it will work for. So that was in 2017 or so. And so now when you fast forward, like at the Royal Opera House, every show I have seen in the past 18 months, every Black dancer has on black tights for every act. And that’s the white acts in Swan Lake, that’s the white acts in Giselle, they have on brown tights. And I think that’s just like huge progress because how it started with and ENB, I would only wear brown tights for certain pieces and certain acts. So, like for example, on Swan Lake only for Act one and three, I would wear brown tights and then acts two and four I would wear pink tights.

For them, their logic was, okay, so maybe when you’re playing a human you wear brown tights, but if you’re playing a fictional, you know, Ok, it’s a swan, everyone’s wearing white, we’re going to go with the white, pink tights or whatever, you know what I mean? And then eventually, it was slow but again, these are the sorts of things that almost don’t matter or make any sense to people that don’t look like me. And I had to spend so much time trying to get my Caucasian colleagues and friends to understand my perspective because they literally did not understand it. They were like, I don’t think the pink tights look weird on you and having to try to convince people of the lens that I see the world through was kind of tiring because it also made me doubt whether or not it was worth it and whether or not I was doing the right thing? You know.

Brenda: 14:01
It’s a case of each one, teach one, isn’t it?

Precious: 14:04
Yeah.

Brenda: 14:05
But Jonzi, is it all about the timing for you in terms of Breakin’ Convention? It is at such a level now, it’s incredible. You’re bringing the best of hip hop talent from all around the world to this little London, well it’s not little. You know, this space in Islington, this renowned world class stage. I can’t imagine that was easy.

Jonzi D: 14:27
It starts before that. So, for me, I feel that coming from an activist environment. My parents were activists and I remember a book about Muhammad Ali that was just left in my room, for some reason, I don’t know why but it greatly influenced me in relation to why are we here? You know, and I love dance. I grew up with dance, but I didn’t grow up with the dance apartheid that I discovered when I started actually looking at this as a career.

So, for me, hip hop dance is just a dance style. And then when I started looking at, you know, doing dance class and stuff, I realised that there was a very different approach to what dance is. And I started to realise that there was a strata. When people talked about high arts, people would refer to classical ballet and contemporary dance and I didn’t see what I was doing at the time as being in this world. So, then it made me think, okay, well if that’s high is what I’m doing low? If we’re using this type of language, it begs the question, do you know what I mean? So, I’ll never forget, I told a story often. I’ll never forget being at Lewisham College in 1988 and it was a dance foundation course and the plan being to go on to higher education.

I ended up going to London Contemporary Dance School, which was absolutely amazing. But the question that I asked when we were studying jazz at the time, I asked, are we going to learn anything about hip hop? And I was told by my theory dance theory teacher at the time, no, because we want to look at preparing you for the marketplace. And to be fair, the marketplace at the time, you didn’t see that much hip hop, particularly in the theatre. So, at that point, I said things have to change, you know? So, my constant drive has been looking at different dance forms and maybe dance forms that don’t have a history of the court dances of Louis the 16th.

Maybe we need to look at some other roots of where dance comes from. So that’s been my journey consistently looking at, you know, reggae dance, Jamaican dance forms, looking all over the world of where dance exists and this language of dance and how it needs to be much more diversified. So, Breakin’ Convention ultimately came out of that. Looking at this dance form, shared by the whole world, everybody has access to this dance style. You mentioned earlier `each one, teach one.’ This is one of the fundamental things about hip hop. It’s not enshrined by an institution. So, access to this dance form is much more I guess, peer to peer. The development of hip hop has created these huge events that are happening around the world. Huge battle events. And I guess Breakin’ Convention is part of that, even though battling isn’t central to it. But it’s a way in which the whole of society can now engage equally, I suppose.

Brenda: 18:07
And I think that’s what’s been revelatory about constantly turning up for Breakin’ Convention, it’s just how open and diverse the audiences are. The fact is everyone assumes that hip hop is urban, but the audience is so eclectic.

Jonzi D: 18:21
Well, the audience is urban because I think urban is a term that is kind of a euphemism for black. But we’re all black. If we’re going to go, there. So, we’re all into this music. We’re all into this culture. Do you know what I mean? and I think that the roots of it are clearly from an African perspective, an African-American perspective. But aren’t most art forms that become really popular? If you look at the West End, you’ll see lots of jazz dance there and increasingly lots of hip hop. So, for me, I think that we need to look at what dance is in the world today. There’s not one type.

Brenda: 19:08
Now, Sharon part of your early career was as a first female dancer in Phoenix Dance Theatre. Tell me about that experience and do you feel it’s important that dance groups such as Phoenix, and I remember when I saw first Alvin Ailey and a couple of weeks ago, I saw Ballet Black, what role do you think Black dance groups serve?

Sharon: 19:28
It’s quite incredible, actually, because I think like Precious, there was a lot of unexplained happenings that just happened. I think there was some naivety around the beginnings of who and how in terms of the seeing the Black body on stage, and a lot of acceptance as to just exactly what it was that we were delivering and why it was happening. The question that Jonzi asked is, what’s the purpose? I don’t always believe that we knew that in the early days. Being one of four, it was a novelty to a lot of people. And actually, it wasn’t until we were on the inside that we understood the importance of who we were and how we were able to influence. I also went to London contemporary dance school to train, and it was a phenomenal experience.

And I don’t really remember having the kind of politicised conversations around who I am as an artist. But getting into Phoenix, it suddenly became so visible, and we were being politicised, so it was a very different way of delivering and actually, you know, it was narrow by comparison, you know, we didn’t, we trained in classical ballet, but we didn’t deliver it on stage. We did some hip hop, we did some jazz, we did a bit of tai chi. We did all of the art forms, but contemporary was our narrative form that we were able to tell our stories. But we were held on a pedestal, we really were, because there was nothing else like that and to see ten Black bodies on stage being dynamic, being as equal to any of the other companies in the UK, not necessarily getting the same kind of credit, but we matched what was happening and it was a phenomenal experience because it did take us around the world, which I don’t know how I would have done that otherwise, whether my career without Phoenix would have really helped me to expand that visibility and to be that visible. So, we were yeah, we talk about it often as the first females entering that space that was held by Black men, which we never dreamt was ever going to be possible, let alone seeing six Black men in the first instance.

So we were, yeah, they were breaking the mould and I feel that even today we’re losing that, it’s becoming more and more diluted. We are losing those power moments of seeing something so powerful because it’s been replicated and tried to replicate it in so many ways, but it is actually diluting the potency of Black visibility and Black engagement and Black narrative. So, there is yeah, something that we have to hold on to.

Brenda: 22:02
And is that significant, having these groups and you as dancers important for you as well as for the audiences because these shows are always packed out. I’ve not been to one dance show, to one Black dance company that hasn’t been sold out or packed out.

Sharon: 22:17
I think holding that space becomes imperative. It becomes imperative to our narrative of British culture. It becomes imperative in terms of the way that we cross the Atlantic, in terms of understanding a lot of our influences at a time, I have to say, came from America. So, we were influenced by Alvin Ailey and Harlem and Bebe Miller and various other companies and the National Dance Theatre of Jamaica, although they weren’t quite in the headlights in the same way. But we had connections with them because they were our role models and I guess it’s not okay to sit in the 21st century and say that everyone has the same equal parts in what we do because then you don’t really understand the deficit that we’re trying to make up with some of the work that we’ve been doing, some of the voices that are actually on the platforms and some of the celebrations of what we’ve contributed to British society and to British culture. We will lose that if we don’t really kind of hold on to what it is that we’re able to offer.

Brenda: 23:16
In terms of celebrating – Precious, how much has having the likes of Alvin Ailey Dance Company and seeing someone like Misty Copeland escalate and then you yourself winning awards, what did that mean for you as a dancer in this space?

Precious: 23:31
So, the celebratory side of seeing representation in Black representation and dance is one. I think they’re big symbols of visibility and progress. However, I have to say what I see, the way I see Dance of Harlem and Alvin Ailey versus Misty Copeland, they’re almost like two different things because Misty Copeland is someone who’s penetrating a very white space, which is really important. And I almost see that as different work because she’s, I don’t know, it’s like she’s penetrating these spaces and she’s causing a lot of influence on this. Like, perhaps I don’t know, if you want to use the word like in this mainstream space or in this white space or whatever, but she’s caused a lot of performance. And I think that there’s a hugely important role to play, kind of like occupying that space because I think it caused a lot of influence. But then on the other hand, of course, out of the necessity, we have our Black dance companies that are kind of there. I mean, at least they started out as being there to really serve the Black community and to enrich our Black communities and to give culture back to our people so that we could feel seen and represented and all of that.

And now, you know, and then it expands to a place where it’s also educating a wider spectrum of people and everything. But it all just plays a role in representation and visibility which just influences the population in a positive way and helps us all to be able to relate to each other, whether we’re the same or whether we’re different. I think it helps to just educate the population and to extend all of our minds to feel as though we can relate to one another.

Brenda: 25:23
And there was there was an exhibition and I think it was in 2014 in Liverpool. I think it was at Liverpool Slave Museum, looking at the history of Black Dance, and it was absolutely fascinating. There’s so much to learn and the names I had never, I know I have picked up on this in previous conversations with you, Jonzi, about whether, and with other practitioners in this space, whether you can define what is Black Dance? I know you have a particular view on this. Do you want to share with us?

Jonzi D: 25:53
Love to. So, I think it’s these two things. Yeah. One, it’s from a cultural perspective, what has the African diaspora offered in relation to dance language? Yeah. And there’s a lot of it. There’s so much, you know, and we can look at it from a historical perspective. We can look at it from a migratory perspective. How African people, as a result of the slave trade, just in migration anyway, we’ve brought culture to different parts of the world. Yeah. So, I think that Black dance is one, the dance that comes from the culture of Black people, but also and this is very important, it’s just dancing. If you’re Black and you’re dancing, that’s Black dance. I don’t think that’s hard to get your head around personally, but hey, I’d love to know what you guys think.

Brenda: 26:30
All right, Sharon, what do you think?

Sharon: 27:01
I disagree with that, Jonzi. I honestly can’t because I think for the very early days, I think some of the criticisms that we were that kind of was imposed on us was that we weren’t doing traditional dance. But then I had no connections with traditional dance. I had contemporary dance. That was what I was brought up to express and to experience. And actually, over the years, you begin to understand that actually the African diaspora is so broad that you could do anything. And even being in my skin as a Black woman then, yeah, that’s Black dance for me. So, you can sometimes get drawn into the channels that don’t necessarily belong to you when you’re trying to defend an argument around what is Black dance? And your often kind of led into spaces that you end up with the political arguments about what, you know, money’s given for Black dance but you’re not a Black dance company, what is a Black company? and you’re bouncing around for years and years.
There is no one answer other than if you look like us, you are doing Black dance.

Brenda: 28:00
Is that your perspective Precious? Because obviously you’re doing ballet in a mainstream ballet company and you’re a lack dancer. So, what’s your argument here? What’s your opinion on what’s said?

Precious: 28:12
Oh, gosh, it’s really hard to pin it down based off of what you, Jonzi, and Sharon have both made really interesting points. However, I, I mean, because then someone can argue that me putting on pink tights in the first place is, like, I don’t know, reverse racism or something. I don’t know, like, there’s so many like, insane things that can be said, which is why I would rather dispel all the complexity in the layers of these arguments.

And just because, you know, its cultural appropriation, it’s this, it’s that, it’s the other. And it’s like, no, actually, this is like a seriously globalised world. Like, everything is everyone’s. And unless we kind of view things that way and if we’re so possessive over things or that’s where the discriminatory and that’s where those attitudes come from, we’re not all just walking into each other’s spaces and saying, oh, it’s just like it’s all fusion, we’re all, it’s all mixed anyways, you know, we’re all here to like to share and to give and to learn from each other with each other, which is maybe it’s my crazy hippy dippy naive perspective or whatever, but I think that’s just how I like to see things. It’s just dance

Brenda: 29:25
It is so hugely complex. I was just thinking, coming up at Sadler’s Wells is Germaine Acogny who’s doing Pina Bausch. So, is that because her company is all Black dance, make that Black dance, but it’s a white choreographer? It’s a very complex issue.

Precious: 29:39
I actually wrote about this for Sadler’s Wells. They had a Guests Selects, Digital Stage and I included that rendition of Pina Bausch’s choreography with all African cast, and I said, actually, typically I always preach about how I think typecasting is wrong but actually in this case using all African cast on this beach in Senegal was incredibly powerful because they’re all connected in this way. For example, when I did the Chosen One with English National Ballet on Sadler’s Wells stage, there was something very kind of artificially manufactured about creating the spiritual experience, which is what Pina Bausch was trying to do back when she first produced this. But you’re literally taking a stage in the middle of London or Paris where it was first done, covering it with dirt and doing this like spiritual sacrificial dance. And it’s actually weird when you think about it.

It’s super obscure, and it actually, almost makes more sense the way that it was staged with the all Black cast on an actual beach that naturally has Earth. Like, that’s really doing, I think that’s really depicting what Pina Bauch was trying to do actually, in a more authentic and real way, than trying to manufacture it in the middle of a city for white audiences.
You know, so yeah, I mean, I guess that’s what art is there to do anyways, to get us all thinking because you can break it apart any which way.

Brenda: 31:21
And we certainly are thinking here. Jonzi?

Jonzi D: 31:25
Yeah. I was just thinking of the audiences, do you know what I mean? Because I think what’s happened is that there’s a divide. Do you know what I mean? And there’s not Black people that don’t even look at going to the theatre because generally, particularly in dance theatre, generally there’s not that much that’s targeted for that community. I think that particularly in London the theatre scene has definitely advanced in relation to that, where there’s Black audiences that are saying, I see myself so therefore I want to go and check it out. And I think that for along time, and particularly as I was studying dance, I just didn’t see myself.

I just want to big up Phoenix right now because if it was not for Phoenix coming to my school when I was 13 years old, I wouldn’t be here now. It was them, directly that made me realise that I can be part of this world as well. So, I really feel strongly about making sure we’re still doing that for the younger generation.

Brenda: 32:37
That must be incredibly powerful for you to hear, Sharon. But what’s exciting is that you’re now in a leadership role where you can make a difference and you can initiate change. How excited and determined are you with this new position? How do you feel about being a principal?

Sharon: 32:52
I love it. I absolutely love it. I think if you were to ask me many moons ago whether or not I would be in this place, I never saw it because again, I haven’t seen anyone that’s doing this leadership role. But I understand the power that I have in the same way as being the AD for Phoenix. I think there’s something about understanding the power of it and making room for others. It’s a hard space to be in. And because the wheel turns so slowly and by the time you’ve managed to make things happen without really breaking the ship, without breaking the, you know, the entirety of the organisation, in order to make change, you’ve got to steer very clear very carefully.

And you know, I kind of feel as though very early on I was, I was gifted with an ability to teach and to educate and to inform and to influence. So, I feel that my gift right now is coming to the fore in terms of a full circle, having experienced being a dancer, having been through the training process, having supported the training process, and now we’re stepping into a space where you’re actually really trying to keep your elbows wide because the political agenda, the agenda of government, society and all of those things that looks at a young person and says, “you’re not meant to do this” or “this isn’t for you”, has to be part of my kind of my drive. And I know that I’m sometimes known as a maverick in terms of what I want to do. But behind the scenes there is that real challenge of trying to dig away at that change, which actually becomes critical to the survival of who we are as artists, of who we are as people, and how we share that responsibility within society, that says dance or art per say, is for you.

So, I do love my role and I’m only two years into it and I say only because it only feels like I’ve just got going. So, I’m hoping that what I’m able to do and able to achieve begins to resonate and looks very different to what it was two years ago.

Brenda: 34:45
I love you guys, not just because of what you do, but what you say. And this could go on forever. What I’d love to do now is this part of the programme we call Pass the Baton where you can tell me about someone that inspired you, and it could be somebody from the past or somebody that you feel is worth looking out for currently. That has really inspired me. So, we can share with the audience, and they can go into a deep dive and discover them themselves. So Precious, can I start with you? Who would you like to pass the baton onto?

Precious: 35:12
There’s two people that come to mind. Kevin Thomas. He’s the director of the Collective, sorry Collage Dance Collective in Memphis, Tennessee. And I think that what he has done is really significant. He has ideals essentially to replicate Dance Theatre of Harlem, but in kind of in the South in America and really start a Black dance organisation that’s kind of expanded into a huge power within the community and him and his partner like have managed to build this on their own. And I just wish more people knew about it because I think that, I think it just takes so much courage to do what he’s done and then to be successful with it as well. I think it’s just really, really powerful, and significant. And then the other person that comes to mind is Erica Walsh who is also a ballet dancer. She’s a dancer at American Ballet Theatre. But I recently met her, and I just thought the way with which she kind of goes through life, I thought was really, really special because it can be really, she’s also the Black dancer in a white ballet company, but she just didn’t seem as tightly wound as everybody I know, who just works for about a company, period.

But yeah, like let alone a dancer, let alone like a Black dancer in those spaces, which is just, like, really refreshing. Have so much respect for her because I think that sometimes it can all just get really, really serious and really, really heavy. And it’s just kind of like, oh my God, it doesn’t have to be. You can actually just like…

Brenda: 37:05
Enjoy.

Precious: 37:06
Yeah, you can actually just like enjoy it. And that’ll actually just influence people on its own. And people will just want to, like, keep more of us around and more of us in these spaces, you know? And so, I just really loved her, her energy, and her perspective. And I think she’s one to look out for as well.

Brenda: 37:22
Two amazing people to check out. Jonzi, who are your choices?

Jonzi D: 37:27
Um, I’ve only got one off the top, my head, to be honest with you, Ivan Blackstock, um, he’s someone who I’ve been working with for quite a bit. He did, his company, BirdGang, who’s he’s left over the last couple of years, but he started a company called BirdGang, and they performed their first ever Breakin’ Convention in 2006. But he’s, he’s been really pushing. His work. He’s been doing film and he did an amazing show called Traplord, which was a Sadler’s Wells helped produce it. And also, the Manchester International Festival. It was performed at 180 The Strand in a very, I guess a bespoke space for his work. What I really love about him is he’s resilience and his determination and his very unique vision of hip hop theatre. It goes` in,’ I just want to say and it’s very challenging, you know what I mean? But for me, some of the artists that I’ve loved over the years, people like Michael Clark, who really kind of pushed the boat out, I think that that’s what Ivan is doing today for the, for the 2020s. And I mean, it’s amazing for him.

Brenda: 38:54
Sharon, who’s your baton going to?

Sharon: 38:58
I’m going to pinch, you’ve already mentioned one, I’m going to pinch a couple of your spaces there, Jonzi. But it’s interesting because a lot of the people I admire for very different reasons. And Sharon Ray, who’s over in America, we lost Leonora Stapleton earlier this year who were role pioneers. You know, Paulette Brooks who’s got serendipity, who’s bringing us a new platform for visual stimulus in terms of culture and Kully Thiarai, who’s at the current moment, she’s the Leeds 2023 creative director. It’s just I mean; she saw Phoenix back in the day. And it’s just one of those things where, you know, that one drop has managed to make many things happen. And I think at this moment in time, there’s two people that I would love to shout out to, and one is Alethia Antonia, who is a young PhD student right now, who’s creating work from a place of self. And I just think she’s going to make marks and she is making marks. And the other one is the current rehearsal director for Phoenix Dance Theatre, who I think has developed a backbone of steel and, you know, and ambition. And I just think whilst they are relatively young in these positions, people like us are able to really give them to support, the visibility and the strength. So, I’m going to hand over those two batons to Joanne Bernard and Alethia Antonia.

Brenda: 40:12
Thank you. Well, we’ve come to the end, so I want to say a huge thank you to our creative, constructive and celebratory conversations led by you guys. You’ve been absolutely brilliant. We end the programme with a specially commissioned spoken word contribution by slow poet, Mr I Am Jones. Enjoy everyone and do join us again for Kiss my Black Side.

40:34
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