Year: 2024-2025
DanceForce Member: Jenise Akilah Anthony
Artist: Naila H. Ansari
Community Partner: SUNY Brockport Department of Dance
Audience: 1,100
County: Monroe

The Movement of Joy was a 3-part project that focused on presenting embodied experiences of black women of the Monroe County community. The project featured a partnership with Naila Ansari’s Movement of Joy and SUNY Brockport’s Dance Department with other campus offices.

The renowned artist and 2023 NYSCI mentor, Naila H Ansari, featured this project as part of her ongoing Movement of Joy program. In this iteration, Ansari collaborated with influential black women of Monroe County including: Damita Davis (SUNY Brockport’s Chief Diversity Officer), Karen Podsiadly (SUNY Brockport’s Director of Student Union Leadership & Activities), Connie Walker (Alumni) and Ghislaine Radegonde- Eison (Wife of Garth Fagan Associate).

Pinpointing black female community members, this project offered an immersive and safe space for them to off load their rich experiences. Fundamentally, the project was centered around the voices and stories of these select underrepresented women. Particularly, these ladies identified the songs and dances that brought black joy during some of the most tumultuous times in America. Through a community- based framework, the project investigated how movement has been the center of creating community, teaching us all how to discover locomotive joy amidst divisive times and struggles.

Planning for this project spanned June- August 2023. I re-connected with the artist after 7 years in the annual DF meeting in 2024. Carlos Jones, Chair of SUNY Brockport’s Department of Dance, worked assiduously with me to frame the project, set up meetings with the artist and source potential interviewees. We also worked with our department secretary, Bonnie Bradley, to create a succinct timeline and schedule for the work, Most of our marketing was through word of mouth, networking, a press release and promotional flyers.

The project contained three phases that served an audience of 1,000:
Part 1: In March 2024, Ansari visited SUNY Brockport’s Dance Department for an introductory weekend of open master classes/workshops/artist talks, and a preliminary audition to lay the foundation for her work in the fall. Ansari’s audition yielded 10 trained dancers who committed to the choreography, intensive rehearsals, and performance schedule.

Part 2 : In September 2024 Ansari recorded and edited interviews with the aforementioned women aged 30-80. The volunteer interviewees responded to 3 primary questions prompted by Ansari – “What is joy to you,” “When did you discover joy” and “When did joy discover you.” Most significantly, Ansari included a posthumous presentation of an interview with Carlos Jones’ late mother sourced from one of her earlier projects.