Ntozake Shange - Dance We Do: A Poet Explores Black Dance

Through Ntozake Shanges personal memories of dancewhat it has meant to her, how she came to know, understand, and feel itwe are taken on a journey that chronicles some of the greatest dancers and choreographers of the latter part of the twentieth century.

PHYLICIA RASHAD

Ntozake Shanges Dance We Do is a gorgeous last offering from one of our most gifted and multifaceted artists. Her passion for dance, just like her passion for words, is among the many reasons she will be missed, though these insightful interviews, ruminations, and reflections will continue to be a balm, across generations, from her to us.

EDWIDGE DANTICAT ,
author of Everything Inside

A workaholic to her last breath, Ntozake Shange has left us with a book that expands our knowledge of Black dance. Not only is it a textbook, but it was composed by someone who created a new form. A true innovator.

ISHMAEL REED ,
author of Malcolm and Me

In Dance We Do, Ntozake Shange presents a language of movement that only she knewrelearned with clarity and courage, and unveiled to the world as a black American groove of words in commemorative motion.

REBECCA CARROLL ,
author of Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America and host of the podcast Come Through with Rebecca Carroll

As a dancer and a writer and a Black girl in a Black body with Black dreams and Black fears and Black hopes and no idea how to shape the world or the words, Ntozake Shange was my teacher and my mother. The magic and the magician. She was the blueprint. She was the road map. She was the beacon; the light. Dance was my first language, the way I learned to speak before I knew the written word would be my weapon of choice. Dance We Do is a praise song for dance and dancers. It is a love poem for anyone who has ever looked in wonder as a dancer defies gravity with their body and casts spells with their presence.

Ntozake Shange delivered her gifts to us embossed with directions, and permission, to create our own magic and miracle and movement. Dance We Do is her final gift to us, but it is, like she was, a gift that will nourish and replenish us for generations to come.

In her most noted works, Shange taught us how to sing a Black girls song; in Dance We Do, she teaches us how important it is to move with it too.

BASSEY IKPI ,
author of Im Telling the Truth, but Im Lying

In Dance We Do, Ntozake Shange offers the living history of Black dance our current movements need. In these conversations exquisite choreography, we witness the artists incomparable poetic stretch, her dazzling theoretical reach, and her unparalleled ability to name the deep political necessity of Black bodily knowledge. Here, we see Shange as teacher and theorist, charting the spiral histories of Black dance with the eloquence of a lyrical rond de jambe. Her keen and tender reflections on dance greats such as Dianne McIntyre and Dyane Harvey set the beat for interviews with newer voices like Camille A. Brown and Davalois Fearon, alongside whom we learn from Shanges great vision and pedagogy. To read Dance We Do is to move with a master. It is to learn not only what Black dance means, why Black bodies matter, but how. Dance We Do makes its meanings elegantly, fearlessly, with the endless precision of Blackness itself: a full vocabulary of bodies and lives, writing rhythms that out-move time.

MECCA JAMILAH SULLIVAN , PHD ,
author of Blue Talk and Love

Blessed are we to have a new work by the inimitable Ntozake Shange, whose writing is a balm for the soul. Sharing with readers her earliest body memories, Shange takes us into the most intimate spaces of her own fleshy form and, by extension, those of the oft overlooked Black dancers she spotlights. She makes us feel the connections between body and brain, the ache of overworked muscles, the discipline required to make jets and fouetts appear effortless, as we linger on every word of this taut work of Black brilliance, wanting our eyes to forever dance on its pages.

TANISHA C . FORD ,
author of Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girls Love Letter to the Power of Fashion

Dance We Do holds an eternal flame for the embodied work and life of Ntozake Shange. This new work is our spiritual relev. It helps us rise to our toes and once again honor Black bodies as beautiful, magical, and elegant. Each chapter is a radical intervention that brings us closer to the Black Radical Tradition of exploring our rhythms. Shange has always known that Black Lives Matter, and this text is a reminder of her commitment to the nuance of Blackness. While reading, I had to stand up, move around, walk, and signify with the text. Thank you, Shange, once again for bringing us home.

JAMARA WAKEFIELD ,
writer

A dancer first, the irrepressible Ntozake Shange writes of her art with passion and humor. She examines the relationships of movement and words and of natchel to formal dance, plunging the reader into the special camaraderie of the studio. Her subjects, renowned and lesser-known Black teachers and choreographers, offer revelations of their own.

JENNIFER DUNNING ,
author of Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance

Ntozake Shanges Dance We Do gives us a glimpse into the methods of some of the most dynamic African American dance scholar-choreographers, whose influences from the 70s to today can still be felt and experienced. In this jewel of a book, Shange also reveals her relationship with each of the featured dancers and their impact upon her multifaceted artistry. Dance We Do is a celebration of poetry, mentorship, music, and the Black body in movement and art.

AKU KADOGO ,
chair, Department of Theater and Performance, Spelman College

Remarkableprovokinginsightful. Ntozake Shanges Dance We Do is a valuable document for those interested in the foundational elements that make dance what it is today, especially Black dance. A real look-see into a world many people knew about but that has never been explored. A must-read for those interested in identifying and understanding where much of American dance concepts today are derived.

OTIS SALLID ,
producer, director, and choreographer

ONCE UPON A TIME , the pages that became this book lived in a purple file folder. By the time I saw this folder it was frayed and faded by sunlight to lavender and bolstered by a protective archival sleeve in the Barnard College Archives to prevent further decay. This book took a long time to emerge. The earliest versions of these pages, computer printouts of questions, interviews, and ideas, are in fact already slightly decayed. Can dance outlive paper?

If you open another folder in the same archive, you can hold a handwritten sketch of a floor plan Shange drew for her home. Around the periphery of the home are the bedrooms, her own room, her daughters room, her writing space, the kitchen, but at the very center of the home, where most folks would put the living room couch and TV, there is an open area designated in Shanges handwriting as dance space.

Shange writes of watching her parents dance after bedtime and of practicing on the stair landings of her childhood home. Shanges written words, her documented practices, and the affirmation of her colleagues all show us that dance was at the center not just of her home but of her life. In fact, it would not be pushing the evidence to say that dance itself