KeyBARD

S1.E6 | Naila Ansari Carbonell Catilo: Amplifying Black Voices through Performance and Pedagogy

• Thembi Duncan • Season 1 • Episode 6

Share episode

Send us a text

S1.E6.

In this episode, Thembi is joined by award-winning choreographer, director and performing artist, Naila Ansari, who shares her journey from the world of dance to her work as an academic and archivist.

We talk about some of her groundbreaking projects including The Movement of Joy, in which she archives the Joy of Black women, challenging dominant narratives and celebrating resilience.

Naila also discusses her innovative work in exploring the subversion of gender norms and interrogating the near absence of Black women in academia.

Naila Ansari is a SUNY Buffalo State University Assistant Professor in Theater and Africana Studies. She recently served as a choreographer for Black Roots Summer, recognized for "Best Theater" by The New York Times, and was praised by Broadway World for her directing and choreography of her adaptation of Shea’s Performing Arts Center's first produced show, Once On This Island. 

Want to be a guest on KeyBARD? Send Thembi a message on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1740803399472257afce75768

KeyBARD is produced, written, and hosted by Thembi Duncan.
Theme music by Sycho Sid.

Listen and Connect:

Thembi: Hello, hello and welcome to KeyBARD. I'm Thembi, and today I'm so excited to be speaking with award-winning choreographer, director and performing artist, Naila Ansari. Yay!

Naila: Woo!

Thembi: So let me tell you a little bit about everything so. Was a native of Buffalo, NY, a Cum Laude graduate of Point Park University Conservatory of Performing Arts program and is a distinguished MFA from the university at Buffalo. 

Naila Ansari is a SUNY Buffalo State University Assistant Professor in Theater and Africana Studies, Ms. Ansari recently served as a choreographer for Black Roots Summer, named Best Theater by The New York Times, and praised by Broadway World for her directing and choreography of her adaptation of Shea’s first produced show, Once On This Island. 

Ms. Ansari merges artistry and scholarship to tell Black stories in America. Her research and performance project Movement of Joy archived stories of Black women’s joy nationwide. 

In addition to the film documentary of these stories, Ms. Ansari has a podcast entitled “This is Joy” on the Alive Podcast Network, the first Black woman-owned podcast distribution company in the country. 

She is a current Interfaith America Fellow for the Black Interfaith Project, which recently presented her production of The Movement of Joy. 

Ms. Ansari serves as the Dance Director and company member of Ujima Theatre. For more information follow her on Instagram @Naila_moves_joy. Yay, welcome Naila! 

Naila: Yay!

Thembi: All right, let's jump in. So, dance is your primary art form…

Naila: Yeah.

Thembi: …but you are so much more than a dancer. So can you describe your relationship with dance as a scholar and community builder? 

Naila: Sure. So, I started out when I was 2 years old, so dance has just kind of always been there. But I always say, I feel like I've had like 4 different lives, because a lot of people that know me, they only know me for dance, but they don't know other things that I do outside of it. And I think that's just because dance is so forward. It's, you know, that's performance-based, so people tend to see you as audience. They don't always see kind of the background of it. 

I did kind of the traditional thing, dance, when I was younger, went to dance studios and I went to a conservatory, then did the thing professionally and just kind of got burned out. I got married, had a child, got divorced. And Carlos Jones, who's a good friend of ours, he's now chair of Brockport College and chair of the dance department there, he kind of talked me into going into higher ed. So I was like, “Nah, I'm good.” 

I'm like, I might be burned out from dance, but I know if I'm that burned out to be like, bored in academia. (Laughs.) And so, because I was going through a difficult time in my marriage at the time, he was like, “I think you would be really good for this. We really want to start to get, scholar and scholars and practitioners in higher ed because we're tending to see more people that are kind of theory based, but they're not really applying the applications.”

So, he talked me into going to grad school, I started adjuncting at Buffalo State while I was at the University at Buffalo. Fast forward, I end up graduating and getting a fellowship at Buffalo State, and then end up getting an appointment there for theater and Africana Studies and built – and starting to bridge my scholarship – which I really didn't know how to have scholarship in the performing arts, and what does that look like in terms of community, because it's always been super isolated.

So, during my work in graduate school, and then working with Carlos, and my mentor Trebien Pollard at the time, who's at VCU, they kind of helped me understand the way that I can bring dance and the work that I was doing professionally as a career, but then all these other pathways that can lead you into other things to help in the community. 

I started to question a lot after I was after performing full-time, like what else can I do? Because this kind of can't be it. It wasn't enough for me in terms of the arts. I saw what was happening in terms of inequality with money that was getting shared, or I should say not getting shared. I wasn't seeing a lot of students in the classroom that felt like they could actually get a job professionally in a lot of ways, because of the inequities and dance and theatre. I knew a lot of them wouldn't be getting jobs, so I felt like there was a call for something else. And then the other part of it was I was in the community, and then most people didn't really understand how the arts could help them and benefit in terms of healing or bringing awareness in other ways. 

So, for the last four years, I started kind of building on that and saying, okay, dance, it might have been my trade. but there's so many lessons that I've learned from dance and the arts that I can start to build it in other ways. So I started working in different spaces for health equity, figuring out ways that we can center joy, particularly in Black spaces – what does that look like? And then also, working with different organizations and foundations to really build and look at the ways that we look at these grant systems and start to prepare a lot of companies to be more sustainable in the field of arts. 

Thembi: I love the expansiveness of that, going beyond being a practitioner of the art to really digging into the way it informs healing and community. And so, you're also an archivist. 

Naila: Mmm-hmm.

Thembi: How does the history of Black dance influence art and culture today?

Naila: Well, it’s huge, and a lot of people don't really understand it in terms of the field of archiving, because I would say Black dance performance and scholarship is fairly young in the fields of academia. So, in terms of archiving, most people understand it only from a very white male historical lens. Not to say dance hasn’t been around since, you know, the inception of people in the world, but we don't necessarily know it as a form of scholarship. 

We don't really know how to archive it, because it's ephemeral, it’s something that's there and then goes away. And it's also part of oral traditions. So when I was in graduate school working on my thesis work, I was having just a difficult time and my mentor Trebien Pollard kind of questioned me and was like, “Okay, we did this Black rage thing. This is not new to the field. What else can you add?” And I kind of took my anger, and suddenly the word joy just popped into my head, and that was kind of it. 

And so I recognized from then on – I went to go ask my elders about joy, and then they had a really difficult time answering the questions that I was posing. And then I recognized, like, this isn't something – besides the fact that we don't necessarily know how to answer it in real time, we actually haven't had any really documentation on Black joy, specifically Black women joy. And we don't even really know how to archive it. Like, how do we actually do that to kind of put away these different stereotypes in the ways we see Black women? 

So, I really started that work, now going on five years actually, of archiving and really challenging the archives and kind of these institutional ways, and the ways that we see Black folks. Typically with that, a lot of folks don't understand about archives. They live in very institutionalized spaces, a lot of libraries. It's a very kind of policed system, like no one can just go in there. You have to like schedule an appointment, then oftentimes they have to know that you're affiliated with some type of institution. It’s a white glove process, you can't just touch anything. So you have to, you have to even know the process to even get into an archive, first of all. 

So the first time I went in, I was like, “Oh, this is a different world.” And I had already been in academia and didn't really understand the full process and the deep dive into archiving. So that's been something that I've really been into recently as part of research of archiving what isn't typically seen as something archivable, which is Black joy. 

Thembi: Listening to you describe the process of accessing information through archives, it really punctuates the separation—

Naila: Oh, yeah…

Thembi: —between people and our history. The idea that if I wanted to have access to history that's directly connected to me. I couldn't even just walk in and ask for it. I would have to know the process. I would even have to know where to look. And that's really fascinating.

Naila: Oh, yeah, you would have to leave your ID. 

Thembi: Yeah, I don't think people think about that. Like, we, in some ways maybe we assume that okay, anything that's not inside of an institutional wall like a like a college or university – Shouldn’t I be able to just go to the Public Library, or shouldn't I have access to this information? But the key information, the way that you have to go through that whole process and like you said, having to be affiliated already with some sort of institution to where they say “Oh, okay, you're acceptable, you can come in, is— do you feel like that holds a lot of people back from understanding how…?

Naila: Oh, 1000%, because people just think you Google something, and that's not how that works. When you want actual first-hand research and knowledge, that doesn't really function but so many places in academia. Like, that's not even necessarily considered really valid. 

So, you might Google something to know where something is, to then go someplace else to get the permission to actually be able to touch something. But the way it works is really kind of its own – it's its own world. And I have Dr. Amma Garrison Kuti, who, she actually taught me how to work into archives and she's an amazing scholar/artist who is a playwright and works on various different productions. 

But Dr. Amma really had to show me how to go into an archive, and if I didn't have her, I wouldn't know. And this was me as a grad student. Like, I knew base level stuff, but I was a graduate student and didn't know fully how to access and go into archives. And then how to build those relationships to get access to certain materials, or the fact that only certain people had access to certain things. 

Like there were things I couldn't even touch as a grad student that she could touch because of who she was, right? And that's because people feel really, or there's people that are watching you, like they're like just literally leaning over watching every single thing that you're doing, making sure things don't get messed up. So there's a really hardcore space of policing that Doctor Amma really had to guide me into the process of how to do it. Like you can't have any materials, you can't have – the only thing you can have is a pencil….you know, these types of things that easily someone could get kicked out if they didn't know the process. 

Thembi: Do you teach others that process now? 

Naila: I do. I teach my students. I work really closely with our archivist, Dan Delandro, at Buffalo State University. We've actually done different projects where we've highlighted archives, and that's been a goal of mine in the community, to highlight what we have and then access and give that information to the public, just because. Some things aren't Google-able, if that makes sense. Like some things you have to literally go find it in a catalog. You have to know how to research the catalog, you have to know what you're looking for, and then you have to know what to ask for, for the archivist to bring it out. 

And so it's a big process that I've been teaching my students how to use and also the community at large and how to be able to archive. Things not only to get access to it, but to archive things themselves so that they last. And that the importance of also being able to not just keep things at home sometimes to be able to put them also in institutions. And the reason for that, because there's climate control that you have to have with certain archives, and make sure papers don't fall apart, those types of things. 

Thembi: So, you talk about being at Buff State and letting people know what's in the archives at Buff State. I'm sure there are Buffalo-related things in the archives. How does the culture and character of your hometown of Buffalo inform your artistic process? 

Naila: Oh, it informs me a lot. So the first time I began this project, I worked with the Black women elders in my community. So they were all, for the most part, either been in Buffalo for a long time or are from Buffalo. So my first kind of understanding of what Buffalo was next to Dr. Amma, who was doing work on Buffalo which is about the Pan American Exposition, and all these Black performance groups that were working together. 

It was my own work and working in my community, and then I met Dan kind of through the process of both of those things and he was like, “Oh, by the way, we have this amazing Monroe Fordham collection,” who – Dr. Fordham was an incredible scholar, one of the top that we ever had in history, in the country – he just happened to be a professor at Buffalo State as well, that was archiving all of the Black churches in Buffalo, the different Black organizations in Buffalo. 

It's so extensive, the work that he was doing. And then there's different collections, LGBTQIA plus collections that we have there. There's a Lester Glassner collection, which is actually one of the biggest Black memorabilia collections in the country, and it was owned by a white man who was actually known and passed away and had a big highlight when he passed away in the New York Times. 

So these are all things that are Buffalo – kind of – known, that started to really build my practice as an archivist and really starting to understand Black life in different types of ways and being able to say, “Okay, the history that we have here is more than some of the tours that I was growing up going to, or just different folk kind of telling me. We actually have real documented paperwork of folks like Mary Talbert, which is what I was doing research on with Dr. Amma. That was an amazing Black woman that was able to really garner a group of Black women that were really helping not only Black folks in general, but helping women get voting rights and Black women specifically, and organizing on an international and national level, and one of the first Black women to go to school. So it's –  yeah, it's – Buffalo has been really instrumental in my work as an archivist.

Thembi: Would it be safe to say that there's a lot that people across the country who do not understand about the significance of Buffalo in terms of just Black history, American history, scholarship in America? Would that be a safe thing to say? 

Naila: Oh yeah. Most people just think of us for Buffalo wings. I mean, sometimes you might get a little Underground Railroad in there, but even still, a lot of folks don't really understand the deep-rooted history that we have here. Especially there's the Black Dance Workshop, where you had different folks like Catherine Dunham, Nina Simone that were really doing the thing and doing the work with the Black Arts Collective. Amiri Baraka was at the University of Buffalo. Pearl Primus was running the Black Studies program at the University of Buffalo. All these heavy hitters that folks know on a large scale in terms of Black life and American life, they were here in Buffalo really doing that work. 

And a lot of folks don't really understand that on the ground level, particularly the Civil Rights Movement, we were always really instrumental, particularly in Black scholarship, really kind of pushing forward through the Black arts. Like we kind of lose that a little bit to DC and Harlem, just because they're bigger, known cities for Black life. But Buffalo has always had that push to make sure that we're investing in the arts, in the Black arts and making sure that we were known and pushing for civil rights and being activists in our own right.

Thembi: I almost feel like the only difference is just that DC and New York have better publicists. (Laughs.) You know, like you need to get better PR for Buffalo.

Naila: That’s exactly what it is. 

Thembi: It's so rich, the connections, that history so rich in Buffalo. 

Naila: So rich! I mean, our Juneteenth is one of the largest in the country, and there is the comedian Sadiq, he was here doing the show at the same time, and I remember he got on his Instagram at the time and like did a “Live” and was like showing Houston, TX. He was like, “Y'all, we ain't with it with our Juneteenth, like I’m at a real Juneteenth.” 

(Laughter.) 

Naila: So we've always—

Thembi: He didn't even know. 

Naila: He didn’t even know. But Buffalo has been really instrumental in terms of who we are, and in terms of cultivating Black life and Black culture here. We just haven't been able to have the access to build it nationally because – there's a lot of different, there's a lot of political reasons why that doesn't happen. We're a really segregated city. We don't have the type of money that the older folks that are white have here. 

The old money is very real and who gets into certain things. I always say that Buffalo, everyone says that Buffalo is, you know, it's like a living room, like everybody kind of goes into it and it's really small. But it just depends on whose living room you're in. Because there are times, I'm just now meeting people, and I’ve lived here all my life. Then I'm like, “Oh, I didn't know you were here and that you did this, and you were part of this major organization and you funded this.” You know, you can be really isolated here. And so for a lot of the times, because we weren't getting the kind of funding that white organizations were getting, we’ve kind of been able to just kind of keep it on our own. And you know, the places like the Colored Musicians Club is one of those things. African American Culture Center, Ujima… Everyone kind of stayed in their own pockets. But because of that, we've also haven't gotten a lot of funding to be where we really need to be.

Thembi: You spoke earlier about joy, and I wanted to talk about a few of your projects, and I'd love to start with your project called “The Movement of Joy.” And in this multimedia project, you explore the joy of Black women through storytelling and performance. What kind of response have you gotten from this work? You said you've been doing it for five years, right? 

Naila: Yeah. So folks love it, and it's been kind of funny because I've kind of come at it in different ways, just because when you get the message out, me as a dancer, I also recognize that dance isn't enough for people to fully understand the story. So sometimes you have to get different folks to come on board. 

So there's times where I've done the show and I have a poet with me, I have a visual artist, a singer. And we do different types of performances that build off the different stories of the Black women that we interview. So I typically ask the women three questions. I ask them to pick their favorite song and move to it. And then we kind of capture those moments on film, and then we recreate them in performances. And not recreate them to be exactly like the woman that's there, but really honoring the ways in which they talk about joy and recreating these stories about Black life, and we use their interviews and their films throughout the process and in the performance so that they can really see the words coming out of these Black women's mouths and be able to really understand and recognize joy. 

What's been beautiful to me is to see people of all colors see the humanity of Black women and cry. And not because they're crying because they’re sad, but you can tell they're crying because it's really the first time that they're seeing Black women talk about their joy. I remember I interviewed one woman, and she was an executive at a company, and she invited some of her colleagues to the show, and they came up to me afterwards and they said, “We've never seen her like that. She's always a very super, super private person.” 

So they were shocked that she even did the interview, A., and then B., was so vulnerable about it. But that helped to create a different relationship in her office because her colleagues and folks that worked for her, they saw the vulnerability that she had. And that's always really difficult for Black women, because when you're in those spaces, you always have to be a particular kind of way because either people take advantage of it, or they kind of already have an idea of who you are and that you're aggressive. So you're always kind of tiptoeing, and then you don't want people to be too close to you. 

So it was really beautiful in that instance for them to still have respect for her, but they really built another level of respect because they saw the humanity and the love and the joy, but also some of the conflict in which she got her joy. Because a lot of the times I don't ask people about their trauma, but sometimes that does often come into play as they're talking about ways that they discovered their joy.

Thembi: You're really tapping into something so important, something that for a generation after generation after generation in this country has been taken away from Black women and you are giving it back and I love that. And you're creating that space for Black women to find, and express, and share joy. That just sounds like such a rewarding process. How is that for you personally? Do you feel rewarded by that?

Naila: It feels amazing, because a lot of times I get insight to people whose families and friends that they've been close with don't have an insight to, because we never really ask people about their joy. And so what's been beautiful – the first thing that was beautiful, which allowed me to keep this as an archival project, was I had two women who passed since I started the project, and I gave their interviews to their families and both of them showed them at their funerals. 

And it's interesting because their families, I wouldn't say they didn't necessarily know the joy specifically, but it is very different when you hear it out of your mother's mouth, right, or out of your daughter's mouth. And so I remember the first time I gave the interview, a woman's sons just cried. Because you're dealing with grief, but then at the same time, you knew that your mother had some type of joy. Or when she, you know, at that time she mentioned her sons giving her joy, you know, even though they – I'm sure they've given her hell –  at different moments… 

(Laughter.)

Naila: But it was even the same for Carlos, who I spoke about earlier in the interview. His mother passed away and I gave Miss Loretta's video to him. And he still looks at it, like he goes back, and he always looks at his mother and her joy. She's just dancing. And, you know, so to have that kind of a gift to give somebody when they go away is something I think is beautiful, and it's something that's allowed me to stay in the project. And the performance part of it is always cool and something that is an investigative process for me as an artist and a scholar. And yes, it’s a certain kind of form of archival experience, but the actual interviews of these women, that's something that's like so short, but yet so beautiful – is what really brings, really has brought me joy and has also allowed me to continue the project.

Thembi: That's so powerful. I love that connection back to the family and I'm sure that as Black women are, many of the women probably talk about their children and their families being the source of their joy. So I can imagine when families get to see that when, you know, their mother, grandma, auntie passes, they get to hold on to that connection and know that she loves them. So that's really beautiful. 

You presented a performative lecture called “Breaking Identities in Hip Hop through the Queering of the Stud.” (Laughter.) Why did you choose the performative lecture approach to explore Queer identities in Hip-Hop? 

Naila: Yeah, so I was in a class at the time that I was kind of just pushed into, which was actually one of the best courses I've ever been in, in my life. And it was a Queer Studies course. So I didn't know what I was getting into, because I was trying to initially get into some type of Black Studies course and they were just like, “All right, this is all we got to offer. You're going to take this Queer Studies course.” And so, at the time I was in the class, and I remembered how white the class was. Like, not in students –  yeah, I was like the only Black student in class, but in terms of the material, and I was like, okay, wait a minute.  

I'm reading all these different things about all these different identities, all these different Queer identities, and it's still not hitting home because, what's happening to the Black Queer folks? Like, why aren't we really – why we only got one article out of like 70 articles (Laughs.) that’s speaking to something about Blackness. And even then, that was still kind of problematic to me, because it was still putting Black women in kind of this idea of essentially like, what this idea of, like what the “stud” is. 

And at the time, that was kind of like a problematic term because it was kind of like some people were cool with being labeled as a stud, and then some Black women were like, “I'm just a lesbian. Like, I don't, I don't identify as —" which is Young M.A. She's like, “I don't identify as like any of that. Like, I'm just Young M.A.” And so I really started to look at the idea of Hip-Hop, but specifically, why are we looking at Black women in this very specific type of way of the stud? And then why are we accepting certain types of queerness? 

Particularly like, we're okay with this stuff when it's kind of misogynistic and like the studs getting like mad women, but we're not really feeling the same way when it's a more femme Black male that's also in Hip-Hop kind of doing the same thing, but with men, and we're kind of like shunning it.  

So the work was really looking at the ways that Hip-Hop culture is always sampled. Like, sampling is not new in Hip-Hop. Like if we're going to the origins of Hip-Hop, sampling is the start of it, right? You're pulling 70s disco music to a track and then going off, and then coming in and then bringing the break, and then coming back in with the beat and doing all these different ideas of sampling and sounds. And so that was the way that I took the course. I'm like, okay, what is relevant to me now, which is Hip-Hop. What’s not being talked about in the field, which is queerness, specifically the stud, because we have this really problematic way of looking at the stud in this one kind of lens. And then how do we go about it to understand that this sampling and Hip-Hop is the sampling of who we all are and what we do all the time. You're just trying to put a label on it. 

Like our identities change every single day. Like no matter what we do, if I walk into a different place right now and I need to be dressed up because it's a corporate – whatever is supposed to be, I'm slightly changing my identity from how I am at home, kind of relaxed, right? And so that was really what the work was on, is that we have to be really conscious of the ways that we understand people's identities and really looking at it. That it’s a sampling and the ways in which we just have to be and perform ourselves. We're all performing, in that we have to be able to understand that in that performance we can choose the identities in which we want to be, and you don't always have to label it as something specific, because that's the only thing that you garner as something like, that's respectable.

Thembi: Wow, there's something really interesting that you seem to do in your work, where you see a gap, you see a hole, you see something's missing, and you say, “I'm going to fill that in.” (Laughs.) What is different about you where rather than just say, “Oh Gee, that thing isn't being shared, or that thing isn't being found,” you say, “I'm going to go get it. And then I'm going to make a project, and I'm going to share it with people and make sure it's preserved.” What's in you that makes you choose to do that?

Naila: Ooh, so for me, (Laughs.) I'm just very – a lot of people that know me know that I'm just kind of like bold. So I'm just going to do whatever I feel needs to be said, and I'll do it in a way that I don't necessarily – it's not my job to make people comfortable. Like I remember I had a mentor, Jason McDowell. He always said to me that being an artist is also making sure that being uncomfortable is your responsibility. 

And so for me, I wanted to make sure that anything that I do, even the work that I was doing with the stud, is making really uncomfortable conversations, making sure that when I'm putting the work that I'm doing, making people think. And so that was something that I wanted to be clear about – in anything that I do, is that I want to be able to do it differently so that I can add to the field, but then also make people kind of question, and then make people slightly feel a little uncomfortable, for the fact that we haven't actually been addressing a lot of this stuff at all. 

And so I remember when I actually started that work on the stud, I remember at the time my professor was kind of like, “Ooh, that's getting a little…like, you sure?” And I was like, “No, I want to do it.” This is the way Black folks are talking about Queer life, and we all really need to figure out how to understand, because it's a demographic in the Black community that we don't always, in my opinion, we don't always give them the respect that they deserve. We need to make sure that we honor that. We also need to make sure that people understand it, and let's do it in a context that people really understand, which is Hip-Hop. 

And so for me, that's what I try to do and all the work that I'm doing, is to see where is the hole? How can we make people feel uncomfortable to be able to sit and listen and answer and also question themselves, in the ways that they've kind of been existing in our everyday lives.

Thembi: Which leads me to “Where are all the Black women in Academia?”

Naila: Nonexistent. 

(Laughter.)

Thembi: You took the same approach. You used a performance-style lecture to ask that question. What did you discover about Black women in higher education through your research and development of that project? 

Naila: Sure. So the numbers are extremely low for Black professors, Black women professors, specifically. So about 1% actually make it to full professor. And if folks don't know, there's rankings in professorship. So you have kind of like adjuncts and lecturers that tend to be part-time, and then there's something that people try to go for, which is tenure. And the tenured position, you start with Assistant. Then you go to Associate, and then some folks go to full, and then you get folks that can go kind of go into that Distinguished Professor world kind of later in in their career. 

And about 3% of Assistant Professors, of women, are Black, and 3% of our Associate Professors are Black women, and then about 1% are full Professors. And so I was working with Dana Venerable and Cassandra, who was at the time – we were all in graduate school together. They're working on their Ph.D.s in English, and we were all in the same boat. We were all really struggling to just get through. And I come from a family – specifically on my dad's side and my mom as well – that went through academia and worked in academia, and they couldn't really even help me, just because when you're in a very different field, they're all very different specific types of things, and it can be very – I don't want to use the term “cult-like,” but it feels like that. 

Like everybody tries so like everybody tries to like, make you go through all these really difficult things because they had a really hard time doing it, and their person before them made them do this, so you have to do it too. 

So about 70% of black women don't finish terminal degrees because of lack of mentorship. And usually that's because – who are you going to, right? Like, who – even within that notion of the 3%, and maybe it might be 4, around now, but even with those numbers, that's not enough to be able to help grad students, especially if you don't even have access to grad students, because some of them, you only might be working with undergrad students. So even to get those levels, there's just not any mentorship really to help. 

And so going through academia is almost kind of like going through anything political. When you're trying to go through those ranks, is that it's very much a Good Old Boys type of club. It's, you know, we talked about academia, it started for really the white, male, wealthy elites. And so that system has always been there, and so it's really difficult for Black women to try to get to those really high heights of academia. They're just not really existent for a lot of us. 

And the when the ones that do make it through, it's one out of like a million that can really get to those types of ranks, because there's always something that's going like this (holds up hand) and it's very, very much policy driven, which people don't really understand. And it's also very subjective, like you have people that will literally take – they’re trying to finish their dissertation, and you might have an advisor that may not read your stuff for like two years, and you're in the process, and you only have a certain amount of time that you have to finish because you have to, you know, you have debt that's following you. You have – you're paying for the semester still, like you're trying to get through. 

Or you might have some people that are so rigid in how they're grading, or how they're editing your work, that everything that you do might be wrong. And even if that is the case, you don't have people that are pushing you through. And so you have a lot of Black women specifically that are like, “I can't do this,” because most of the time we're still having to work full-time jobs, you know, or we might have kids. Everyone's just trying to get through, and it's like, “Okay, why would I stay here to just get brutally beaten down intellectually on a daily basis?” for some stuff that you actually might be doing better than your own professors, or actually might be like more in the field than your professors are actually in the field. 

And so that work that we all did together, “Where are all the Black women in Academe?” was really challenging – Where are we? Because, A., we're not getting more people at higher rates…so even though we might have Black women graduating, going to college at higher rates than we were, that's also undergraduate. We're not getting Black women that are working in the institutions. 

So even right now, I'm one of the only Black women in the School of Arts and Sciences, and we have a vast population of Black and brown students. But that's not necessarily always indicative of the university, it’s indicative really of the pool that you have, and people that are getting access to that pool, whether it be finalizing, graduating, or even getting jobs. It's – they're not easy jobs to get. 

Thembi: So right now, there's a kind of a brewing conversation about open-source education, about different paradigms of education that go beyond academia that go beyond these institutional walls that can be very high, with really high barriers to entry. 

Do you imagine that there could be some future where, because those barriers to entry are limited, then Black women would be able to thrive academically? Because you speak on, you know, you may as a Black woman be doing things out in the field that are very remarkable. But because you've got this institutional barrier, you aren't able to convert that into scholarship. Do you imagine a place of success for Black women in a more, for lack of a better word, democratically accessed type of education? 

Naila: I think it can when we have the people in our communities support what we do in the masses, right? Like, we have to remember, academia is also a business, and their prestige has really come from money, right? When we look at all these Ivy League schools, you're really looking at the fact that they have massive endowments. Yes, they're getting paired. And their students are getting paired to really good medical schools and good law schools and all those other things, but it's also because of the access, and the money, and the relationships that they have, right? It’s not that—

People that built these institutions aren't the most brilliant human beings in the world. They're financially savvy to know how to capitalize off of education, and we can be able to do the same things when we realize and figure out how to develop our own folks in the ways that we can build. Now we're starting to see it at HBCUs, where folks are starting to kind of invest more money into Black schooling. 

There’s not that there's not white professors that work there, but you arguably will have more Black and brown faculty and staff that work there. What's happening now is you have folks like Edward Bloom that are coming out and trying to push against – he already pushed to get rid of Affirmative Action, passed in the Supreme Court. He's pushing against Black women with the Fearless Fund, and next on his chart is HBCUs. 

So we've been trying to build and establish that through these kind of Black systems, but we still have the “they” that decide, “What good education is,” “What makes someone an expert.” And until I feel like we understand as Black folks that we don't need that validation, then we're going to be able to be successful, because it's coming. 

Like whether people want to or not, HBCUs – I hope to God, they stay, I hope to God a lot of our Black professors stay in academia. But the way that we're going now, particularly with all these DEI and Affirmative Actions, HBCUs are next. And I don't think that people really understand the real division, the divisiveness, and the brutality that folks are willing to have to get rid of Black folks, particularly through education and business. And so it's a real fight. 

But we have to be able to say, “You know what? We can build our own institutions, and we can figure out how to do this without ‘the man,’” right, or get allies to help us build these other institutions that are kind of outside of these folks that are trying to push and use our own laws against us, right? Edward Bloom is essentially using the Civil Rights Act against us. 

And so when we are able to figure out how to validate ourselves in the masses and recognize when we do do that, that we might have somebody try to burn it down. But we have to be able to understand that we can do that. We've been doing it. That's part of our DNA in this country. And we're going to have to, we're going to have to continue to fight to make sure the spaces that we have, whether they're HBCUs or just Black spaces on campuses, are there to survive. Or we figure out a different framework to be able to to get the folks that we need to help build up our communities. 

Thembi: You really touch on something that's so important, particularly for Black folks and just the idea of how we're never in a place where we can rest and say, “Okay, we've achieved certain things, let's keep moving on.” And I think sometimes people think that. People think that like, “Alright, this will, this can never go back,” but all the things you mentioned are pure examples of how we're constantly in a struggle to just to have access to what we rightfully should have access to, as citizens of this country. So that's really, that's a really important point. 

I want to shift back to your work as an artist, archiver, scholar. There's an aspect of improvisation that's included in what you do. Can you talk about improvisation and its place in your work? 

Naila: Sure. So improv is kind of like a daily thing for me. I think anybody that has to work in a lot of white spaces, you're always trying to maneuver and manage what's coming at you in real time. So that's kind of the literal phrase of understanding improvisation, that anytime you do something, recognize that somebody might come at you with something else right away, just so that you just don't have access to it. So they can just constantly shut you down. So you’re always trying to think, you know, be four or five steps ahead of time, but if that doesn't happen, you gotta shift and move. 

In terms of the practice work, Black folks have always been able to create in the ways in which, for me, has always been through a call-and-response and hearing and responding to what's happening in real time. And so the improvisation of my work is really, what is happening right now, and how can I respond to it? From like a more intellectual, scholarly approach. And then when it comes to movement, what am I feeling in the moment that's connecting to the story that I'm trying to tell? And then, anytime you create anything that it becomes, “choreographed,” it had to come through improvisation first. You had to come up and start to feel something first, to then be able to set it. 

And so I've kind of built my life off of that. And I really didn't understand that until I really started to really see Black women, Black women choreographers and how they created in the spaces. And not only created in the spaces, just in terms of movement, but created in the spaces around a lot of white men and around the white, a lot of white folks that they had to gauge and garner back and forth, the relationship with an executive producer and a director and all these other, you know, all these other kind of folks that police the system. 

So a lot of people don't understand that even if you're a creative in the work, you still have essentially someone that's over you, which is usually the person that pays the most money to make it happen. And so for me, I've always tried to figure out how could I use this improvisation and still be true to myself, but then also kind of maneuver and manage the creative side, and also kind of the, you know, the more financial, administrative side of things. So that shows up in my work, whether it's administratively, or whether it's the actual practice of improving and having a feel.

I'm not a 5-6-7-8 person, I think you know that. (Laughs.) I’m kind of like, “What does this need?” “Who do I have in the room, and how can I make them their best, while also making them themselves, while also telling the story that needs to be told?”

Thembi: I love the connection you made between improvisation in the outside world, as well as inside of the work. 

Naila: Mmm-hmm…

Thembi: That's so true. It's so, so essential. When you look at your body of work, what recurring themes have emerged through your examination of that? 

Naila: Ooh, so for me, joy, obviously, just because that's what I focused on. But the bigger thing that I would say is community. It’s something that I think that we, as Black folks, we talk about community all the time, but we don't really know how it works. 

And I think – sorry my dog is going—

(Laughter.)

Thembi: That’s okay, that’s okay!

Naila: When we talk about community in Black life, we specifically talk about kind of what I've noticed is like, it's always a struggle to get through. Like, how are we going to get through? Like we gotta get this fight. Like we gotta garner everybody we're about to, like, we gotta get out. We gotta protest. And that's a part of it.

When we talk about community for me, and the work that I'm always trying to do, is how do we build relationships to respect and honor everybody that's in the space, even if they have different opinions? And how do we build a community off of that, to make sure that we're telling the same story. And I think we do that really well in the arts, particularly in the performing arts, because we don't really have a choice in theatre. Everybody has to work with one another. 

And I wish we can build that same framework outside, but for me that's something that is a is a major theme – is that we have to work as a collective to make something work. I can't just be a choreographer, or a director, or someone that is, you know, producing something or putting something together without thinking of the whole. It never works that way. And so I think that's, you know, that's I would say “Community Joy” would be my theme. 

Thembi: That is perfect. Put putting those things together. I love that. And you talk about how it takes so many different people to make it work, and you've collaborated with visual artists, spoken word poets, vocalists, historians, faith leaders. And you talked a little bit about that earlier, those different collaborations. How do you make decisions about who to collaborate with when you're working on a project? 

Naila: Ooh, whoo! So I usually, and you know this, Thembi, I usually work with people that I like. I don't work with people I don't like. I'm kind of out of that world.

Thembi: (Laughing.) That’s a good place to start.

Naila: Yeah. If I don't like you, I don't care what color you are. If I don't like you, and I don't feel like there's a good energy to work in a room together, I just won't do it, because I the process of creating is too hard to be with people that you don't like. Knowingly don't like, in the sense of like, if I go into a room and I'm like, you know what, I don't really feel your energy, or feel that you're going to be somebody that works in the collective, that's going to be a “No” for me. 

And then the other thing I would say is, I want to be able to work with people that are really talented, and really good at what they do, and are really strong in their asset.

The biggest thing I would say about that in terms of talent, is I would like to work with an asset build – meaning, like everybody that is really good at what they do, they do that, and they do it hardcore, and nobody questions what they do, right? It's not that people don't have questions as a whole, but you really trust the person that you're bringing into the room. So that I know, like, if we're going to go on stage together, like, I know you’re going to kill it. Even if you make some, even if you change a little something up, I know that it’s going to be for the good of what we're doing. You're not doing it in a selfish way, which can happen sometimes with artists, like egos can kind of go into the room. 

But it has to be people that I wholeheartedly trust in terms of talent. That I know that what they do, they're going to deliver it in the best way, and they're going to be able to come at the process and the best way that's equitable. But they're also going to do it in a space with grace, right? Even if, you know people always get frustrated at different times, because that's just what the process is. But how you deal with that frustration is something that's really important to me, with anybody that I work with, whether it's actually performing or in a creative space. 

So I like you, you're talented, and you are really strong in your asset, and you treat people with grace. 

Thembi: I like that. That's a good checklist to have when you're working with folks. So as an educator, how has your focus on archival work shaped your students’ perspectives? 

Naila: Ooh, so I think they would think I'm kind of funny, because I usually bring what's happening currently, and then I connect it to what it what's already happened, and show them, okay, this is a thing that happened, like I know you might think this is new, but like, this is where this actually, like came from. And so when I kind of grab them in that way, it's allowed for me to really teach them and understand the archival process and the importance of going back to where it was, and where it came from. 

So, you know, I just had a lecture, and we were talking about twerking and we were, you know, talking about the different ways and understanding strip club culture in class, and you know, the students kind of in their world, they were like, “Oh, this is just how we get down, this is new.” And then I literally was just like, “Well the Freaknik documentary is coming out, and like, y'all, we've been doing this for a minute. (Laughter.) Like, y'all, we're not the only ones like, wiling out at parties,” right?

But then we'll go and we'll look at someone like Sarah Baartmann, and we'll see what that looks like. Like actually, how the Black woman's butt was used as a space for really like a circus to be made fun of, right? And that was something that wasn't the way it is now, because Kim Kardashian or some of these other folks decided that they wanted to like all of a sudden like cultivate the Black woman's body, right?

We have to also understand the history and then, it makes it, what I've noticed from them is like, looking at that and kind of going more into these archival, deep historical places, it then makes them question some of the behavior or things that they might be doing now that might be counterproductive to what things were, right? 

So like, I might have a student that says, like, “I don't want to vote because I feel like my vote isn't going anywhere.” And I'm like, “Okay, well, let's just go look at this archive.” Even if we can't go to the actual place, we can go online. We can go to the Schaumburg, we can pull up something. Boom. This is in their archive right now. They scanned it, they took a picture. “You see that this person died for you to be able to vote?”

Thembi: Yeah, it changes it a little bit, right? That changes it a little bit. (Laughter.)

Naila: Right, but in all fairness, they don't know what they don't know, right? And Google doesn't necessarily always give it, but when you have something that people can touch in an archive, they know that it's, to some extent, they know that is real. They know that it actually happened, right? Because sometimes you don't know what to believe when it's just online. But when it's something that was really there, that's documented, that's been preserved, you think about it in a little bit of a different way, which is what folks did, you know, with the Lynching Museum, Brian Stevenson, right? It looks a little different when you kind of have all these different, you have all these different kind of hangings that are like visually right there. You're like, “Whoa!” That's a different way than just kind of taking it in online or just kind of hearing something. 

Thembi: We’ve talked about a range of different things, including the importance of preserving the history of things. So what overall is the role of arts in our society, or what should it be, in your view? 

Naila: I think it needs to be more respected, at least here in the US, for sure. I mean we can start there. I think the role of the arts, I think the role as artists, is to be able to challenge what's happening, and particularly the inequities, by way of storytelling. I think a lot of people don't really understand when a policy is put in place, because you're usually having to have gone to school in a specific kind of way. You have to read up on it or you have to know. There's so much that goes into understanding a policy that's there. 

It's really different when you have the arts that's able to tell a story and people are like, “Aha, I get it,” right? Which is why a lot of the arts are attacked right now. Like a lot of people don't want to fund the arts. Like, “Why do I want to be able to do a play where people can show that their water is messed up, and they can't drink it, and this is the reason why.” And we are able to put it in layman's terms, in terms that people are able to understand and feel, then you create an uproar, right? 

The arts are so powerful that we're at a really, we're at a watershed moment with the arts and why a lot of people don't want to fund them, because they're afraid of the stories that can get people to move and take action. Because once people really understand something, they won't tolerate it anymore, right? 

And so we have to be really mindful of what's happening with the arts, and make sure that we don't allow the arts to fail in the sense of us not funding the arts to be able to keep artists creating works, or be able to write different plays, or to be able to visually show things. We have to be at the forefront to make sure that doesn't happen, because arts – I really, and I don't say this to be funny, I understand we're not surgeons or anything else as artists, as artists and arts administrators. But what we are, are people that can create change and get people to understand what's happening in their communities and take a stand. 

And then you can be able to go into those other places like policies, right? It's always like what comes first? Like the arts, or the issue, right? And usually it's kind of, it's really both, right? Simultaneously, some people have already, you know, you see different books and movies that have already – there are things that are happening right now.

Like flying cars and things are getting ready to happen, that people have written about and creatively ever written about decades before, that is happening now. So the mind has always been able to create and imagine, but people don't want the change that comes after that. And if they do want the change, it’s something that they're publicly funding that usually works in their interest. Art doesn't typically work in a conservative interest.

Thembi: And it's very clear through your work, that how you see the role of arts, is how you exist in the world of arts. So that's an absolutely perfect connection, you know? 

What's on the horizon for you? What kinds of projects are you working on and what are you excited about? 

Naila: Well, we're getting ready to open Crowns, that Thembi’s directing!

Thembi: Yay!

Naila: Woo! So come see that. Still working on the “Movement of Joy,” working with different organizations, particularly foundations, to be able to get those funders and philanthropists to start to really fund the arts and start to move money towards the arts to make sure that we can have bigger impact and be able to invest in the arts and create our own equities to continue to build and tell our stories. 

I'll be going to Brazil in August to be sharing my work for a conference there, all about the African diaspora. And so I'm super excited about that. That's coming up. And yeah, just doing the work  every day. 

Thembi: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that – worldwide! Hopefully in another 5 to 10 years, we'll be able to come back and talk about more of your body of work, right? And look again at what you've been doing and what new discoveries have been made. 

Naila: Yes! (Laughter.)

Thembi: Or maybe even sooner than that. Who knows? Alright, so thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation with me. I'm so glad I got to listen to you, learn from you, ask you questions and…‘til next time. 

Naila: ‘Til next time, thank you!

KeyBARD is produced, written, and hosted by Thembi Duncan. Theme music by Sycho Sid. Visit us on Instagram @KeyBARD_IG.

 

People on this episode

Head Shot

Thembi Duncan

Host
Head Shot

Naila Ansari Carbonell Catilo

Guest