VoE - Nyama McCarthy-Brown
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[00:00:00] 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: I'm coming to understand that, I think most people, not all, but most people actually think of themselves as outsiders, for some reason or another. And so, in the midst of that, how do we work together? How do we create sense of belonging? How do we come to work together when we, so many of us carry something in us that says, I don't belong, or, I'm different, I'm the outsider? 

Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences. With your host, David Staley Voices focuses on the innovative work of arts and sciences, faculty and staff with departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry, and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics and languages among many others.

The college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new now.

David Staley: Joining me today in the ASC Marketing and Communication [00:01:00] Studio is Nyama McCarthy-Brown, Associate Professor of Dance Pedagogy through Community Engagement at the Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. In 2021, she was awarded Outstanding Dance Educator of the Year from the National Dance Education Organization and the Distinguished Dance Educator Award from Dance Teacher Magazine.

She was Ohio State's inaugural Artist Laureate in 2023. Dr. McCarthy Brown. Welcome to Voices. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Thank you. I appreciate that. It's happy to be here. 

David Staley: And I would love to begin with your year as Artist Laureate. As I say, you were the first, the inaugural Artist Laureate. Congratulations. First of all, tell us what the Artist Laureate program is.

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: The Artist Laureate program is really about sharing the arts all around, in particular Ohio, the regional campuses for Ohio State University. But, it's the idea that arts can be, should be, need to be amplified everywhere, and it's helpful to have someone point out how art is already happening, being [00:02:00] created and occurring in the lives of everybody and kind of how do we ferret out those spaces and places? How do we uplift those people and artists? How do we get excited about those processes and get people involved? And so, the Artist Laureate project is really about amplifying the arts. Different mediums are selected different years.

The first year was, for me, focusing on dance and community, and I believe the second year was a real big, exciting focus on theater. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Yeah. 

David Staley: Yeah. Tell us what you accomplished during your year as Artist Laureate. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: During my year, I took a group of students to be a part of my project. It was very exciting and enriching work.

We created a program about different dance pieces that shed light on sense of belonging and community and how connections are made, and then we went to different community partners, we went to the OSU regional campus at Lima, [00:03:00] and in Lima, one of our really special moments was I was able to connect with an alum of the program and one of my former students who had taken and been interested in dance education, and she's now teaching at the Liberty Magnet Arts School in Lima, and her fourth grade class became a part of this project. And we went to Lima, the OSU Dance students and I, we danced with students there, created a movement score, and then that evening, we went to the local, Lima campus, OSU campus and performed the pieces that we had been working on at OSU, and then we performed the piece that we created with the fourth graders in Lima, and also had a local dance studio there perform with us on stage. And we did something like that in different spaces; we went to Mansfield, we went to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Uh, so... 

David Staley: In Cincinnati, right? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: In Cincinnati. So we had a little tour, which was exciting for students and [00:04:00] myself. It was really nice to meet different people in Ohio, and I think that was kind of the impetus and driving force around the Artist Laureate program is to expand beyond the OSU campus. Sometimes we can, you know, get in our car or on our scooter or bike or whatever and go to campus and go to our building and go home, and not really realize all of the people around us that have ideas and experiences and creative processes that we can be excited by and engaged with.

So, it was really an opportunity for me and my students to get off campus, to share with people, share things we had been working on, and then also learn about what's being worked on in other places and see where those connections can happen and be amplified. 

David Staley: You made reference to a movement score.

I'm not certain what that is. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: A movement score is a device of choreography. It's kind of pushing against the idea of a repertory choreography, where I would come in and I [00:05:00] would teach you eight counts of movement and you would repeat them, and when you would replicate them in me and you would do the same thing and they would be the same.

A movement score might be something where I would say like, I want you to walk in zigzag lines until you see one of the other dancers in the space; when you see one of the other dancers in the space, you will hold and freeze for four counts, reach in three different directions, and then keep moving. And so, it invites each person involved in the movement score to think for themselves, to see other people in the space, to take direction, but to do what they want with it. 

David Staley: Hmm. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Because in those walking steps, some might walk slow, some might, walk fast, some might walk with a limp, some might, you know, walk with big bubbling gestures or something. So, it gives a lot of space for creativity, but it also gives an organization to what's gonna happen.

So, it's kinda like an organized chaos situation. 

David Staley: [00:06:00] It's almost like improv, is that...? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: It is, yeah. Some people call them improvisational scores. 

David Staley: Okay. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: And I think they can be as structured and tight and restricted or as loosey and goosey and free. But, when working with a group of nine year olds and ten year olds, it was really nice to invite them into the space, give them something to do so they are not lost, but also welcome their freedom and their play into the space as well. 

David Staley: Had you ever worked with young people before, with children? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Yeah. Before being a college professor, I was a high school teacher, and before that I was a fifth grade ballroom teacher, and before that, I was a...

David Staley: Oh. So the answer is definitely yes. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Yeah. I've, I've actually worked in all kinds of settings with all ages, so, yeah. 

David Staley: Where did you come up with the idea for this program, for the Artist Laureate? I'm interested in the genesis of your ideas. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Well, a lot of it was coming from the book that I wrote, _Skin Colored Pointes_, and, in the, the book, there were the stories of 13 women of color in ballet, but a couple of the stories were really poignant [00:07:00] to what was going on in our cultural reality in the moment around implicit bias and belonging. And so, within the Artist Laureate program, people write a proposal and someone is selected, and so in my proposal, I wanted to amplify some of the concepts from the book and put them in the body and embody those ideas and experiences, and a lot of those ideas were around, how do we come to understand implicit bias? What does it mean? How is it experienced and lived experience, not just in technical terms and theories? And then, in terms of a sense of belonging, how do we get to feel belonging? I'm coming to understand that, I think most people, not all, but most people actually think of themselves as outsiders, for some reason or another. Oh, we're all here together and I belong and all of that, but I'm different from everybody else because I, da da dah, I'm different because I da da da. And for everybody, it's a different reason, but most people [00:08:00] are grappling with some kind of, I have anxiety, or I was adopted, or I'm not the same cultural group, or, I didn't go to school here since I was in kindergarten, or I didn't, da da, fill in the blank. And so in the midst of that, how do we work together? How do we create sense of belonging? How do we come to work together when we, you know, so many of us carry something in us that says, I don't belong, or, I'm different, I'm the outsider? 

David Staley: So how do we do that? What's the answer to your great question?

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: I think it's a constant work, and a constant understanding that, you know what? I do have this thing that makes me feel different, but so does everybody else, and these differences are our superpowers. It is what makes us unique. It is what makes life exciting, and we are all here together for a reason and we're gonna work together because that's how we move forward together.

So, I think it's getting people to buy in on that idea, which I don't think is necessarily easy, and I don't think that it always happens, [00:09:00] but I think that's kind of, for me, the goal. 

David Staley: Well, you mentioned your book, _Skin Colored Pointes_, and I wanted to go into a little more detail about this. Tell us, what were you accomplishing, I think, with this book? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Well, I learned so much. It's a really beautiful exploration of lived experiences, oral histories. It's definitely considered dance studies research and dance history, a departure from, from my first book, which focuses on pedagogy, but for _Skin Colored Pointes_, I learned, you know, I worked on it for probably six to ten years, like it's a long project, so I evolved a lot as a researcher and I, one of the things that I learned was kind of the weight of research. And my first interview, I was not expecting to write a book. I was thinking, I'm gonna go interview this person, i'll write a little article, I'll move on with my life.

I'm not even really a ballet person. And at the end of the interview, I was like, I have to do something with this interview because it's really important, it's really special. Okay, what am gonna do? And I'm like, well, I'm gonna go interview somebody else. And then the more interviews I collected, [00:10:00] the heavier the responsibility for me was to not just put them in the drawer and move on to my next project, and so I really felt like I had a responsibility to share these stories that were really impactful and illuminated so many things for me.

I learned about limiting beliefs, not just the ones other people put on a person, but the ones you put on yourself. I'll share a little story about Lauren Anderson, who is the first African American principal dancer in a predominantly white company, the Houston Ballet Company, from the eighties, long before Misty Copeland, and she talked about thinking she was gonna quit ballet, and being really heartbroken about that experience at a young age, but knowing that she was gonna be in this, spring recital nonetheless. And she goes to the call board, that's where they list who gets the parts, and every spring the board goes up and you go to see whose name is listed, and she didn't see her name on the board. And she goes into the director's office and [00:11:00] she's like, what? What's going on? I don't, I first you don't say I'm gonna be a, a dancer, and now, I don't even get a part in the spring recital and everybody gets part. And the director says, Lauren darling, you're Alice, and she realizes I did see L. Anderson, but I thought that was some other kid because, I can't be Alice, alice is white. And the director says, colors are for a canvas: you're a dancers and dancers dance, and you are Alice. And she said, well, heck, if I can be Alice, I can be anything. But what her story told me was really fascinating.

She said, in the entire time of her career, she never experienced racism at Houston Ballet, except for when outsiders came into the space, but, from the school and the company, she never experienced racism. But her not thinking she could be Alice is totally a moment of racialized experience, and, what I saw in that was, she had the limiting belief. She carried implicit bias. [00:12:00] It wasn't put on her by somebody else: somebody wasn't gatekeeping her, she was gatekeeping herself. And that is one of the impacts and aspects of racism that a lot of people don't think, your beliefs are limited before you could even be stopped by somebody else, which is part of structural institutionalized racism.

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: You don't even have to say, Black people can't go there because we can look at the room, see no Black people, and just take that understanding kind of subconsciously. And so, one of the things about kind of reversing that and changing society is when people interrupt those moments, like that director did, he says, no, you're Alice, and so that is a way of interrupting those stereotypes. And it's not just a message to Lauren, which it was, but it was a message to her audience, and it was a message to the other dancers in the space that she belonged and she could get the part. And what's even more interesting to me is I found myself presenting on Black ballerinas at Swarthmore College, [00:13:00] this was like 10, 15 years ago, and I was saying how there was a scarcity of Black ballerinas and I was looking at this one student who was kind of questioning with her face, and then she asked me a question at the end and she said, this kind of makes no sense to me because I've seen Black ballerinas be principle dancers my whole life.

And I said, are you from Houston? And she said, yes. And so, her idea of who gets to do what was totally shifted by seeing Lauren Anderson on stage her whole life, and other dancers, but, that's how you shift those things, you shift the culture by widening the spaces. And it's not just for people who are marginalized to do that work, but it's people in power.

David Staley: You'd said, with that initial interview, you weren't imagining a book, you thought this would be an article. Why did you decide to conduct this interview in the first place? You said you'd never done anything like this before. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: It was a graduate student assignment. 

David Staley: Ah, okay. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Yeah, it was one of those assignments, which, really, when I look back at like my tenure [00:14:00] dossier and now my, I'm gonna go for a full professor soon.

You know, a lot of these things, I was just doing what someone told me to do. Go get published, go get an article, go to a conference, go to whatever, and then you look back and you're like, oh, I did all these things, right? So it was just, it was just one of the things I was doing to accomplish an assignment.

David Staley: Hmm. Had you ever done a formal interview before, and did you have to sort of learn that process? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: I started in grad school interviewing Black ballerinas, and then at a certain point I decided I wanna go beyond Black ballerinas. I want to interview Asian ballerinas, Latina ballerinas, Native American ballerinas.

But it, really budded in grad school, and the more interviews I did, the more I learned, oh, you know, I, I have to have a backup plan for this situation, or I need to carry my data like this 'cause I lost an interview or I need to, you know, it was, it was a lot of trial and error. I did take a course on oral history research while I was doing my doctorate work, but, yeah, it was a process. 

David Staley: I know that one of the things that you explore in the book are the obstacles [00:15:00] many of these dancers face. Tell us, tell us some of these. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: I heard stories that were absolutely wild. I mean, some of them are stories that you kind of would anticipate, oh, I was the only Black student in the class, or nobody know what to do with me, with makeup or my hair, so no one would help me, or, you know, I was kind of just being cast to the sidelines. But, so a lot of the obstacles were kind of cultural navigations, and also like what does it mean when you can't look to your parents or your family structure to understand this space you're in. So, your family is not translating codes and ways of operating, or maybe everybody at the ballet is doing this thing, but your parents aren't in on it, so they're not, you know, supporting it too, be it your merit gifts or your reverence to call time or whatever. So, there were a number of things like that. I think one of the things that was interesting was there is no monolithic experience for a Black [00:16:00] ballerina or an Asian ballerina. I only have, I think, three Asian ballerina stories in the book, but it's fascinating to me that one was able to list, you know, incident after incident after incident around her Asianness, and another one was like, it was never an issue, I never had anything occur, ever that related to limitations or even opportunities. She was like, I was always evaluated on my dancing, and that's just the way it always was. Whereas, this other dancer was like, called sushi by her castmates or China, or you know, pulled to the side and said she didn't do a good job with shaving her armpits because they could still see it was too dark, you know, or like lighten up her skin with powder.

Like, things that you think would be absurd, like, you know, both are occurring at the same time. Really just a lot of fascinating experiences to kind of like sit with and understand, that how these things happen [00:17:00] on stage, each person had a story to get there. 

David Staley: As you completed this book, did you see yourself or your own history and story reflected in these women's experiences? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Well, I'm not a ballet dancer, although I have taught ballet and danced, performed in ballet pieces and things like that. I think one of the things that was true for me was there are a lot of stories of... I asked every dancer about their teacher, and they all kind of got, ah, very emotional about like the people who brought them through, and I think that is something I identify with, as something, like ,my dance teachers are very special to me, and it's endearing experience to be cultivated and, and learn from somebody, and it's something that I identify as a student and also hope to be a teacher for other students. So, I identified with dancers on that level. And also, most of these women were put in dance class, I want to say all, but I, I'm always careful to use [00:18:00] that word, but definitely most, their mother put them in these classes. And so, there is something about that experience, and my mother did put me in dance class.

It was because I was asking to be put there, but, and some of the students, I mean some of the women in the book talk about, you know, their insistence on being in that space and so their mother took them, but, I did find that interesting, that it was kind of, for some, like, I'm positioning you socially in society to do this thing that will be good for all of us, you and our family or whatever.

And for others, like you needed a physical outlet, you gotta go to this place and get some energy out or, or whatever. But, I did think that was an interesting thing about kind of the relationship and where people are placed. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. Well, you've anticipated one of my questions, I was gonna ask, why are you a dancer and did you know from a young age that you wanted to be a dancer, or were there other things you wanted to pursue? Were you gonna be a writer, were you gonna be an astronomer? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Such a great question. It kind of triggers all these different ideas in [00:19:00] me. So, I sometimes think, and I ask people to consider in their mind the first time they got excited about movement, and I do have this memory of me, maybe three or four, in the choir stand at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, and my knee is like bending to the beat in a very particular way, and I knew that my body had to engage in this moment. And I think about like that being kind of the first cognizant time.

It wasn't long before I was asking to get into dance class, 'cause my sister went to dance class and I was always on the side of the class dancing, but I wanted to be in the class, and I had to wait till I turned six and then, that was that. I didn't really think I was gonna be a dancer, because I went to the School of the Arts and by that point it felt like I had missed too much formal training, 'cause most of my dance classes were through park and recreation centers in San Francisco, and I just felt like the San Francisco Ballet School kids were just [00:20:00] beyond me in so many ways, that I would just didn't think I could catch up and do it. But I didn't really think I wouldn't dance, and even today, I think, everybody's a dancer.

We all move our bodies, we all breathe. This is all dancing. And I get that response, you just gave me, shaking your head, all the time. 

David Staley: I shook my head no, I'm a very poor dancer. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Yes, I get this all the time, but I think that... 

David Staley: But I like dancing, I'm just not very good at it. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Somebody told you you weren't a good dancer. 

David Staley: Maybe, yeah.

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Somebody gave you an idea of what good dance is. 

David Staley: It's true. Yeah. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: But isn't dance to be human? Isn't moving to rhythm a part of humanity? And so, I think everybody's the dancer, but I also think that there came to be a time in my life where I was willing to do anything, but the only doors that were opening were dance doors.

And I was like, well, I guess this is the one I'll go through 'cause I'm qualified, I could do that, but I could also go to law school or I could be a teacher or I could, I remember I applied to be a tour guide at the CNN Center, like I just wanted a job, but these dance doors would just open, open, open, open, open.

So, I said, well, [00:21:00] I, I guess this is where I should be going, is where the opportunities are. And so, then, because I don't really think you can't dance and do anything, do you know what I mean? 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: I didn't think I had to have a career in dance to be a dancer, 'cause I'm just gonna dance anyways. But this is just where they all lied.

But, you said something about being a writer that kind of made me think. When I started writing about dance and I was like, okay, I'm gonna be an academic and I'm gonna write this book or whatever, and I was like, but I'm not a good writer, and I never wanted to be a writer. And my really good friend, she said, there are no good writers.

There are people who work at it and people who don't. And I thought, yeah. And maybe there's no good anything, like, maybe there's no good dancers, there's no, there's people who work at it, people who don't. No good basketball players. I mean, there is natural talent, but hard work will beat you every time, so what are you gonna work at?

And so, yeah. 

David Staley: Well, let's talk about another one of your books, _Dance Pedagogy for a _[00:22:00] _Diverse World,_ and you had made reference to this before, you said this is more pedagogical. Tell us about this book. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: This was my first book, _Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World_. It's based largely on my research dissertation and also my time in the classroom.

I graduated from Spelman College and went to Oakland, California to serve in Teach for America, and I ended up being a high school dance teacher, which I loved to the moon three times and back, but I wanted to keep teaching dance, and in California they didn't have dance credentialing at the time, it was P.E., and so I went off to get an MFA and, there's five other stories there, but. But, I used my experiences in the classroom. And then, I taught high school dance again in Atlanta, Georgia, and then I've taught many other places. And what I learned in teaching dance, particularly, w hen I was asked to teach high school dance in Atlanta, I was asked to develop a conservatory based high school magnet program in an underserved [00:23:00] community, there were tons of students who wanted to dance, but they did not have ballet training, and the principal at the time wanted me to teach ballet and modern, which I was qualified and could do. I had just gotten my MFA from the University of Michigan, and I was ready to teach ballet and modern, no problem.

But that was not what the community's embodied histories were, and that kind of rubbed heads and was in great conflict. And then, I realized that these students should not be positioned to overcome their history, their embodied history, their dance history, their cultural histories. They should be positioned to work with those histories to excel, and that's where culturally responsive dance pedagogies kind of started to bloom in my mind. I knew a lot about culturally relevant teaching from teaching courses and reading books, which was already very heavy in the education ecosystem. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: But it wasn't a thing in dance. And so, in dance, ballet was gatekeeping and western dance forms were gatekeeping, and I think that my book, and it's widely used in [00:24:00] universities across the country, it is part of the shift to dismantle those ideas and honor the dance histories that are carried in people's bodies, that they get from dancing with their families or line dances or quinceaneras or Chinese folk dances.

Like, how do we take those histories and those embodied experiences and and leverage those, to have students develop as dancers, as opposed to saying, you don't need those in this room, practice that somewhere else, the only way forward here is ballet or modern, which I think is problematic. 

David Staley: How does the book work?

I mean, I guess, you know, give us the table of contents, or... 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Yeah. Well, one of the things that's really nice about the work is it gives examples and it gives tools on how to develop a culturally relevant pedagogy, not just in theory, but in practice. What does it look like in your class? How would your class be different if you were practicing it?

And so, kind of, it's a nuts and bolts and an application focused book because there are [00:25:00] lots of people who will talk about the theories and the ideas of it. And most people believe in the idea of it. It's just that when you say, okay, now do it. And they're like, yeah, and then they go back to the bar, back to the way I do it because that's the way I know how to do it,

right? So it kind of takes that extra, they need examples. They need stories of what it could look like, and why it's important. And so, a lot of people also don't realize the cultural clashes that are happening in the space, because if you're part of the dominant culture, a lot of people in marginalized spaces will stay in the marginalized spaces to talk about it, and they won't explain what is happening.

So, the book also shares a lot of those moments in a kind of a revealing way for some. 

David Staley: Hmm. You conduct a workshop series, a liberation dance workshop. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Mm-hmm. 

David Staley: Tell us about this workshop. What could one learn or gain by participating? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Great question. It's a, a lot of the things that are in my first book, _Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World,_ and also my next book, my third book, that I'm working on [00:26:00] is "Liberation Dance Pedagogies", something like that, it's still in the works. But, basically, it's really hard to read about culturally responsive dance pedagogy and then practice it, and so, the workshop really gives people a physical experience of how this can look. Dance, historically, is really focused on the banking model. I show you what to do, you do it back, right? And so Paulo Freire is like, we're done with the banking model. 

David Staley: The Brazilian pedagogue. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Yeah, the Brazilian educational theorist. We're done with the banking model, liberation of the oppressed, that's really oppressive to just tell you what to think and then you repeat it back, right? But in like a ballet training or even a codified modern dance technique, I'm gonna show you the position that you do it back. So, for a lot of people who are ingrained in that idea of delivering content, it's a nice idea to welcome students', you know, embodied histories into the space, but it doesn't get [00:27:00] actualized, because I still want to see that pointed foot when you jump in the air, or I still want to see you turn out, or I still want to see you, whatever. And so, like, the workshop is really a space where you can learn how to undo some of those things.

David Staley: Who tends to participate in the workshop? Who are the students? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Usually it's, it's usually teachers or pre-service teachers, so people who are planning to teach or people who have been teaching a long time and are looking for new tools. 

David Staley: What drives you on, creatively? 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: I really do have a serious case of ADD, so like, I'm always thinking about five different things or like, oh, we could do this, we could do that. And then you can wear a hat and then let's do purple pies and, you know, let's wear a crown. Like, it's, it's everything. Like, I want everything and the kitchen sink, so it's easy for me to get off on a tangent. But, I also usually have some, like, driving project that I'm working on. Right now I'm working on a collaboration with some colleagues from the Arts, Education and Policy Department, and we are [00:28:00] working to bring some dance films to students in Columbus City schools, and have them respond to the work and make projects, and that's happening in the fall. So, these projects are funded by the Spark Mellon project that Lisa Florman runs, and also, Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Themes Wendy Hesford heads up. So, those are some projects I'm working on now. I'm also getting ready to do some study abroad initiatives. So, my colleague, Crystal Perkins, and I are gonna do some site visits this year to South Africa, Ghana, and look at how we can develop some study abroad programs that will span for years to come and, and take students on OIA sponsored trips, and we're also looking for OSU research partners who might wanna get in on those trips and have it not just be a dance thing, but maybe it's dance and music and African American studies and philosophy or sociology [00:29:00] or anthropology or, like, who all, how do we get our students together and do some interdisciplinary work in study abroad? So we're investigating those things now and this year as I head into sabbatical. 

David Staley: Nyama McCarthy-Brown. Thank you. 

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Thank you, David. I appreciate the time. 

Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.