Dance Unscripted
Dance Unscripted brings together working artists, makers, and educators to explore creative research, pedagogical practices, dance-making, and more. It aims to break down barriers between audience and artist, educator and student, and professional and novice, creating a space for conversations that foster engagement, collaboration, and connection across diverse participants and fields.
This project is funded through a grant from the Lamar University Center for Resiliency.
Dance Unscripted
Ep 4: Embodied Forms & Resilience with Stacey Allen
In this episode of Dance Unscripted, host Amy Elizabeth speaks with Stacey Allen, a multifaceted artist and educator, about her journey in dance, the importance of storytelling through movement, and the intersection of dance anthropology and cultural studies. Stacey shares her experiences with freedom colonies in Texas, the significance of embodied practices, and the need for culturally relevant curriculum design in dance education. The conversation also delves into the role of creative research in making dance accessible to broader audiences and the impact of community and resilience in the arts.
Stacey's Links:
A Little Optimism Goes A Long Way: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Optimism-Goes-Long-Way/dp/B0CGHLPBQD/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iyR4c7Z6AHS3PyWlxy4_3BMy1pDhPOHc-RFEOu2plmyYUpRAXIjvCFLsrOg8T0qhUt33dSBSQzSbz3a7JGDm9W1Inttmz94RHCqVkOmKKeRbdhesqdjfGyHtLCYEVD-4G89GJv69_llIcd1LdnGmm6460NkdS3_AMuGAJEioDfxfwG0RQQWe7IDCvdWcY9viJxZHq56P8LKNO3VPjZ9vHVA55g9HDcdY1JcLJzeHXUw.DtbHgI2yPPf0fbilkuuptr57pgT2-X5YRX7bcUOfanM&dib_tag=se&keywords=stacey+allen&qid=1752981011&sr=8-1
D is for Dance: Dancing Through the Diaspora: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/d-is-for-dance-stacey-allen/1147396758
Socials: @niasdaughters, @theblackartsymom
Website: https://www.niasdaughters.com/
Amy Elizabeth
Welcome to Dance Unscripted. I am your host, Amy Elizabeth. And today's episode, we are going to be speaking with Stacey Allen. Stacey is a Houston native, carries a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from Sam Houston State University, a Master's of Arts in Cross-Cultural Studies from the University of Houston, Clear Lake, focusing on dance anthropology. She's also the founder and artistic director of Nia's Daughters Movement Collective.
author of multiple children's books, co-founder of Pretty Cultured, director of artistic programming at Anderson Center for the Arts, and a huge advocate for service in her community. Stacey, welcome to the show.
Stacey Allen
Hello, Amy, how are you?
Amy Elizabeth
I'm so well. It's a pleasure to have you with us today. And before we get started, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we do have a small connection as we both overlapped for a brief period at Sam Houston State University. And Stacey was actually one of the first dancers to work with the company after the original founders graduated and moved on. And it is
Amy Elizabeth
Stacey, it is beyond impressive to see how your journey has evolved from a student into an award-winning performing artist, curator, advocate, all while growing this beautiful family that you have.
Stacey Allen
Yes, thank you, thank you. Yes, I'm so glad you mentioned that. Being in Huntsville and trying out a lot of different dance opportunities while on campus getting my undergraduate degree in dance was a pivotal time in me helping me to decide what type of work I wanted to pursue in dance. So yes, I'm so happy to be here. Such a full circle moment.
Amy Elizabeth
It really is, but this is kind of where I want to start today. If you wouldn't mind providing us with a little background of your dance career and you can make it as brief as you want because you've had many pathways over the years. But how did you arrive to this present moment?
Stacey Allen
Yes, the brief, the short version. So when I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in dance and what is generally offered to you is a career in performance and also a career in teaching. And so I was, when I was younger, I was trying to figure out how do I...
Stacey Allen
do this, right? And my initial intention was to have a performance career. But like many people who find themselves post-graduation teaching always feels like, OK, that's the next easiest, best step. And so I was able to secure a performance job. I moved to Austin briefly and danced with two companies there, Ballet African, Ballet East. And I've
I was set up with a teaching job at a charter school, primarily African American charter school. And I absolutely fell in love with dance education, really arts education. And so I was able to like kind of build my pedagogy and build what I thought was important for students to learn.
And so then after a couple of years in Austin, I decided to move back to Houston because Houston not only is home, it just felt like the dance scene, the art scene, the cultural scene that was more aligned to what I saw for my future. And I danced with Urban Soul's Dance Company for several years and I did several seasons with them. And alongside that, I also continued to teach. And so then fast forward.
I got married and I started having kids, really started having children back to back. And so I was trying to figure out a way that I could still be involved in dance and performance and education truly with motherhood. And so that's really the groundwork that started me to start this movement collective. I needed to find a way to still be involved in storytelling, telling black stories, telling the things that I thought that are important, not that I think that are important, that are important.
but also figure out a way to blend this with my new role as wife and mother having a family.
Stacey Allen
And so I found that it was actually more suitable in the beginning to direct dance than to try to physically dance. So what I know about postpartum and breastfeeding is that it's very taxing on the body. And so I found that I could still bring in the early days of Nia's Daughters Movement Collective, I could still bring my children into rehearsal. I could still carry out visions without the physical toll of performing. And that's really essentially how the company was grown. It's always been a place where
mothers could come and dance. We've had several mothers in the company, a lot of the leadership and the volunteers that we have, our mothers, and we're all balancing that as well as have a commitment to dance performance and black storytelling. So that's kind of the short version of what I've done.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Amy Elizabeth
I think it's really beautiful that you're bringing your whole person into everything that you do. We were talking earlier about humans. are multitude, we are complex, we have all of these titles that we give ourselves. Some of them we fall into out of necessity, some of them we choose, but being able to bring that whole person, being able to...
come in as a wife, to come in as a mother, to be able to create the space for your children to also kind of be involved in what it is that you're doing, I think is rare and really beautiful. And I'm sure that the people that you work with value and appreciate that. And so I want to jump right into this idea of cross-cultural studies and dance anthropology. You talked about storytelling, you talked about this,
Amy Elizabeth
these stories that you share. So first, can you define for our listeners, what is dance anthropology? And then how does this intertwine into the work that you create?
Stacey Allen
So my definition of dance anthropology is, so anthropology is a study of culture and so dance anthropology is the study of cultural dance to many effects.
Stacey Allen
I learned of course, and dance appreciation and dance history about Catherine Dunham and Pearl Primus, but it wasn't really until I was in a professional company, you know, trying to really understand where my place was in black dance that I really understood the importance of their legacies, right?
breadth of the work that Catherine Dunham and the groundbreaking work that Catherine Dunham and Pearl Primis did. And so what I have tried to do with my own research is kind of blend what
we've seen these four mothers do in dance anthropology to some of the current public histories that we're experiencing right now. And what was the second part of that question? Because I kind of went off on a tangent. Okay.
Amy Elizabeth
does that intertwine with the work you're creating? So how do we see this anthropology coming into your work?
Stacey Allen
Yeah.
Stacey Allen
Yeah, so I've had the opportunity to study dance in a cultural context. Last summer, I was able to go on a trip to Senegal led by Shani. She's a professor at, yes, at Houston Community College. Her and her husband led a trip to Senegal, and we studied with the National Ballet in Senegal. I have...
Stacey Allen
feel like I can't think right now, all the places that I've studied, but that is the most, that's the trip that's on the top of my brain. And so being able to blend those with, blend a lot of those cultural dances with, with.
modern dance is not a new thing, right? It's a thing that has been tried and true, but to be able to bring new stories. And so what I mean by new stories is that the work that my dance company tours and we most often perform is called the Fairytale Project. And it's a very local story. It is a story about two people who started a freedom colony in Texas. We are based in Houston. This black settlement is about two and a half hours outside of
Houston, right? And so I think that is what has been the most special about being able to bring cross-cultural studies and dance anthropology into my current work is blending these very local Texas Black history stories with this cultural context. Like there's a section in the work where they have to cross the Mississippi River where I was able to utilize my knowledge of
other cultural dances such as Jean Valou from Haiti to help steward that process. So it's been a blessing to produce this work, these types of works, because
At bare minimum, the aesthetic value people find pleasing, right? But for people, it's kind of like a, if you know, you know, if you understand some of the cultural contexts of the dances that we're doing, then you see like, I'm seeing how she's bridging all these diaspora stories within the movement.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah, so let's actually, if we can take a second and talk a little bit more about this Texas connection that we have.
You said that it's about two and a half hours outside of Houston. Can you speak more to, cause yeah, this podcast is also based out of South Texas. Yeah, so out of Beaumont. And so yes, what I'm really interested in is the connection between geographically the connection.
Stacey Allen
Yeah, Southeast, Southeast Houston.
Amy Elizabeth
between what it is that you're doing and what you've discovered about the relationship of the region to the work itself.
Stacey Allen
Okay, so I just want to share this quick little statistic, right? And so Texas is home to nearly four million African Americans, right? Nearly four million African Americans. So that means the largest concentration of black people throughout the United States live in Texas. So Texas has the most black people.
We don't have the largest percentage of black people. Places like Mississippi and Louisiana have large, like the black population is the larger percentage, but Texas has the most black people. One million of, about one million of those people live in the Houston, greater Houston area, but another million.
of the African Americans in Texas live in East Texas, right? So that's everything from Beaumont to Tyler to Longview to these places I'm talking about like Shankleville, Marshall, Pernola County, all of these places. A lot of African Americans in Texas, including a lot in Houston can trace their roots back to East Texas. And so why is that, right? And so we know that
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah.
Stacey Allen
We know that in the East Texas area, that's where lot of enslavement happened. But we also know from the scholarship of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, which is led by Dr. Andrea Roberts, that there are over 500 places where Black people intentionally created communities during Reconstruction all the way to the Great Depression. So a freedom colony, then also being called Black settlements, they're all over the country. There are places
post-emancipation where they were either given land but mostly they saved their money and purchased land and created their own communities. And a lot of these communities can be marked by having churches, having schools, having businesses. Some of them are incorporated, some of them are incorporated. A lot of them...
no longer are in existence because of systemic practices that have caused their erasure or environmental. A lot of freedom colonies are actually were built in undesirable places like in bayous and things like that. But some of them have a strong footprint to this day. And what I mean by footprint is they people still live there. Their descendants may not live there, but they still come home. They're still connected.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
And so we made a work about Shankleville, which is probably one of the better known.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
freedom colonies in Texas. And I learned of this story because my husband and my children are descendants of the founders of Shankleville. So essentially the story goes that Jim and Winnie were enslaved on a plantation in Mississippi and then their master, so Winnie to a plantation in East Texas in Newton County. And so Jim decided that he didn't want to live without his wife. And so he escaped that plantation, did not go north to
towards the Mason-Dixon line, but he actually traveled through enslaved territory and they reunited at a spring by, on the land, right? And that's how they reunited. He whistled for her and she knew that that was him and they reunited. Ultimately, he had to go back into slavery because they had to make arrangements for his master to buy him with the new master and all the things. But ultimately, many, many years later after Juneteenth,
They put their money together along with their son-in-law, Stephen McBride, who is a direct ancestor of my husband and my children. And they purchased this land and they started Shankleville. And so that is the work that I created a dance work about, and it's called The Fairytale Project. Because essentially it's love story of how...
Amy Elizabeth
It is a love story, it's beautiful.
Stacey Allen
Yes, that's the true part. And so of course, in the show I had to add a little historical fiction, know, spice it up. But I like to make sure that I intentionally tell what part is true. And so from there, we've been able to get connected with so many different stories, particularly in Texas. What has been beautiful is that we premiered this work in 2023 at Discovery Green.
And since then, we made an intentional effort to tour small towns in Texas because I love Houston. I live in Houston. I'm from Houston. Well, we got a lot of dance. We have a lot of art. You know, there's lots of opportunity. There is always more opportunities for arts education. We know that. But a lot of students grow up going to Miller Outdoor Theater.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
or somewhere in the theater district, they get that opportunity. But you know from living in Beaumont, there's students who don't live in a major metropolitan area. And if you add onto that, students of color, black students, students who are low income.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
who don't live in a major metropolitan area have even less opportunity to see this type of programming. And so we've been touring that work since then and we've learned more and more stories from there. And our rep around freedom colonies and Texas black history has grown. We spent considerable amount of time in Crockett, which is also in East Texas. In Houston County, there are several freedom colonies in there, including Giving Hills.
Stacey Allen
which we've worked with Victor Lee giving to Stuart's dad legacy. We've been to Crockett several times. We've performed in Kyle, Texas. We've been very intentional about going to small towns in Texas to share this story. We have more things planned in the future, but that's kind of how our work relates to Texas in particular and also like this particular...
I'm doing this because I'm thinking of like how the map looks the west, the eastern part of Texas. Yeah. And I too, I also have roots in East Texas. My family is, a part of my family is from a freedom colony in East Texas in Panola County that we call 1100. So yeah. Yeah.
Amy Elizabeth
Okay, yeah. Again, it's bringing that personal connection and bringing that whole person into what you're doing. You had described earlier embodied forms in your...
Amy Elizabeth
I read that you described this work that you're doing as embodied forms that carry histories of resistance, resilience, and reimagining. And for the purpose of this project, I'm really interested in understanding how the research infuses evidence of resilience. Can you speak directly to that part of this topic that you're working on?
Stacey Allen
So yeah, let's talk about the embodied part. Our bodies have muscle memory and our bodies hold memories. And those memories can either be trauma or it could be healing or it could be a little bit of both because I would say that there are phases of grief where some of it you have joy about the person that has transitioned and then there's other parts of grief where there's despair. So these embodied knowings when we are able to come into a place often we try to
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
everything we do has a pedagogical intent and so often we do like master classes or some type of meditation where people can get into these stories and so
What I have learned from doing these workshops in conjunction with the performance is that people have lots of memories surrounding home and lots of memories surrounding what family can look like. I always say the absolute best compliment is if someone has come to one of our shows and then I see them a couple of years later and then they report back that they
went and did some genealogical research, right? Or that they went to their family reunions or they started archiving. So that is the best compliment because once they experience this, it is meant to catapult them into something else. And so when I think about resilience, what we're getting in this... So doing the ethnographic research, I...
totally missing that word, doing the ethnographic research to prepare for some of this work, you got to get deep into them archives. Right? I've read lots of archives at the Gregory School. I've read
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
an archive called Black Gold, which specifically talks about Panola County. I've read oral histories, accounts of different Black people in the rural East Texas area. And when you get into those archives and you really understand what people were contending with, it helps you to understand resilience in a different way. It's a very different experience. A lot of the work also, like I said, so I've read like,
I've read like oral histories that other people have done and now I'm reading it so like it's archival material. But then I've also conducted my own oral history and been in conversations with people. And so when they see this work, often I'm honored that it opens up an opportunity for them to talk about the things that they've been through. And to be quite frank, a lot of black people in the East Texas area have experienced terror.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
absolute terror, right? And to just still know that despite that, that they still have a certain level of hope and that they still, some of them, even though there has been astronomical land loss, right, through a variety of practices that have been detrimental to our community, but that some people still own their land and that they still living on it and they're still thriving on it. So that's what I mean by resilience.
Amy Elizabeth
I want to circle back to the idea of.
resilience in the sense that they have been able to overcome these things, these exterior things that are coming into their lives. And you said they still have hope. Where do you think that that hope comes from? What empowers the people to continue to move forward, to continue to push forward?
Stacey Allen
God. they have incredible faith. I don't have anything else from that.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah.
Stacey Allen
These people, my ancestors, my family, they have strong faith. They believe that God is working all things together for their good and that is what keeps them going and what has kept us going.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
And I would say, yeah, and I would possibly say because you talk about the church, like a lot of these communities, have the churches built there, the schools built there. So maybe pulling from that sense of community and that community helping to hold that faith.
Stacey Allen
Absolutely, absolutely.
Stacey Allen
Absolutely. There are communal ways of being that I guess I took for granted, right? Because some of the things that you experience growing up, just think of them as normal. But when you kind of get deeper into the archives, I was like, okay, I read, I can't remember the title, but I know it was in Black Gold, the archives about Panola County. And they talked about the rituals surrounding with somebody.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah.
Stacey Allen
passes away. And so they talked about spending weeks, you hear me, not days, but weeks, helping these families mourn and grieve the loss of their loved ones. And it makes me think about even in my own life, when my dad transitioned, how people brought my mom food for day, like long, like long, it wasn't just the repass right after the funeral. We're talking about a sustained effort.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
to help people grieve. Same thing when my grandmother passed. My grandmother passed during the pandemic and we had to have the funeral outside. And it was on a weekday, it was during the work week. Same with my grandfather too. But the outpouring of people who came in support of the family, the amount of people who sent well wishes, who brought food, who checked on our family, those are communal traditions.
that are centered in not only what is common for people in East Texas, but also people throughout the African diaspora.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's... Yes.
Amy Elizabeth
So you also spoke of recently, you recently lectured on culturally relevant curriculum design. And I know you said that education is a huge part, pedagogical practice is huge part of what you do with your company. And so I want to talk specifically about culturally relevant curriculum design and what does that look like for you? How does that differ from traditional or common curriculum?
Stacey Allen
So in my dance upbringing, okay, so before I got to Sam, right, I danced in high school and I went to, I grew up in Missouri City. So Missouri City is a suburb of Houston, but it has a very high African-American population. And the name of my high school was Thurgood Marshall High School. So that already signifies that it's primarily African-American school, right, it's named Thurgood Marshall, right? And so.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
In that dance education prior to going to a college, learned lots of genres, but during football season we performed like that HBCU style major at dance. And what I will say is that then going, and I'm not saying that this is indicative of the institution where I got my undergrad degree in, but I'm saying this is indicative of the dance.
culture is that we start to prioritize certain types of dance. Now, even today, we still prioritize concert dance over folkloric dance, right? And so to me, culturally relevant pedagogy is decentering ballet. I remember in one of my first interviews for school job, the interview we asked about, you know,
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
So what is my training in ballet and all the things and ballet being like the basis of all dance? And I remember saying that's impossible because people dance on the continent of Africa before ballet was even formed. That's not the center, but I have lots of ballet training, obviously, because I have a degree in dance, right? So I could teach this, but...
Stacey Allen
Maybe that's not the first six weeks. Like, I don't know. Like, I don't have all the answers.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes. Yes, yes. I mean, for those of you who are listening and not watching, I'm just sitting here vigorously nodding my head. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because as an educator, I teach dance history and I also teach dance appreciation. And we start from the dawn of time and ballet doesn't come in until like week 10, week 10. But there is, yes, if you go back and you look at the history of dance and there is this...
Stacey Allen
Hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
status that is put on concert dance, primarily ballet. Yes, Modern falls under that concert dance category as well. And ballet being the foundation of all dance. And I think that there's a misconception of what dance is because when I, I mean, I say, you know, I'm the artistic director of Aimed dance and I automatically am met with where's your studio. It's a professional dance company.
Stacey Allen
you
Amy Elizabeth
It's not a studio. there is a, yes, no, it's a misconception, misperception of what dance is. And unfortunately, I feel like it's been put into this box. And I feel right now there is a dance revolution of sorts where the history is starting to, for lack of better words, be dug up. Like we're digging.
Stacey Allen
People ask me that all the time. I thought I was the only one dealing with that.
Amy Elizabeth
We're unearthing all of these things that we have done to the art of dance to put it into this box, into this category. And thank you for being a part of that mission.
Stacey Allen
Mm.
Stacey Allen
That decolonization of this, yes, I would say for sure.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes, I mean, and I think a lot of times people get a little frustrated because, know, why are we hating on ballet? We're not hating on ballet. Ballet is beautiful. It is absolutely exquisite. is beauty. It is strength. It is physicality. It is not the end all to be all.
Stacey Allen
No, listen, I love ballet, okay?
Stacey Allen
And to be very clear, like Amy said, I love ballet. And in this season of life, I found this YouTube girl who does ballet classes. So I sometimes start my morning with a bar. I want to be very clear. I am not saying that down to ballet at all. I'm not saying down to modern dance, because that's where the bulk of my training is. I am saying that when you decide
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
that you want to teach a group of people that it is important to consider them in the education. That is the boiled down part of it. And that dance has so many functions outside of what we consider concert dance. Dance is a way that people come together. It has been used in rites of passage. It is a way that people find their mates, their partners. It is a way that people connect to God.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes!
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
It is a way that people tell stories. And so when I think of culturally relevant pedagogy, it is talking to students about all the ways dance intersect in their lives. One of the things I always ask, like if I have like a mixed gender, multilevel community class, the first thing I'll ask is how many of you have ever danced before and everybody don't raise their hands, right? Because they think and I'm feeling come in there like.
Amy Elizabeth
You
Stacey Allen
And I said, everybody needs to raise their hand because y'all have danced at a family reunion. And they're like, yeah, line dancing is dancing, right?
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Stacey Allen
If I play y'all favorite song right now, y'all gonna start dancing. So the answer, okay.
Amy Elizabeth
No one's gonna stand still. If you can't, when the music plays, you can't stand still. It's a part of like, I'm getting very impassioned right now because this is how I feel about dance. And this is kind of my mission in my own community is that dance is a part, it is a part of our humanity.
Stacey Allen
Really?
Amy Elizabeth
You know, my board president came on and she did the first episode introducing the podcast and she said, we don't teach babies to dance.
We all have this natural rhythm inside of us and each of our rhythms are unique. Some of it is embedded in our culture. Some of it is just embedded in... There's something about it that I feel that it is a part of our DNA as human beings. I mean, even animals dance. Like movement, movement, it's all...
Stacey Allen
Mm-hmm.
I also do that,
Amy Elizabeth
movement. I mean right now I'm very expressive with my hands, you know, it's like, but we've categorized dance as this thing and it's all about context. I understand that. Like I'm moving my hands like this on a podcast where some people can see me and some people can't, but if I stood on stage and I moved my hands like this, I'm all of sudden dancing.
Stacey Allen
Right, absolutely.
Stacey Allen
Yeah.
Amy Elizabeth
And it's, is, does have something to do with it. But if we can strip away these perceptions, misconceptions of what dance is, we would understand that it is a part of our person.
Stacey Allen (32:01.368)
Yeah, and I know that there's a delineation between performing arts and performance art, right? Or dance and performance art. But one of the things that I have recently been curious about is how do we even tell a different story about what performance art is, right? And so what does performance art look like from a different set of artists who've had a different set of life experiences?
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah.
Stacey Allen
who are trying to communicate something different. It may not be as avant-garde as what would be critically acclaimed or academically accepted as performance art. And it may actually close that gap between what dance and performance art is because if you are able to express performance art from a place that is culturally relevant to you, you may get right back closer to dance. It's just something that...
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
and think about.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah, the investigation I think is where it all lives. It's in the research, it's in the investigation, it's in the asking of the questions. I think that that is one of the, for me, that's one of the key definitions of being an artist, right? We have to define ourselves as an artist. An artist is a curious person. An artist asks questions and doesn't care if there's an answer. We just keep asking the questions and staying curious. And so,
You mentioned the possibility of this practice, this culturally relevant curriculum bridging the gap between embodied practices and research methodologies. So for our audience, can you first explain embodied practices? What does that look like for you?
Stacey Allen
Right, so even like I just talked about like a ritual around grief, right? These are things that, rituals that we have, these are practices that we have. So embodied practice can be everything from like I talked about these grief rituals, but also us doing line dances at a family reunion. That is a practice of something we do. And so,
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
as that gets passed down from generation to generation, you understand, when this song comes on, we're going to do this dance and this is what this means and these are the feelings that it brings. That's a very, I think, accessible way to explain what an embodied practice was. What was the second part of the question? I'm sorry.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah, the first part was to explain the embodied practices. And then I'm going to add on to that is what are the specific research methodologies that you utilize to empower these embodied practices in your work?
Stacey Allen
Okay.
Stacey Allen
Okay, research methodology. So like we talked about earlier in the episode, my practice is an extension of my life, right? It is not something that is separate. And so a lot of the research is lived experience, but also a lot of the research is archival work. But sometimes because of the histories that my ancestors have had, the archive...
Amy Elizabeth
huh.
Stacey Allen
sometimes doesn't lend itself to a full story and there are gaps and then I use my own lived experience and the orchestries that I have in my own family to fill in those gaps and I use what I would call an imagination of what I want the future to look like to fill in those gaps. I know what is common. Like if I hear a family story and I can delineate between what is fact and what is folklore, but
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
the folklore is just as important as the fact part. I do make an intentional effort like when I explain about Jim and Winnie Shankleville, like which parts are true, but then if you see the show, you'll see the parts that may be true, may be not, I don't know. And in terms of methodology, it's blending all those things to tell a new story. I try to also be very clear that I create historical fiction, right? Yes.
Amy Elizabeth
huh. Yeah.
Stacey Allen
The goal of that is not only because it's more fun, I prefer to make historical fiction, but the goal also is that it will encourage you to go and find out the facts part. Because now I've this information to you in this fantastical way often, or in this way that is full of aesthetic value. Now you can go and read about it and learn it in long form, right?
So even like this, podcast is long form.
Stacey Allen
but you may sometimes scroll across things on social media which are short form. And so now that short form may invoke a curiosity in you. And so that's kind of the methodology I use when creating the work.
Amy Elizabeth
So with Dance Unscripted, I am interested in defining creative research. I have had many conversations with artists on how we incorporate research into what it is that we do. And you were just speaking about all the different ways of methodologies you incorporate that into your practice. Do you feel that there's a difference between traditional research that I'm defining as conclusive?
and creative research that may not necessarily be conclusive? Do you see the research you do as conclusive?
Stacey Allen
So I'm not sure if I feel that my research is conclusive, but what I will say for my creative research, I want to speak for my creative research, I'm not sure if I know holistically is because I do have a academic background, I think it has academic merit, but it's not made for the academy.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
Mmm.
Stacey Allen
My work is for the people, right? It is to connect audiences who, not, they not logging into JSTOR. They don't have an account with JSTOR. You know what I'm saying? Like they, I don't even have an account with, small aside, I don't even have an account with JSTOR. I'm always trying to read something and borrow people who work. Maybe you should take that out. I don't know, cause I know that may not be legal.
Amy Elizabeth
Thank you. Yes.
Stacey Allen
So, okay, so my audience don't have login to JSTOR, right? And so I'm trying to bring that rigor to a certain extent. I mean, I'm not pressed about it. Like I do of course cite work that has been done, but my creative research is for the people. And so what that looks like.
Amy Elizabeth
Okay.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
for me, I think it's conclusive, but I also can understand how there can be holes in it, right? Because I'm pulling from so many different sources. I've written two children's books. The first one is A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way, and the second one is coming out. It'll be out by the time this airs. It's called D is for Dance, Dancing Through the Diaspora. And so in those books, this is a...
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
This is the outgrowth of my creative research. The first book I wrote because I was teaching in elementary school and when I would try to teach about who Catherine Dunham was, I could not find appropriate educational materials for elementary school students. I would have to show them clips and videos that were sent to an older audience and then of course differentiate the instruction. And so one day during my break, I just said,
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
on my floor in my classroom, in my dance classroom. And I just wrote out this story, this narrative story about a little girl who looks up to Catherine Dunham. So you get this opportunity to have the social emotional learning because she's working through her stage fright. But then you also learn Catherine Dunham is. And so to me, I believe that this is creative research because I know who Catherine Dunham is. I made sure that the information that is in the book about Catherine Dunham is accurate.
But also that's not the only takeaway of the book, right? The book is also about a young girl who's working through her stage fright and she's having to encourage herself with the affirmation a little optimism goes a long way. I think that that exemplifies itself as creative research because I am holding all this information, but then I am deciding what is the appropriate vessel to bring this work to the public. I think.
that sometimes when you are in academia or you're in an academic setting, you can get to a place where you're only talking to each other.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm.
Stacey Allen
And I think that for my work at this moment, I do have academic goals that I want to do. I do want to publish in a university press. I do have academic goals. So want to be clear about that. But I do think there comes a time in an effort to become conclusive, you may have lost a large part of the audience because I'm trying to read JSTOR. Listen.
Somebody wanna be in me y'all's login, please do I'm trying to read it, but I can't say that everybody that comes to my show not that they came but they just may not that's not what they doing right now. They just want to have a good time and if they can have a good time
Amy Elizabeth
Right, and it's also accessibility. Yeah. Well, and it's accessibility. And that's actually one of the reasons, my whys, in starting this podcast is that, like I said, I could go read the journals, I could go read the books, I could go watch the work, but I can't actually dive into the person and into the why and into those deep questions and conversations I want to have.
But I understand that I have the privilege of having access to those things because I am in academia. My students don't have the same access. People who identify, well, they do. But let's let's let's sit. Let's put it this way. My students are not interested in getting someone's login to JSTOR. They don't want to read the journal. They don't want to read the textbook. They want to get down to the part.
Stacey Allen
Well, your students do. Your students do because they have the login.
Okay.
Stacey Allen
Okay.
Amy Elizabeth
that means something to them, that they find that connection with. And so, we want to get to the root of it, we want to get to the meat of it, and we're creating as creative artists, as creative researchers, creative beings. I think it's almost our responsibility to find these creative pathways, to share our histories, to share our ideologies in ways that are more accessible to a general
Stacey Allen
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
public to the non-identifying dancers. We want to connect with our community. They don't necessarily identify as dancers, but yet that information is relevant and prevalent to them. And so how do we bridge that gap and bring that information to them?
Stacey Allen
Yes, absolutely, because when I wrote the first book, A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way, my intended, we had like a small, for those of you who are listening, we had like a small marketing conversation before we pressed record. But my intended audience, what I thought was my ideal target audience for that book was dance educators who needed this resource in their classroom, right? So like,
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah, we did.
Amy Elizabeth
Hmm.
Stacey Allen
These are the people I'm writing this book for because you know, as a teacher, I don't know if you've taught elementary school dance, but those of us, I'm hoping that some of you will probably find yourself in an elementary school classroom. I think it is a very valuable experience for anybody who is pursuing a career in dance at some point teaching an elementary school classroom. But I was thinking like, oh, you know.
Elementary school teachers, including the dance educators, are always buying books and resources to expose their students not only to literature, but to new ideas and new things. And so I'm probably mostly going to be selling this book to school districts with dance programs or university programs who are teaching future dance educators. I was completely shocked, but also honored that a general public was interested in the book.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
So I was able to get my book on shelves at a few local independent bookstores. And what I found is that people who had children who were not involved in dance at all still found value in the book. And so when you talk about...
non-identified dancers. Well, everyone kind of could connect to like, hey, I could use a little bit of encouragement or I'm still working through confidence. That's a universal story. And so in that universal story, now you also know who Catherine Dunham is. And so I think that that's critical that we make the work accessible. We talk about accessibility all the time. But it can become very easy that you start talking to the same people.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
Then with the second book in the editing process, I sent it to a colleague who edited it, who helped me edit the work. And also, he is a father and he has a young daughter. And he said that it was so much information about African diaspora dance that he never knew about some of these people. And it was a joy not only to edit, but learn more about who these people were. And so with
the packaging of the beautiful illustrations. Both of my books are illustrated. I'm gonna show you, I got the cover right here. Okay. This is the first one. And then this is the second one. And so this one, like you can see, it's so beautifully illustrated. And like everything in here is intentional to the plant life that we chose. But even like learning about like C is for Chuck Davis, right? He recently transitioned in the last few years. And so.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
Now the readers, they're getting this A through Z book, but now they're also learning the Who Chunk Davis, because they may not have already known that information. That to me is accessibility. And having our research and display through a multitude of modalities is important, because while I do intend to write chapters and all the things about dance education,
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
Everybody ain't gonna read that. But people like children's books. I'm an adult and I buy children's I try to pretend like I'm buying them for my kids, but I read children's books.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes. Yes. I mean, the answer is yes. I find myself in the bookstore and it was, I recently went to a baby shower and it's, how do you know about this book? Well, because I was at the bookstore and I was reading the children's books and this one's my favorite out of all of them that I read. It was my favorite and they just stared at me.
This is how you spend your spare time. Like you don't even have, right? I don't have any children, so I guess it is surprising that I would go to the children's book section, but it's...
Stacey Allen
It's not surprising. Everybody reads children's books. Everybody you listen, everybody reads young adult fiction. in terms of, okay, we're laughing about it, but in terms of accessibility, it's a great overview. I needed a biography of a prominent person and I purchased the young adult fiction because I was like, I can read this book.
in two days and get an overview of this person's life and then decide from there how I want to further research that person. And so to me, that is the embodiment of accessibility and creative research. You are able to package all these deep concepts. Like there are tons of material about African diaspora dance, but writing a through Z book gives someone an overview of what that information is. And then they can decide where they want to take
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
they're learning further. And the goal is that they may eventually pick up what would be considered conclusive research, right? But this was their entry point. And I think it's important that as we matriculate through a cycle of getting more accolades, that we don't forget about the person who lived down the street from us, they ain't heard about none of these people, have not heard about a freedom colony.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
But they do know that they go back to the country every year, every summer for a family reunion. And so you're starting to help these people make connections like, wait, that town named after my great-great-grandfather is a thing. It's not just something in our family, it's connected to a larger story.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah. Yeah. And as a, as a Texas native, I've been in Texas, the majority of my life and all of these towns that you are naming, I recognize the majority of them. I did not know that, that, that is what they, how they were founded and the history and the culture of them. And I mean, you gave the statistic of 4 million African-Americans in Texas and Texas having the largest number.
I didn't know that. There's a lot of information that I learned from this that I didn't know having lived in Southeast Texas, East Texas area pretty much my entire life. And so, I mean, even if I'm not African-American, it is still a part of my community. It is still a part of the town in which I grew up in. It brings new light into the community in which I serve in the community in which that I am a part of.
Stacey Allen
Yeah.
Amy Elizabeth
And so just having this conversation made that available and accessible to me.
Stacey Allen
Absolutely.
Stacey Allen
Absolutely. And then the next phase that I'm working on, we're very much in the beginning phases, is bridging some of these connections to indigenous practices from people who are native to the Texas area. So Texas also had indigenous people before colonial presence, right? And so what were their dance styles? How does that?
connect with some of the other stories that we have and how does that tell a more complete story about what art and performing arts are in Texas.
Amy Elizabeth
That's incredible. And that's a huge undertaking. But it's one of, I feel, based off of listening, is that it may be a huge undertaking, but it is a necessity. It is a mission. Like this is the mission and the vision for the work that you do, the person that you are, and how you engage and empower your family and your community. And it's incredible work.
Stacey Allen
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
On behalf of everyone, thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. So I do have selfishly have one more question and then we'll get to our rapid round. But in looking over your biography, there was a tile of a work that stood out to me, just grabbed me. A single thread weaves a future.
Stacey Allen
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes, thank you.
Stacey Allen
You
Stacey Allen
Okay,
Amy Elizabeth
That title, that title just grabbed me in and I thought I want to know what this is about. Can you just, I mean just that title sucked me in.
Stacey Allen
Asking that oh my gosh. Okay. That exhibition is my heart. You see how I light up Just bringing it up. So that exhibition premiered in 2021 and Okay, so we've been talking about dance this whole time but a lot of my work also is in visual arts I'm not a painter, but I'm a curator and specifically black material culture Even these frames are like thrifted frames
Amy Elizabeth
Hahaha
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
from a practice I have of collecting vintage African-American art.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
So I had the beautiful pleasure of working with Saida Carter. She is the founder of Era Vintage, and Era Vintage is a clothing line. And at the time they were doing a lot of upcycling. And so she was going to thrift stores and upcycling these pieces into like this couture fashion, these couture fashion moments. But also it was a lot of storytelling. And so her and I, teamed up.
and we created this exhibition called A Single Thread Weaves a Future and boiled down, it really is talking about like the concept of Sankofa, of the things that we need for our future there in our past. And if we go back into the past, we can find some of the answers for the future. We centered a couple of Black women, some elder Black women in the exhibition. One of them is Joethel Gibson, and she is a master quilter.
I met her postpartum when I had my daughter, my second child. So the thing about dance and being pregnant, sometimes if you have a, I had complicated pregnancies and complicated postpartum and I couldn't dance, you know, during those times. And so I needed a creative way of being when I couldn't dance. And so I started going to the library. Shout out to local libraries. They are so necessary. Okay.
Amy Elizabeth
Hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes.
Stacey Allen
I had to put that out. I started going to the library and I joined this quilting club and that's how I Miss Gibson. And from there, we've just been able to form a beautiful relationship. has one of her signature pieces is a underground railroad quilt that has all of the different cutouts and iconography from...
from quilts during that time that they would place outside so people could know which places were safe. And so Saeeda and I built an exhibition centering dance and fashion to tell these stories of what things from our past we could bring into the future. So when I say it was multidisciplinary, it was multidisciplinary. We had photography, we had mannequins with these beautiful pieces, and we had performance art.
Amy Elizabeth
Mmm.
Stacey Allen
and being very intentional of calling it performance art, I choreographed, I think four sections originally to music inspired by the thematic things that we were building off of. And the beautiful thing is that this was part of the space taking residency with Fresh Arts. This was like the first year they brought that residency back. And we did a very robust six weeks of programming.
So essentially we invited our African-American women in the arts in a multitude of genres to do programming in the space. So each week of that summer, we had different programming, everything from reproductive justice and black maternal health to Afrofuturism and film. And it was just a beautiful time. From that exhibition, a lot of the new creative work that I do,
has really been outgrowing of that. I was able to meet lots of different artists and from there curate their exhibitions at the Anderson Center or curate their exhibitions other places or just build new partnerships. I know we spent a lot of time talking about freedom colonies and African American history in Texas, but the other part of our work is really centered in reproductive justice and specifically black maternal health.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Allen
And so being able to build, because Nia's Daughters is grown out of that. If you really think about how art is a healing avenue, it could be a critical intervention for families who are in need of an intervention. So I don't even know if I answered your question, but A Single Third Weasel Future is my heart. It was, I would say it was my first major art exhibition.
Amy Elizabeth
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
No, you did!
Stacey Allen
and I was able to bring dance into it. So yeah.
Amy Elizabeth
Yeah, no, that's again, it's it all has the thread line of the whole person, the whole self coming through in everything that you do, whether it be your writing or be curating or dance making or education. It's how are you coming in with your full person, full self? And I, truly genuinely believe that we need more of that.
Stacey Allen
Mm-hmm.
Amy Elizabeth
in our world right now. And so again, thank you for that. Because it's not easy in my opinion to come into the world and to come into all of these different places and spaces with the whole self. Because it generates an additional sense of vulnerability in my opinion. And vulnerability is a challenge. Vulnerability is difficult. And I think...
Stacey Allen
Absolutely.
Amy Elizabeth
that that is where that tool of resilience can really come in and help us to find our way through that. So, Stacey, this has been an incredible conversation. I think we have covered everything under the sun together. So thank you for taking the time to share your research experience and your family with us. It is now time for our rapid round where I'm going to ask you to complete
Amy Elizabeth
So complete, yeah, you're just going to complete this sentence. Yeah, but you're just going to say resilience is and fill in that blank.
Stacey Allen
is necessary to sustain.
Amy Elizabeth
There you go. Beautiful. All right. Here you go. Sentence number two. Dance has taught me.
Stacey Allen
what it means to be human.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes! Thank you for that because I 100 % agree.
Stacey Allen
Yay!
Yes. Thank you so much for having me on here. has been an absolute pleasure having this conversation. I still love long form, when you get to be able to explain the idea out. So thank you for providing this platform.
Amy Elizabeth
It really has.
Amy Elizabeth
Yes, thank you so much for joining us. And we will be following up with your next children's book for sure. And we'll make sure that we link those books in our show notes so that people can find them for themselves. So thank you for bringing that resource to us. And we will see you on the next episode of Dance Unscripted.
Amy Elizabeth
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dance Unscripted, presented by Aimed Dance. You can find Stacey at niasdaughters.com or on social media at @niasdaughters or @theblackartsymom. We've added the links to her books and sites in the show notes below. Thank you so much for joining us today. Knowing that you could've chosen any other platform, you chose us, and you chose dance, and for that we are forever grateful. Be sure to click the subscribe button and share with a friend or colleague. Leave us a review on Spotify and your name will be added into a drawing for Dance Unscripted Merch. Season One is brought to you by the Lamar University Center for Resiliency.