Photo by Flannery Langton ’22
Dr. Ninoska M’bewe Escobar teaches West African dance at the College.
BY EMMA MARTIN ’20
I met visiting artist and dance scholar Dr. Ninoska M’bewe Escobar outside Kendall Sports and Dance Complex on an overcast afternoon, expecting to be intimidated by the incredibly accomplished professional.
Escobar, who is from Honduras and moved to the Pioneer Valley in 2016, has been both a professional performer and dance educator. She studied with Alvin Ailey (perhaps the most prominent figure in African American dance), performed with reggae band “Third World” during their U.S. tour and starred in the original 1980 film “Fame” as “Phoenicia.” She was a principal dancer during the 1980s in The Caribbean American Dance Company, Newark Dance Theatre and Djoniba Mouflet, among others.
Yet Escobar is anything but intimidating. A gold ring in her nose complements warm, intelligent brown eyes; a smallish stature conveys the grace of a lifetime of dance and movement. Her soft voice is kind and distinguished as she tells me about her prolific career, influences and philosophy of dance. Escobar is a theory and history teacher in the dance department at Amherst College, where she organized the 2018 symposium “African American Dance: Form, Function and Style!” She is teaching West African Dance courses at both Mount Holyoke and Smith this semester.
Can you tell me about your involvement with Alvin Ailey?
As a young dancer, I was trained and danced in New York City … I started out at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts when Louise Roberts was the director, and [at Clark] I began studying important modern technique — which is a very prominent technique of dance in the Ailey repertory — with Marjorie Perces, who was from the original Horton company [Lester Horton Dance Theater]. She was a mentor to me when I was at the Clark Center and she encouraged me to consider moving from African dance, which is what I had been involved in ... to contemporary dance.
So I was studying with her and she recommended me to Alvin Ailey and introduced me to him. He gave me the opportunity to study in the American Dance Center. It’s now called the Ailey School but then it was the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. I was part of the final generation to study with Mr. Ailey. Mr. Ailey helped guide me to my first really big opportunities in dance.
In the 1990s the Ailey School asked me if I was interested in coming back to the school as a teacher. And I did. I spent almost ten years teaching West African dance and ... contemporary modern workshop to some of the advanced dancers in the school. And then I went into administration at the Ailey School; I co-directed the pre-professional dance program there for a number of years. And then I directed Ailey Camp in New York, the program that offers professional-level dance training to young dancers … along with writing and music for six weeks in New York City and also in Miami.
And then I got involved in training to become a historian of Mr. Ailey’s work. So from about 2001 until I started graduate school in 2010 I was traveling around the country leading small, usually week-long seminars in high schools and in some colleges: teaching, working with students and teachers, teaching about some of the important elements that went into creating “Revelations,” which is Alvin Ailey’s signature masterpiece. And then … after really becoming immersed in Mr. Ailey’s history I was encouraged by some colleagues of mine to pursue a Ph.D., and I did.
[Pearl Primus is] another icon who came of age and came to prominence in American dance in the 1940s. She was one of the first balck dancers of her era to explicitly tie her work as a dancer to protesting injustice, social and racial injustice in the United States. And I started investigating her work on my own and decided to make her my doctoral project when I entered graduate school. I finished that project last year.
Can you tell me about your role in “Fame”?
Well, it was my first really big job, and like I said I didn’t audition for it. Mr Ailey recommended me to Louis Falco and I met with him and then I started working on the film. It was a very large cast … Irene Cara, a colleague of mine, was the lead female and my role was her girlfriend in the film.It was hard work: very very hard work — a commercial project. And like I said we shot in NYC, we had some pretty long days.
We had largely a cast of dancers trained in ballet and modern dance. There were very few dancers really with an African dance background. My movement in the film was African derived dance as well as modern dance. But it’s something that I guess Falco was intrigued with at the time. He was a modern dancer and choreographer but he was very interested in other forms of dance. And in terms of “Fame” he was really looking for a certain kind of personality in dance, looking for a lot of energy.
For me the opportunity was important because it expanded my understanding of the profession of dance. I took it very very seriously. I kept notes. And because Louis was very welcoming of me, very positive towards me, as I mentioned, I continued studying with him and then I danced in William Gornel’s company afterwards. … So it really developed me in terms of my ability to do different kinds of repertory. At the time I was quite young, I was in my twenties, I wanted to learn as much as I could about possibilities for myself as a dancer.
Could you tell me more about your origins as a dancer?
As I mentioned, I grew up and was introduced to dance in the context of traditional culture. I was born in Honduras, I’m Central American and in my family dance was an important expression. It was related to both the Spanish, the African and the Indian elements in my family’s heritage. Therefore dance was a very important expression of our culture, our hybrid culture. When I was a child, my parents didn’t support my interest in going into dance professionally. Like a lot of immigrant families, they wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer in America. But I decided to pursue this dream I had of being in the dance world … As a young dancer most of my work was in concert dance. After I danced in “Fame” I did some other commercial projects as well but I was really more satisfied by concert dance work, working in repertory with choreographers and other concert dancers.
Are you working on any projects or inquiries right now?
I’m working on developing a new project. I would like to spend time working with my dissertation material. I think that it could offer a very helpful dance history text for the field so I’m going to pursue that.
In terms of my creative work … now that my dissertation is done I am looking forward to resurrecting my creative work, which is why I am so happy to be teaching this semester. But in terms of the community, I’m thinking right now about developing an artistic social justice project that would be an opportunity not just for some of my students and interested dancers and artists to be involved in, but [also] ordinary community members.
I’m an immigrant and I have a real concern about the current very negative atmosphere for immigrants. So I’m thinking about what I can do as an artist to foster dialogue. What can I do as an artist to encourage people to not reject each other because of difference or because of crisis or personal tragedy, like so many of the immigrants that have been isolated, detained or deported?
I’m thinking, “What can I do as an artist to educate the American public about some of the communities that have been so vilified here in the United States?”
How does teaching dance compare to performing it?
When you are performing you have left the sphere of teaching and you are now projecting all that you have absorbed as a performer, as a dancing body, as an individual human being, for an audience. As a teacher I am privileged, I am very aware of the privilege that I have to share what I’ve learned and to encourage … dancers, whether they are already trained or whether they are new dancers, or students who are just beginning to experience what dance has to offer and understanding that the arts are intellectual, and that there is nothing that stops someone from experiencing and enjoying and being influenced and channeling an artistic truth and an artistic energy.
So for me I am happy to see all kinds of people in my dance classes, no matter how they identify, no matter their body type, no matter their body shape. Throughout my career as a teacher … even when I was at Ailey School, I have always encouraged dancers to understand that the most important thing is wellbeing and health and that body shape and body type is not what makes a dancer.
What makes a dancer is a certain spirit and a certain desire to express ideas in a way that writing can’t really do or music alone can’t really do and that anybody, anybody who wants to do it can do it. So that is part of my philosophy of teaching that I hope will encourage my students that I have here this semester … to continue to claim dance for themselves whether they want to be professionals or not, but to claim it for their life if they love it. It may continue to benefit them in the other work that they do, academically and in their personal growth and, hopefully, in their success.