Parker (kweenwerk) shared a reel today that bears listening to and reading the description. She starts off by talking about us living in a world where we’re told if we want to belong we have to disappear, meaning you need to take the things that make you unique and hide them away. However, keeping our culture, community and lived experience is so important as Parker reminds us.

She also reminded us of an interview with second-generation Lindy Hopper, Al Minns, speaking to the uniqueness of a jazz or swing dancer. You have no way of making a comparison because each person is unique. He’s also spoken, though we can’t find it at the moment, about how you could look out at The Savoy and see hundreds of different styles being danced.

In contrast, I used to teach there was one way to do a swingout for beginners because that is how I was taught to teach it. I can only imagine my co-teachers and mentors were modeling after their own mentors this notion there is a singular way to do a swingout along with other jazz steps and movements. Just as I was being pigeonholed into a singular expression not necessarily representative of me, so too would I model this learned practice on my own students.

Paolo Freire talks about this in Pedagogy of the Oppressed where he outlines steps for the oppressed to become fully liberated rather than repeating the oppressive cycle. This takes critical reflection so as not to mimic the witnessed power dynamics. So are we liberating people when we teach them or are we repeating dynamics not of the originating Black culture?