Creating the Balance Between I and We

Our fifth installment features Adia Tamar Whitaker, with our host Courtney J. Boddie from the Teaching Artistry with Courtney J. Boddie Podcast, who analyzes African Diasporic Folklore to create visible connections between the past and present in order to construct a shared cultural understanding towards community learning. 

Whitaker, engulfed by dance at a young age, was thrusted into arts education during her time as an intern with the Ailey School. During this moment, she realized that arts education could be rewarding: making an impact on students and her wallet. 

Reflecting on her learning experiences, she wished both her peers and elders were making necessary connections: Her peers consumed by the present and Elders stuck in the past. For Whitaker, everything happens simultaneously where the past is used by the present to create opportunities for the future. Separation only forms a loss of collective effervescence. 

With much of Whitaker’s work focused on cultural consciousness, COVID-19 has forced her, and the world, to push radical change because the nation cannot escape what is happening. Unfortunately, our society seems to embrace cultural innovation but ultimately sides with concepts approved by White culture (the status quo), which can be exhausting for the BIPOC individuals trying to spark change. As Michael J. Bobbitt mentioned in a previous interview, “Racism will not end until White people are willing to give up power.” 

Therefore, we must ask: What is valued and how do we get people to see value in everyone’s process, not just the (white) ideal? 

Join us next week when Courtney interviews Quanice G. Floyd, who was recently appointed as the Executive Director of Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance after previously serving as the Director of Learning and Leadership Development at the National Guild for Community Arts Education. She is also the Founder & Director of the Arts Administrators of Color (AAC) Network, an organization committed to empowering artists and arts administrators by advocating for access, diversity, inclusion, and equity in the arts in the DC and Baltimore metropolitan areas.

Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director of the 20-year old Brooklyn based dance theater ensemble Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective, has performed contemporary dance, vernacular movement, Afro-Haitian, and Haitian dance in the U.S. and abroad for eighteen years. Whitaker has traveled to Haiti, Cuba, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ghana, Jamaica, and Trinidad, to study and teach dance. Whitaker received an MFA in Dance from Hollins University, a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University, and completed the Professional Division U.S. Independent Studies Program at The Ailey School. She was also an Urban Bush Women Apprentice, a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography @ FSU Creative Entry Point Choreographic Fellow, a Jerome Foundation grantee and Isadora Duncan Award recipient. Most recently, Whitaker received the highly competitive NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography and completed her second year of her Dunham Technique Certification. 

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