The Department of Dance has been working with accomplished dancer, educator, and choreographer Aysha Upchurch throughout 2023. As a guest artist, Upchurch was heavily involved in choreographing a piece for the upcoming Winterdances: Liminal faculty concert.
PSOA Media Team’s Jason McCullum got a chance to sit down with Upchurch to discuss her work with UWM and how she approaches education throughout all she does. What emerged was a riveting conversation that stressed the importance of storytelling in art, building community through humanization, and how dismantling oppression is the center of education.
Something at the center of your work is D.Ø.P.E., which is an acronym of yours that stands for dismantling oppression, pushing education. Can you tell us about how you approach dance, expression, and justice?
D.Ø.P.E. is always at play in everything I do. I don’t believe that education must be strictly formal. Anytime that people are gathered there is an opportunity for deep listening and connecting and the availability to do so welcomes connection with one another. Through this, we can transform and humanize learning and questioning.
Our world often weaponizes, abuses, and misinterprets language which can make students afraid to have conversations out of fear of messing up, but that is human. This is at odds with a lot of the paradigms that have been constructed in this country. It is a chance to disrupt and dismantle the power structures that do not allow people to be their full human selves.
Do you think this concept of D.Ø.P.E. resonates with the audience?
I certainly hope so. I have a lot of admiration for all types of artists and a lot of respect for folks who make their creative works legible for audiences. It is an artist’s right to invite whoever is consuming the art to sit with it, whether they understand it. For me, at this stage in my creative journey, I like to make the point of my work legible without being too on the nose.
At our informal showing in August, I was pleased that even in its unfinished version, people were like “Oh, I get it.” If August was a convenient sample size, then I believe the February audience will also be invited into the story world that I co-created with the dancers to sit with the question the piece is asking.
Can you describe your practice of choreography and how that intertwines with this idea of narrative structure?
I have come to believe dance is the language and tool that helps people feel empowered in their bodies and identities. Now, if that is the larger message, it would not work for me to just move my way. I’m intrigued by dancers who respond to questions which makes my choreography practice co-creative.
Essentially, I will come in with loose ideas of phrases of movement that I believe will set the tone to introduce motif gestures so that audiences can connect movements to the emotion of questioning. My role as a choreographer is the same as my role as a teacher. In both roles, I prefer the term facilitator. My job is to be like a DJ; a DJ cannot just play their playlist regardless of whether the people want to hear it.
If I give something to my dancers and they respond to it, then we weave that together to co-create the story world with their movements and emotions. With this piece, I was trusted to hear the dancer’s voices and craft them into a story. So, what people will see is my choreography and how dancers respond to it, I leave a generous amount of space for the students who walk into my classroom or rehearsal space.
What were some highlights from your time with the guest artist program?
I love the format for this specific guest artist program, which I have shared with the dance department faculty. This setup worked well for how I operate and helped with my goal of making the classroom a community. I like to DJ and choreograph in a space that is more relationship-based and humanizing.
Earlier this year, I got to meet the students and faculty on a personal level by teaching for a week in the department. So, by the time we had auditions at the end of the week, I had a sense of who the students were. It was less unnerving and unnatural for the dancers (and for me). I believe this process allowed the students to be open to my process and personality.
How much time did you spend with the students overall?
In February [2023], I was with them for one or two classes a day and those were different classes. So, I got to meet the students in different contexts throughout the week leading up to our audition day on Friday.
Then we picked the cast and let them know they were selected. I came back in August where we had five rehearsal days that were full, intensive days. 10 to 5, every day.
What can audiences expect when Winterdances: Liminal premieres this February?
My piece is titled “Just Like Us” which comes from the following quote from Junot Diaz: “We all have blind spots of privilege around us and they’re shaped just like us.”
The piece invites people to think about what the cast is using as a mirror. What does it mean to be a mirror for someone else and to show that what you cannot see could be the thing that is preventing you from seeing more of humanity? I hope that folks enjoy and connect with the piece and what they will and won’t see — depending on where you sit, you may get a different version of the piece. I look forward to people being encouraged to investigate what is in them, that is eclipsing their ability to see more of humanity in others and themselves. I will be there for a couple of shows and I’m very excited to see the finished pieces! I’m looking forward to coming back!
Winterdances: Liminal premieres the first weekend of February 2024. View showtimes and ticket info on the PSOA events calendar.
Story by Jason McCullum ’25