In this episode of Mid-Ground, Tara Aisha Willis hosts a conversation with Ajara Alghali and Meida McNeal.
In this episode of Mid-Ground, Tara Aisha Willis hosts a conversation with Ajara Alghali and Meida McNeal.
INTRO: Welcome to How People Move People, a podcast about the impact that our words, art, stories, and lives have on each other. Each series' journey unfolds in a sequence of six episodes. This series titled "Mid-Ground" is hosted by dancer, curator, and scholar, Dr. Tara Aisha Willis. “Mid-Ground,” brings pairs of dance and performance artists together in kinship around their roots and work in the Black Midwest.
TARA WILLIS: What is something that you love about where you're at right now in the Midwest?
AJARA ALGHALI: I am speaking from Chicago, Illinois right now. By the way of Detroit though, I cannot forget that, you know, I am a Detroiter, just a four-hour drive, but that's actually what I love about it (laughs). Is being able to drive to, but also like the similarities of, you know, Detroit and Chicago. I was just at the IABD and someone had mentioned like, oh the Midwest, they're not friendly and blah, blah. And I said, well, says who? And they were like, you're from Detroit, you don't count (laughs). You know so sometimes I'm like, okay, does Detroit count as the Midwest? But that's actually what I like about it because it could be so different in, in, in much of the places that you go to.
MEIDA MCNEAL: I'm at home (laughs). And home for me right now is Albany Park. But I've lived in various places in the city and come back and forth, to, you know, back to Chicago, left Chicago many times. I think it is just this whole cityscape. I mean, you know, I'm an artist, but I'm also a city worker. Since I like really came back and started to root down and say like, I'm here, I have always been in like city-wide context. So I love neighborhood, like I can see the very, the nuances and specificity of like different neighborhoods. Like I get their characters across the city from like, from out East to out West to North, you know. But I also love seeing like the connections between the city, the whole, you know, that is the fabric that it makes up.
TARA WILLIS: What does your work look like typically? What are its values? How do you make things happen? What would you describe as the activity of what you do in your work?
MEIDA MCNEAL: I come from like a movement base and a writing base. To me, it's all just one big palette now of like, whatever the work is, like what does it require and what does the world that we're making require? And I'm gonna tap into those forms of creativity. But I think movement. has always influences the way I make, because I think in terms of like timing, pacing, quality, how is it taking up space? Those aspects of movement, I think, yeah, just color the way I think about creating things. I'm an ethnographer too in my background. So like storytelling and kind of lexicon building or identifying is really important to me that like every world like has its own, own language and concepts and things, and we're trying to fill those out as we make stuff. And oftentimes I'm making stuff together with other people. But then I also have, I think, developed a solo practice that I'm trying to dig into deeper in the past several years. And had never been, had always been one like who really wanted to collaborate and make things and then had a project that felt really important as a solo project and then discovered, Oh shit, I like this (laughs). And so it's something that I want to keep, keep developing, and for me, again, that is always a mixture of movement and storytelling or image making as part of whatever is being built there.
AJARA ALGHALI: Well, making, making art like more accessible. It’s been a large, I would say, large opinion or whatnot that art is in the quote unquote cultural center. So now I'm really trying to have a way, make a argument or sorts that says, why does art making or art like enjoyment have to be in the designated cultural center? Why can't neighborhoods have their own like cultural hubs in which those artists and those communities can develop, show, their art? I have a degree in urban planning and I'm always thinking about space and, you know, in like designated places. And, you know, that's what I've been thinking about. You know, Detroit is a very Black city. And also, you know, it's not really welcoming for Black and Brown bodies to be in the cultural center anyway. You know just in terms of like how to navigate the transportation system, you know, like heavily policing and also like the, the cost overall to be able to enjoy a show or a performance that's in like the Detroit Orchestra or the Opera. But also, you know, it's just not really speaking to our everyday life as well. So how do we, you know, we make and continue to like address the issues of like space and space of cultural appreciation that you know our art forms deserve, you know, like, so I've, I’ve actually been spending a lot of time with that.
TARA WILLIS: Beautiful. Just so we have kind of a sense of your relationship with the Midwest over time? What would you say are your connection to the Midwest over the course of your life? The trajectory of your relationship with the Midwest?
AJARA ALGHALI: Sometimes, like, I hate it. I'm like, ugh, you have to drive to get to every place. You know? Sometimes I'm thinking, like, why can't I be in D.C. and New York where I could take the train to Boston or the train to Philly, or something like that. And then I'm also just thinking about, like, the fact, like, oh well, the Midwest, we are, like, a happier people (laughs) just being here, but we all followed the uh Great Migration, right? But I don't know, like it's just been, I, we connect more with the life of Detroit, Michigan more so than you know being from Alabama or like my father's from Sierra Leone. So, like even being from Sierra Leone, like we have just really like embedded ourselves in the Detroit Motor City culture. You know my dad worked at Ford, so it was very much so like that is just like ingrained in us. He was you know a union member. So yeah and I do not see myself leaving. Like, I like to go to different places to visit, but I always like, man, ah it's still Detroit for me. I don't know what it is, if it's the what up dough or like just, and I hate to say grit because the Whites have taken over the word grit. But it is, you know, we just kind of like, we just are not impressed with anyone. We just be like, okay, who are you? Like, I really don't care. You know what I'm saying? And so and that's why, I mean, that's what that's how I move. It's like, I'm not impressed. Okay. Like, what, like, did you cure cancer? Okay. Then get out of my face. So, and I think a lot of Detroiters are like that. So, I mean, and that is like my connection. And I think it just, it didn't happen over time. It's just like, boom, like from day one. Like in order to be a Detroiter, you gotta be this. Like, are you up for the challenge? So.
MEIDA MCNEAL: Similarly like my you know family, the connection to Chicago is through Great Migration. My other family's from Mississippi. Was in the second wave, Westsiders, Fifth City Garfield Park. I think that that I have actually been exploring that history more of things that I grew up with as a young person in on the West Side and that they are being kind of like radical community efforts and movements in the city before, which my parents are part of in that that area of Fifth City that we don't, there's a lot of history that's covered up. And I think it's important to know that people have been trying to address disinvestment for a long time and trying to make their neighborhoods better for a long time. And we got models, right? Even as that work re-emerges, I think one of the things that I encountered in the parks that I loved so much is that it gave me this vantage point of seeing how people were mobilizing in their communities, you know, for all kinds, like using these civic spaces as a launching pad to like think about civic participation through art, but also through nature and also through recreation and sport. And that like all of those things together. I think that's given me a, it is shifting my understanding of Chicago. We've always been a labor town. We've always been a union town. We've always been I think community arts have always been really important here. But like, yeah, that, that connection through the parks just taught me something else about this city that, you know, if I loved it before, like I, I love this city (laughs). I ain't never leaving. Like I will always have a connection elsewhere and try to, I need to move, I need to travel. But I always need this to be my base. And I always want to see it be better than what it is.
TARA WILLIS: Meida, what was your, can you just remind me what was your like trajectory with the city? How long have you been working for them and in what roles?
MEIDA MCNEAL: When I moved back in, was that like, ‘09, I started working with the nonprofit that worked with schools. So that was my first kind of like entryway into kind of thinking, you know, about the city as a whole, or arts in the city as a whole. And the work with this nonprofit is first as a teaching artist and then as a program manager and working with other teaching artists. And then from there, I went to the Parks and was there for about eight years as the Arts and Culture Manager. And then, in the past two years, I've been with the City of Chicago with the Department of Cultural Affairs. And so the work I'm doing there is kind of just flipping a coin. So it's a lot of arts and community investment. Now having some resources to share back, you know, versus having space (laughs), buildings or green space to share, now there's like more like funding and then connections with other city resources that people need to like make their art.
TARA WILLIS: Ajara, can you kind of do the same? What has your relationship been with kind of art, work, making art happen in the city of Detroit or for the city of Detroit, more broadly?
AJARA ALGHALI: Oh now I really see why you brought us together. (laugh) Oh my God. Like, so I, I've been doing that type of engagement. And so, it has been a lot and I'm, and I'm not about to be like talking shit about like Detroit, but probably in most cities, their, their community engagement is okay. You can have something White or you can have something Black. And you have to choose. And so that is how I got into working with the City in arts, in arts and planning engagement because I was contracted to do a like a mural project. It was, it was like a very hyper local mural project and I wanted to seek out local artists and that's what I did. And so, I really made the engagement process about the artists and the community getting to know each other. It took about a year or so. And that's what like most, if it's a municipality or whatever, they think that you could just do the work in like a month. And you're like, wait, what? Like, no, you actually can't. Like, it takes a while to do that type of work. But and the mural, oh man, I wish I was like, yeah, we could have looked at this mural or that mural. But anyway, and that is the work that I started to do, just a lot of like public art activations like that: mural making, like performance art in pocket parks. And that was even before I even realized, like I wanted to do dance and even before like TeMate even came into existence, I was just, you know, in that field and I just so happy to, you know, be able to project manage really well. And I had a connection with artists because I danced, but didn't think of dance as like, oh this is going to be my line of work. So I was just trying to shake some trees like I'm doing right now, but shake trees for the city to really like benefit arts and culture. And so that's how it actually started, like just doing engagement. I was just thinking like, how they're doing it is wrong. If I had a position, I would do it this way. And then it just, someone saw me one day and was like, oh you used to work at so-and-so. Can you do this for us? And that's how, that’s how it happened.
TARA WILLIS: I love it. So I'm curious about like, like you've both like learned and studied dance forms, you've both like done this labor to like make art happen in public spaces, across your respective cities. What are the influences behind all of that?
MEIDA MCNEAL: Okay, lineages. My first memory of dance is the movie, Fame (laughs). As a kid, I loved that movie. I loved Leroy (continues to laugh), you know. So yeah, so like that's that’s my, I think when I saw that I was like, I want to take dance classes, you know? And I started in the parks. There was a park right across the street from my house. I took like ballet and modern and then there was a multicultural modern dance company here called Joseph Holmes Dance Theater. And so I was a scholarship student there for many years while I was in junior high and high school and was exposed to all kinds, of you know, pioneering modern forms (laughs). So the Graham, the Horton, the Cunningham, the Limón, and did some Jazz, did some Ballet still. Same time, I came up in the city where House music was born. So, you know, I, my social life was, was parties and House, you know. And I think Chicago House, you know, has, has some like dances that you might name, right? The Prep, the Wop, you know, Lotto, whatever. But the central movement was something called Jacking. And everything else was like free. It was like, you know, just you're in space, you are responding to, sound and bodies and, music and, you know, on a dance floor, in club space. And those clubs could be clubs, could be basements, could be a lounge, you know, could be somebody’s storefront that they pulled to have a party. And so I think I just navigated between those two worlds, you know. And then you know did go and get my degree. Made my own thing up (laughs). It's called cross-cultural performing arts where I mixed dance and (mic bump) theater (mic bump) and cultural anthropology. And then went on and got my MFA at Ohio State in Choreography and dance history was big in there. But at the same time, I was also going back and forth to Trinidad. That was like where my, my research was. And so I was looking at like basically like cultural belonging and cultural nationalism through movement languages. And how different, different communities in Trinidad were using different movement languages to define what it meant to be Trinidadian, you know. But also could see these connections between, again, House and now Carnival culture. And then it was like, look how Black people do this (laugh) somewhere else. Like there is this, you know, this event that happens around movement and sound and music and spectacle or you know, fashion, you know, where people go for catharsis, to be together, to have some kind of altered experience, you know, while they're engaging in those forms.
And so I carried that with me. And then went on to get my PhD in Performance Studies where again was really digging into the work in Trinidad and thinking about, yeah, the power of, of all of these performance languages as ways to like, yeah, make meaning in the world. And then I think that's where I came to like, okay, we're using all, you know, we're saying stuff without saying stuff, you know. And I think that's where I just continued like that's, that to the root, like that's, that's what I think I do with, you know, that's what I'm still interested in, in making work with other people is that we use our bodies through movement, through song or sound or music to try to understand some things about the world we're living in and the world we want to live in.
AJARA ALGHALI: I loved that answer. I was like, yeahhhh (laugh) But almost similar, though. That's why I'm like, whaaat? My dad owned a nightclub when I was a child. So I have always been in spaces. Oh he owned a nightclub and he was a DJ, is a DJ. Well, he'll let you tell he's still a DJ. But I'd be like, stop.
TARA WILLIS: My dad is still a jazz musician and he hasn't played in 25 years, so I understand.
AJARA ALGHALI: Right, so I feel like, okay. And I remember being there and us being the only kids there. So that is how like, immersed, like my dad made like music and culture. We listened to Congolese music, we listened to Trinidadian and Carnival music and so like I was able to have like a very broad catalog of music growing up because we just you know, we, we had it all. But it's that like foundation. It's like that Black music. And then the dances that came out of it, like, you know, Jit versus, you know, Jook. I mean, so it's just so like, yeah. So I'm just like, that is, well, I, you know, like going to Jit parties, like in basement parties or even people like having like cyphers out in the street. That is like my motivation to the work that I'm doing. Why I want Black people to be like embodied enough to be like, why, yeah, we're going to have a cypher outside in the park. And that's okay, you know what I mean? Because that's how we've like always done it, you know? And this ties back to like my work when I think about urban planning is that when I think about like traditional West African dance in, you know, the foundations of that, that into. People danced for particular reasons, right? A particular time of the year or a celebration or something, but it was also done in a communal setting. That is, I believe, the origins of urban planning, right? Contrary to what, you know, like, Western philosophy would tell you is that I truly believe, and I am researching this too a central point or focal point that you would gather to like dance and create music around, you know, someone's baby was born or now was harvest time. Those were things that happened in daily life. And that's the way that you communicated and got things done more efficiently. And I feel like, you know, that was how you went in and like fed your family. And that's how you like you like signify like okay the end of Ramadan. And so, like I'm really trying to research like the indigenous like planning styles that we had back on the continent and how like dance was a very major part of that. And you know that brings me to Detroit in like, and now, like, of course, Chicago, when we're talking about, like, our own music, our own dance, and how we would express all of that, and, you know, and how now we're kind of like, at first, like, it was open, and then it was kind of closed. And now it's getting back to an open place where we're like this is how, you know, this is how we are. This is the music we listen to and this is the way we dance and not, you know, being like self-conscious about it, you know, having to do it while like White people are just like, what, what, like, what is that? What are you doing? And you're like, Oh, go sit down someplace. Like, you know, so, you know, being able to like be like to do those things in, in our own way and not have to be like policed over it.
TARA WILLIS: Can you all talk about some specific, let's get a little more into the detail of your work. Are there specific projects through which you've been exploring these inheritances?
AJARA ALGHALI: The work that is showing up, like for me now in terms of like lineage and such, it is like urban planning related. So I do remember like us living in the city and then my dad working at Fort Wixom, that's like 25 miles out of the city. So, you know, like having to travel so far for work on the highway. And then like not so that was, he was working there in the 80s and 90s. And now that plant is closed. So like all of that, all of that like infrastructure and the economy that was generated around that, that plant is no longer there. I mean, so and I'm thinking about, you know, how the city would give tax breaks and tax credits to large corporations like GM, like Ford, and then turn around and close. And you have cities like Flint and Pontiac that were dependent on these plants, and they're closed. And now that huge tax base is completely gone. And so people always think like, oh, you know, like Black people don't know how to run their city. Like, no, like it's not Black people. You know what I mean? It's the policy machine that you think that you're getting, like on the front end, that you're like, oh-okay, this is gonna be great. But then you're actually kind of like removed. I mean, it's the same thing when I think about the businesses. Like we all want investment to go into our neighborhoods, but then on the back end, it's like you, you don't think about like, man, I don't own my own building. And so like, even if I have to think about that, that's like a very focal point, like central to me, like right now is like, man, like I don't want to do any of this work unless I own my own building, like for real, because I've seen what happens when you don't own your own building and how you have to walk away. Like we, we spoke to business owners that said, I walked away with like 50 cent in my pocket. Being there for community, like, how do we get back to those communal roots? So that is kind of like the lineage for me is if I think about like, you know, how I even think about dance, you know. Thinking about communal activity, because sometimes, like, I'll, I’ll get like inquiries about a dance performance. And people say, oh we just need a drummer and a dancer. No. You get the full ensemble, period. Like, full stop. Like, I don't do that because that was not like traditional African dance. You ain't have just one person out there just, it was a communal activity.
TARA WILLIS: Meida, do you want to chime in with your, like getting a little more specific about projects that are emerging from these um driving forces?
MEIDA MCNEAL: The one that's like on the nose is like, you know, the Chicago Black Social Culture map, which, which came out of performance, like, you know. As I had mentioned, like, grew up with House everybody I make with we all grew up with House as like part of our, you know, formative years and continued to hold it as a really important part of our lives. And I think the way that we like think about people, like how we engage people and community and the way we like try to live our values in community is because of what, you know, what we learned through collectivity and House growing up, right? That we're just continuing to build off of that. And so that particular performance project, we had done several works, kind of looking at, looking at House in different ways. And for this one called Juke Cry Hand Clap, we were really interested in like, you know, House is older than itself, like that we could always sense from the ways that, you know, you're in the party and it's like, sound like a field holler and like (laughs), you know, there's all these like polyrhythms and other influences, Gospel and Jazz and Soul and all these other things that came before what House is or, you know, emerged as. But that they were all there on their threads. And so trying to... that made us think about Great Migration and like thinking about like Black people coming here and then what are the cycles of as you're rooting down, in this new place, like how are, how are these social traditions changing over time, but like also keeping the thread of continuity? And then also because I think, you know, House has now been around, it's like it is a Chicago folk form. It's an indigenous form, you know? So wanting to also like honor that, like let's trace its history now that it has been around for, you know, 30-40 years, right? And so the whole premise of the work was to map all of the spaces that we could find, and source together with folks through a series of parties. And like that meant everything from like really big maps that we just asked people to put post-its of all the places and then also like these kind of individual maps where people could talk about DJs or party promoters or, you know, all who was putting up flyers and, you know, really important memories to folks of when like things started or stopped or DJs that were in residence in places that were impactful. And then we took all of that and made a performance out of it. And when we finished the performance, it was like, well, now we got like hundreds of data points about what is the history and like, what do we do with that? So we decided to put it back on a digital map and then to see how it might grow. And this has been an organic thing. So, you know, we kind of built it in one platform. And then when we hit a wall, it was like, okay, well, what do we do now? And so we started expanding the circle of folks we were talking to who had, you know, other networks. And then we started doing live programming, which is now the format we're in, where we do kind of four programs a year that are like, panel discussions that we record and transcribe and then put back on the digital map. But then we also do community archiving on site where we invite people to bring their stuff and to learn how to take care of this stuff, because that's important stuff. That's our history. And then also invite them to add it to this, you know, growing map. And so I think that actually taught us something about the way we wanted to make work, that all of our works now pretty much have like a research and development period, where we're doing designing some human-centered (laughs) experiences for people to kind of get together and create stories, build data together, and then that becomes the source material for the performance work. We are now, as of January, we are space partners at First Church of the Brethren, which is in Fifth City Garfield Park. And so we're really excited about like not being itinerant anymore and taking that work and really, you know, rooting it on the West Side, which certainly I think needs more recognition and love, and centering in our city. And the work that we're about to embark on is called Pleasure Power Portal. And that we wanna look at gathering different kind of sub-communities together, like young people, elders, women, you know, and kind of building some story cyphers and movement cyphers to think about like, what gives you pleasure? How do you find it? How do you define it, you know? And then we're gonna make a work. So like, you know, that is, that is how we do the stuff. And I think House is all through that. Cause I think we've been talking about what the structures might be for this work as performance, Pleasure Power Portal. And I think Disco is the thing. So I think we're going to be making songs in like disco (laughs) formats and, you know, mining that vocabulary and building spaces that are, you know, celebrating the way that those kind of environments to kind of build a work that is about pleasure and some damn joy.
TARA WILLIS: Can both of you like make the connection a little more clearly between like how your artistic practice as dance people—movers and makers—connects with like the institutional structures, for lack of a better phrase, that you've both created? How did that decision to build the things that TeMate and Honey Pot, in their respective structures, how did that like emerge as the way to do it? And then how are you sustaining it or envisioning the role of those institutions?
AJARA ALGHALI: Our organization is probably a counter toward institutions. I was tired of like teachers or, you know, like the dance profession, professionals that I would encounter and like they, they had like no regard for, for African diaspora dance. And it's like, like the people that I've learned from have been dancing all of their lives, you know. And then I was, and I was just thinking to myself, like, so you're going to say like, because you have X, Y, and Z degree that you think that you could teach over this said person that has been dancing for like 60 years. Like, I don't get it. But like, for TeMate, it really was just about, you know what, I'm tired of this whole like Western view of what dance is. What the straw for me was I went to a Jazz class and the, the instructor was like, yeah, you guys should come back for the Ballet class, you know, because ballet is the foundation of dance. I said, that's it. I'm, I’m, I’m done (laughs). That's it. That's it. TeMate is born (laugh).
TARA WILLIS: Can you explain what TeMate is and then how like your individual creative practice fits in?
AJARA ALGHALI: I've been studying and performing traditional West African dance, probably a little over 15 years now. And so that is the foundation of it. And so it's TeMate Institute for Black Dance and Culture, because I don't want people to think that, you know, it is just one thing or the next like, no, no, no, no, no. Like last year we had a Vogue class because Voguing is Black dance. It was born out of like New York. Like it's, it’s New York Ballroom scene that like young queer Black and Brown people like created. So like when people be like, oh Madonna's Vogue, like sorry, like that it was happening way before that. And so our organization, it's, we have a performance company, but that's not all that we do. We have, where we have, we host dance classes, dance conference, where we bring in people to instruct classes. So we do, we had Haitian, Congolese, we have, you know, we've done Afro-Cuban, we've had Dancehall, because I want individuals, people, period, to see the wealth and the beauty and to celebrate all that is Black culture, you know? And I mean, and it's, and it’s a lot of it. And then we also have, we're getting ready to start an archiving project to really tell the story of how Black dance actually like, like flourished in, in Detroit. So just really telling the story of like a tree in all of its branches, right? Because while of course traditional West African dance has been around of course in Africa, but it didn't come to the States until the late 60s, early 70s. I mean, and even it was probably before then with Katherine Dunham, but she wasn't doing traditional, you know, she was doing like Caribbean style. But anyway, but it's all rooted, you know, like you had the dancers that did Dunham, you had the dancers that, you know, like that evolved in, you know, you had like, you know, individuals going on this track and this track, but it was all like Black dance and, you know, and telling the story of those pioneers and those dance companies that just said, you know what, I'm about to just you know, buck the system. That was their way of bucking the system back in the day. And now, like, I feel like we have the ability to just push a little bit more, more so that they had the ability to do. And I just feel like we that's, that's what we need to do. So I view TeMate as this, TeMate Institute, cause I do feel like I wanted to grow to be an institute where people can learn, grow their artistic craft in Black dance.
MEIDA MCNEAL: I love everything you just had to say there. And so many similarities. I teach a class that's called “Mapping Black Social Dance and Culture.” And for me, that is really about trying to tie together this, these threads, you know, and to see again the continuities and the differences between these forms. But also I think that like the preoccupation with Blackness and movement and performance, for me was very much one of resistance through high school and certainly college and, and that, that whole university experience of like why are we not studying these other folks and looking at this other form of wisdom alongside. Like when I did my PhD, all of my, like the majority of my theory came from Caribbean scholars. And I was like, there's a whole, whole corpus of intellectual inquiry that blows the shit that we got here out the water. Like in terms of like the analysis of kind of like capitalism, power, you know, race, and wasn't being looked at all, you know. Also you know, Honey Pot was a group of Black women who were friends who wanted to make stuff together and who all had education, teaching, pedagogy as some part of their practice in addition to creative expression. And so wanting to bring that into a space to like do some things together. It was first a group of women under the banner of Thick Roots Performance Collage. And then we became, we, went away for a little while and then came back to do a work called Ladies Ring Shout. And that was like a women's, a Black women's kind of creative circle and workshop where we were using creative modalities to kind of think through particular pressures and experiences that Black women were having in the moment of like the2008-2009 kind of crash and recession. And that those things were economic, but they were also, you know, political and otherwise. And wanted to, yeah, explore that together. And then from there, like Honey Pot started to emerge. And we stayed in like collective format for, for a long time.
We only became an institution, you know, recognized entity in 2018. And we decided to go that route because we wanted to build something that we, you know, thought, you know, could potentially last beyond us, but that also would allow us to work with more people. It became really important to always pay folks, you know? And so we got more serious about funding and development and expanded our mission to be both like critical performance and public humanities work. And so, you know, we make performance. We, we are committed to long-form performance works because, you know, just continue to believe that that is important work and an important way to experience and think about the world. But also wanting to engage in the archiving work in a more formalized way. These conversations and kind of paneled like, you know, gathering the knowledge and finding ways to kind of pull it together, put it somewhere so that other folks could access it, especially younger generations who I think are often cut off from a lot of this knowledge. And I think in particular because of the way that information flows now, and it's just so much of it. It is very easy to like, miss our histories, you know, if we don't do the work to archive them, to put them in a place where they can be sourced and looked at and thought with. So I think, yeah, that's, that’s how we got to the place we are now. But we also did some, some work, before I took the role with the City, Honey Pot served as the like lead public engagement artists for a master planning city process called “We Will Chicago.” That was kind of the first attempt of the Department of Planning and other departments in the city to do a city master plan since like 1966. And so we did a lot of work with about 20, 20 plus artists in different neighborhoods to kind of begin to socialize that idea at the start and to get like story cypher and other kinds of embodied experiences and art making exercises with folks to kind of gather like, you know, what have been the harms of the city? Where does the city need to go? What does a healed city look like? And that, that was really impactful work. And we were like, well we could do this work too, as an extension of the art making practice. And so I think that's where we are now, as an institution that's trying to figure out how to keep the art making work going, the building of new bodies of creative work, how to do the public humanities work, which is really important. And then how might we, you know,do other kinds of engagement work, city visioning work that uses creative modalities and ways of thinking and being to like get at larger issues, in addition to supporting other artists and trying to build a space. Because there aren't a lot of spaces on the West Side that produce performance. Like to have another space where in particular West Side artists could, could you know share their work, present their work. So I don't know, we're trying to do a bunch of different things (laughs) as this entity that we're building into.
TARA WILLIS: You've talked both of you about how your organizations are archiving . What is the legacy that you hope that those organizations will leave of themselves?
AJARA ALGHALI: I've been hearing a lot during the interviews is that individuals came to the West African tradition because they wanted to learn more about their culture and, and connect to, to themselves. So just thinking about like those stories. You know, what were the political movements that happened that people were like, you know what, I wanna get more connected to self? Because that's what I'm hoping that the archive could be, is like those life lessons that you can you know go back and say, Oh wow, like ok, they were doing that, or, oh this, this mama knew this person, or they were dancing with this person, you know. Or just a place where you could just go and cackle from time to time, listening, listening to the stories. Because I've heard a lot of cackle stories, seriously. I was like, y 'all were wild back in the day (laughs).
MEIDA MCNEAL: My son grew up calling me and my friends the Cackle Crew (laughs). Yes.
TARA WILLIS: What do you think of when you hear the phrase, the Black Midwest? So just say words, phrases, it doesn't have to be full thoughts. Go.
AJARA ALGHALI: Family.
MEIDA MCNEAL: The block.
AJARA ALGHALI: Friendly.
MEIDA MCNEAL: Yup. Yup. I think of head nods and looks. Go back to what you called up in the beginning. It is gritty. It's gritty, it's grimy, it's like, it’s like you know.
AJARA ALGHALI: Black Midwest, Black Midwest. Like real people. Like no, like no, no bells, no whistles. We, we like to have a good time, but we'll, but we’ll let you know what we will and won't do (laughs). You know? When we find each other, we like, Oooh let me hold on tight.
MEIDA MCNEAL: …and cacklin' (laughs).
AJARA ALGHALI: Yes (laughs).
TARA WILLIS: My last question, this comes from an interview I heard Alexis Pauline Gums give, and she was talking about, she was working on this book that she's, I think just recently published on Audre Lorde and just talking about reading, like thickly reading all this Black feminist text and feeling like she, even though she wasn't born when a lot of that text was written, in the 70s, like there's a feeling like they were writing for her, right? That they were loving her from, you know, in the future, from where they were sitting at their desks writing. And so I'm wondering, for you all, who are you loving with your work?
MEIDA MCNEAL: Black people, in community (laughs).
AJARA ALGHALI: Period, that's what I was about to say, like (everyone laughs). I was like, yeahhh. All of that, full stop.
OUTRO: How People Move People, is brought to you by The National Center of Choreography at The University of Akron, or NCCAkron. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Edwards, James Sleeman is our editor, theme music by Ellis Rovin, sound design by Damon Locks, transcription by Arushi Signh, cover art by Micah Kraus. I’m DeMarcus Akeem Suggs, Director of Development at Mid-America Arts Alliance, Founder & Framework Culturalist at kummbuntu LLC, and an NCCAkron Board Member. Special thanks to The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for their continued support of NCCAkron programming like this. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at nccakron.org and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @nccakron. We hope you enjoyed this episode and encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for How People Move People.