By Temitope Ogunleye (she/her)
Part 2 of 4
This series contains discussions of misogyny, police brutality, racism, and sexual violence
Resistance is born in rhythm: voices rise, bodies answer, and movement falls into step with the heart’s march, insisting that what moves us within must move us together. Movement in this context is not merely reaction; it is resolve made visible. It is how grief unravels, how joy spills open, and how protest takes shape when words fall short. Across generations and geographies, Black women have turned their bodies into instruments of resistance (Kuumba, 2006). In Nigeria’s Nwaobiala movement of 1925 (Kuumba, 2006; Obayan, 2016) and the Aba Women's War of 1929 (Fallon & Moreau, 2016; Kuumba, 2006), women used clothing, dance and public protest to confront colonial officials. In the Ring Shout tradition, enslaved Africans used synchronized movement as cultural assertion (Jesus, 2023).
This tradition continues through artistic collectives like the traveling acappella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and the dance collective, Urban Bush Women (UBW), located in Brooklyn, New York (Dieter, 2017). Sweet Honey in the Rock, founded by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon in 1973, channels the sweetness and strength of African American womanhood (Kuumba, 2006). Within this same narrative, UBW, founded by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in 1984, merges movement, music, and theater rooted in African diasporic traditions. UBW, made for Black women, by Black women, embody a commitment to redefining, through performance, dominant narratives about the Black female body (Dieter, 2017). Both groups continue to perform today (Dieter, 2017).
To dance is also to remember and to teach. Artists like Aida Overton Walker, Katherine Dunham, and Pearl Primus challenged racial caricature through choreography that insisted on dignity and cultural connection (Craighead, 2006; Jackson, 2019; Jesus, 2023). Walker took this mission on in the 1890s during the late Victorian era, and Dunham and Primus in the 1930s and 1940s during the Modern dance era respectively (Craighead, 2006; Jackson, 2019; Jesus, 2023). More recently, dancers like Jay Pather (Craighead, 2006) and Oxana Chi (Zami, 2021) have embodied cultural hybrids by melding form and aesthetics in ways that disrupt monolithic notions of ‘Black dance’.
When the body becomes the very site of resistance, its message resounds in every circle, every stomp, every sway.
Jump to next: PART 3 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Nudity
Read the full series:
PART 1 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Architects of Change
PART 2 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Dance
PART 3 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Nudity
PART 4 - Black Women and Alternative Resistance: Writing and Voice
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Header image: Sweet Honey in the Rock performing, CC 2.0 by singitonline on Flickr
