Ava LaVonne Vinesett, associate professor of the practice of dance and artistic director of the Duke African Repertory Ensemble, sits down with towerview’s Molly Nicholson in Trinity Café to share her passion for African dance and the path that led her to teaching and Duke. Throughout the interview, she’s practically dancing with her hands, tracing circles in the air and shapes on the table. Her 22-carat gold wedding ring, earrings and bracelet with mythical creatures winding around her wrist glimmer—she says she likes the color.
Vinesett, who hesitates to admit that she’s danced for almost 30 years, was one of the founding members of the Chuck Davis African-American Dance Ensemble, where she danced for over 10 years and served as assistant to the artistic director and educational coordinator. Gradually, she took over Davis’ class here.
When Vinesett became a permanent member of Duke’s faculty, over 10 years ago, the dance program offered one African dance class. Since then, that class has developed into a program that includes a repertory company, two class levels and full-credit courses. The dance department, she says, hopes to receive approval from the Committee on Curriculum for a dance major within the next year.
Now as a first-year faculty in residence in Blackwell Dormitory, she lives with her two children Domingo and Oesa, and her husband Richard, whom she met as a teaching assistant in a dance class at the Ark Dance Studio—a special place for them, she says. The couple just celebrated their 20th anniversary.
Vinesett has also been a priest of Lucumí, a Yoruba-based religion that developed in Cuba, since 2001.
Growing up in Teaneck, N.J., the self-admitted former tomboy says she showed little interest in dance. She still recalls an African dance group performance at the World’s Fair when she was about four years old, but never considered dance seriously as a career until college.
So how did you get into dancing?
Well, let’s see, I think like many other little girls, my mom decided that I would dance. My older sister was actually the one who wanted to dance. I had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever, I was tomboyish, you know. My mother felt it would be easier, I guess, to put both of us in the same class rather than, say, put one in one direction and one in the other. We’re pretty close in age, like 22 months apart.
So my mother decided that we were going to dance. And I hated it, ballet style, absolutely. It was at the Town Hall, actually, in Teaneck, N.J., where I grew up. And I think my sister and I were the only two little brown girls in there, yeah, at that time. And it was boring, I was just absolutely bored. It was so (pause) confining, if you will, it definitely wasn’t about that self-expression, that creative movement. Anyway, I hated it.
How did you come to North Carolina?
Well, let’s see, my sister was here... at Duke. She was studying here. I was out in California at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. And I was spending more time I think in Englewood, Calif., on the beach than I was in class (laughs). So (laughs), my mother and father were like, “Hmmmm, perhaps you need to be in North Carolina where your older sister is so she can keep an eye on you.” You know. And so I ended up coming to Durham and hanging out here.... I started taking classes at [North Carolina Central University] and ended up just going there....
One summer that I was here, in between classes, and came over to, right out here, in front of Baldwin, and Chuck Davis was doing a class out here, and so he let some of us take classes outside, it was part of the American Dance Festival, yeah.... I volunteered as an usher for a lot of the performances and saw his company at the time perform.... And that was it. (shrugs and smiles)
That was it. I was like, I don’t how I’m going to do it, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know, you know, but I had decided that that’s what I wanted to do. So, yeah (laughs). It’s just one of those things that, I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience where something just absolutely takes hold of you, and you may not be able to figure out why or what it is or what’s happening but there’s something that’s happening and something that’s changing, if it’s energy, if it’s spirit, if it’s whatever, I don’t know, everybody probably has their own reference to what it may be, but for me, it really was based off of the feelings that I was having as I was watching this company perform, and it was a feeling of something changed in me.
Which is one of the reasons why I think also that, not just dance, but art in general is so important because it has that power and it really does have the potential and the ability to do that, to move you into another place, into another time, into another state of being, all that. So anyway, that’s what happened. (laughs)
How did you actually get into the company?
Well, like I said, [Chuck] was really just so instrumental in bringing community into art. So that’s where it comes from in the first place, we talk about that in class sometimes anyway, social dance forms. And so the dance forms come out of the traditions of the people and so it’s very much about bringing the art full circle (traces a circle on the table). And so he was interested in passing the beauty of this art on to the community and so he let [students] come into his classes and take his classes... and he said that he was going to start a company here. And selected several of us, asked several of us to help him found the company. And so it was really, back to what I was talking about, kind of being in the place at a time because that summer, I wasn’t necessarily supposed to be here. I didn’t have enough money for a ticket to go home, back up to New Jersey, and so I was just kind of hanging out here, you know, until I got the money (laughs) Yeah, and so, it just turned out that, while I was... here, it happened.
Why do you dance?
Why do I dance? You know, it’s such a good question because for the life of me (laughs) I can’t figure out why!.... I don’t think about the “why” to be honest with you, and I don’t think that I have an answer for that. Um, I feel like I don’t have a choice, you know. I feel that I dance because it’s like the way that I’m able to more fully express (pauses) whatever all this is that’s going on inside of me (gesticulates in opposite circles around her face and chest). And, and how my way of expressing the impact that the world has on me. And my way of also hopefully impacting the world.
So again it’s... because it’s like I feel that when I’m dancing, and I mean really getting into it, because there are so many different levels that are involved with it. I mean, there’s the part where you can just kind of regurgitate information that’s put out there, given to you. But once you understand what the steps are, once you understand what the choreography is, there’s this other level that you can get to which is, that’s the level that I think actually reaches and touches other people, that’s the energy exchange that happens that can make someone just like stop in their tracks and really pay attention and really see something that they’ve never seen before, really have that experience and not necessarily be able to verbally articulate what it is that they’re sensing, feeling, experiencing.... And I feel like that about dance. If I could express this (same motion) in words, I wouldn’t dance. I don’t know if that answers the question. It’s about as close to it as I think I could come right now. And you know, you could ask me tomorrow, and I could have a totally different answer for you. And I’m pretty attached to that. (shrugs)
My dancing, I think, is very different from my teaching. I mean, I like teaching the form because it’s interesting for me to watch students begin to have a totally different understanding of who they are and this other experience of knowing. You know, of using a part of their sensibilities that doesn’t have anything to do with anything else that they’ve done before. Even if they’ve danced before. It’s a very unique experience, I believe. And it’s interesting too, I like watching them kind of come into that discovery.
If you could give students one piece of advice....
Commit. Commit. That can apply to so many things, it applies to your whole purpose of being here, you know, the direction that your life is going to take, the direction that you’re creating for your life. Commit to it. Don’t be half-assed about it, whatever happens. And not allowing fear to stop you, to paralyze you.... And hoping that students understand that even this, the time that you’re here, sure, it’s significant, but it’s just a breath, it’s a little chapter....
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