It is the end of a fruitful rehearsal for the Swan Prjct dance company. The high school contingent has just finished running through their performance to “My Queen is Harriet Tubman” by Sons of Kemet, its frenetic afrobeat stylings rattling the walls of SEEDS Studios in Des Moines’ East Village. The dancers raced into a line, snaked across the floor; as the song ended, they collapsed onto the ground in perfect timing.
The company’s middle schoolers cheered them on, shouting affirmations. Someone asked the dancers how they were feeling. “Tired! Sweaty!” they replied.
Though there seemed to be enough energy in the room for a few more run-throughs, Swan Prjct founder and artistic director Sarah Jae instead told her troupe to, “Go to your hearts. Find some calm.” The kids settled onto heart stickers on the studio floor, breathing as the speakers began to play “BLOOD.”, the sparse opening track of Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. They moved through an adagio — arms lift and transition from one ballet position to the next. The moment is stillness.
Before Swan Prjct had a name or a distinct mission, it began as an adult beginner ballet class taught a few days a week by Jae in 2011 as a way of making dance more accessible.
“During that time, a dancer I taught, Yvette [Zaród Hermann of Art Force Iowa], encouraged me to work with youth again. I had been creating preschool art programs and other dance spaces for adults since I was 18,” Jae said in an email.
Swan Prjct has grown into a community of its own, with Jae still teaching adult classes but also heading a dedicated youth contingent of the group.
“I am most proud of the community that Swan is creating, and to be working with and collaborating through dance with so many different ages and generations all together in one space … from age 5 to 75,” Jae said. “In the program we have teachers who are in their teens, and instructors in their 70s. I have the honor of co-teaching a class with Cynthia Hunafa, who is one of the original members of Gateway Dance Theater — the first dance company to bring dance accessibility to our community, 50 years ago.”
Swan Prjct will collaborate with Gateway on a project later this year. This summer, the junior high and high school members of the group performed their third-annual showcase at Des Moines’ historic Hoyt Sherman Place. Called (((WAVES))), it was billed as a contemporary ballet and “a journey honoring Afrofuturism and the water in its many forms.” The showcase was produced by SEEDS, a nonprofit co-founded by Executive Director Dontreale Anderson in 2019, with Jae joining a few months after its inception.
“Swan Prjct exists to break stereotypes and strengthen community. It serves dance and movement initiatives for youth and adults, while committing to decolonization, reproductive justice, and abolition work in the community,” Jae explained. “Our elders and our kids are the most disregarded and disrespected members of society, and their wisdom matters most to me, so creating spaces where everyone feels seen, heard, respected and led towards self empowerment is really the most honorable and important thing I feel like our program is offering.”
Something struck me as I sat against the wall on June 13, watching Swan Prjct’s last rehearsal before the (((WAVES))) showcase. This was not the first time in Iowa I’ve been among a group of dancers whose Black and brown complexion reflected my own; contrary to what many might think about Iowa, my years of breaking and hip-hop dancing in the state provided countless opportunities to share rooms with dancers of marginalized identities.
But the hint of leg warmers underneath sweatpants and brown skin ballet flats gets at something else. The beginning warmup combination — up onto releve. Pas de bourrée. Plie and lift. Tombe. Pas de bourrée — reinforced it. While hip hop was created out of the ashes of poverty in the Bronx by Black kids, nurtured and sustained by brown kids and embraced by all kinds of artists the world over, ballet is an entirely different beast, tracing its predominantly European lineage to King Louis the XIV in the mid-1600s. Mainstream ballet companies have only started to become more diverse in the last decade or so.
So it feels significant that this is the first time I’ve been in a room filled with kids of color, who call Iowa home, rehearsing a ballet performance.
I was pondering this sentiment during a quieter moment in the rehearsal, right before the energy expenditure of the Sons of Kemet section: when the Jhené Aiko song “calm & patient” played over the studio speakers —“Down in my darkest hour / You lift me up, you pick me up / You gave me so much power” — while the dancers continued to fine-tune and adjust.
Anyone who has worked in the nonprofit sector knows how volatile the landscape can be, and Jae is certainly no exception.
“We are making a few changes to programming in our upcoming season out of necessity,” she said. “This has not been a visibility issue, or inability to provide quality arts programs, but it is mostly due to the toxicity of the nonprofit system — the lack of funds and lack of care from local entities — that have been called to action, know of our struggle, and have not come through like they should.
“Going forward Swan Prjct can only exist through people power,” she continued, “and these self-sustaining practices will need to be a big factor in keeping this initiative moving forward in the direction it needs to go. … If you’re interested in supporting SEEDS or Swan Prjct’s all-volunteer led crew, we would greatly appreciate the support for our work.”
SEEDS Studio’s next performance will be at the Des Moines Art Center on July 19, in which students will present two public performances after participating in a weeklong intensive workshop with visiting artist N’Jelle Gage Thorne
But on June 13, after two hours of all-out dancing, the evening’s work came to a close. At the last huddle, a logistical point from the top of the session was reinforced by Jae: “We all know we’re coming performance-ready, right? So how are we showing up?”
Someone, perhaps a little frayed from the late hour and full rehearsal, belted out, “6 o’ clock!”
“No, no — show ready!” The others corrected before Jae had a chance to. Soon the dancers began to trickle out, picked up by parents and guardians. But a majority of the group was still on the floor by the time I left, socializing. Going over moves. Planning for tomorrow. Finding themselves.
“Remember to smile at each other,” Jae had told them. “Give each other some eye contact, connect with each other. Have fun.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s July 2024 issue.
