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Recently: Standing still does not move this Carrboroite

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Staff

Joy Williams of Carrboro left Wednesday for a six-week trip to Mali. Photo by Valarie Schwartz.By Valarie Schwartz

With wide-open mind, heart, arms and face, Joy Williams has returned this week to Mali, the West African nation she first visited in 2002, where she learned the dances of her ancestors. During this trip, she will participate in The Bloodline Project, striving to fight Mali’s number-one killer of children — malaria — killing one child every 30 seconds. The problem is compounded by the 70 percent illiteracy rate in this country we Americans may best know as the land of Timbuktu.

A native of western Orange County, Williams, 27, is the fourth of seven children born to Mahlon and Veronica Williams. Mahlon is retired from the Carrboro Police Department.

“My parents met at N.C. Central, then married and moved to Carrboro,” she said. She credits both of them for the love of the arts that she and her siblings all share. “They both reinforced it,” with her father insisting that all of them learn to play an instrument. With a roll of her expressive eyes, she says she learned to play the bass clarinet, “just to fulfill the obligation.”

She needs no instrument — music speaks through her body. While talking on the Weaver Street Market lawn, her hands subconsciously started “dancing” in time to the loud music in someone’s passing car as she used them to punctuate her words.

But dual activity seems to be part of her way. During her freshman year at Wheaton College, she started a dance team called TRYBE, now 10 years in existence. Throughout college, she traveled — to Spain, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mali and Guatemala, where she explored the African diaspora and learned native dances. After college, while still living in Boston, she studied ballet and worked in a soup kitchen before receiving a Fulbright grant for a dance exchange in Columbia in 2006 (see a video at youtube.com/dancechapelhill). She participated in the 2007 and 2008 American Dance Festivals while running a dance school in Carrboro.

In Mali, Williams will be part of a cultural immersion program at the Yeredon School in Bamako that will include learning dance, history and language before visiting villages.

“We will travel to learn dances and to provide a social component to protect children from malaria. We’ll be educating whole families,” Williams said. They will also distribute insecticide-treated netting.

Wherever she has traveled, she has learned the same thing.

“Blacks are always at the bottom,” Williams said. “I wanted to explore why that was a truth, and the relationship between color and an interest in dance.”

Following her project work in Mali, she will further explore social themes there. “Hip-hop and pop dance culture from the West is being introduced and I wonder how much it is affecting historical culture there . . . and how much dance is relied upon as a part of life.”

Whatever she learns she will bring back with her to the dance school she started at Church of the Harvest on Hillview in Carrboro. She calls it Chapel Hill Dance and offers classes where she teaches people at all levels of ability how to express themselves through movement.

Her ultimate goal is to create global community by teaching cultural dances wherever she goes.

“I want to bring the desire for people to learn more, with more people taking trips to West Africa or taking courses at local colleges in hopes of furthering their understanding,” she said.

She’s planting seeds.

“The point is to come to a place where we can begin to experience a world that’s not always about thinking that we have to be one up on another to get ahead.”

She’s undaunted by the magnitude of her desire.

“It’s a big project but I don’t feel like I’m carrying a burden,” she said brightly. “There are many people using their talents, carrying the same hope.”

Finished with talk, she got up and moved to a sunny place on the lawn and danced!

Learn more about Joy Williams, including how to make a contribution to help finance her trip at dancechapelhill.webs.com.

Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekays@mac.com

Joy Williams concluded expressing herself with words by delivering some physical expression. Photo by Valarie Schwartz.

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