On Thursday, Feb. 1, McGill held its eighth annual Black History Month Opening Ceremony at the Elizabeth Wirth Music Building, hosting around 130 students, staff, and faculty. Breaking away from the tradition of hosting lecturers, this year’s ceremony featured a performance by the Montreal Steppers, followed by a talkback panel discussion regarding the importance of celebrating Black joy through art.

Shanice Yarde—McGill’s Senior Advisor for Anti-Racism and Equity Education—was the primary organizer of the event and the first speaker of the evening. The speech was followed by a performance from the Montreal Steppers—a non-profit organization and dance collective specializing in step. The art of stepping is a Black diasporic dance which uses the body to create a musical beat out of claps, stomps, and chants. The Montreal Steppers are both performers and educators on the history of step—since 2019, they have provided dance workshops to over eleven thousand students across Canada. They included the audience in sections of their performance, encouraging observers to make music and move in tandem with the dancers.

“As we clap, we remember the hands of our people who cultivated crops for the entire world,” Kayin Queeley, a member of the Montreal Steppers and a Case Manager at the Office of the Dean of Students, told the audience during the performance. “As we stomp, we remember the feet of our people who, through displacement, travelled thousands of miles [….] And stepping is a reimagining of the use of the body that was once only viewed as property to create music that we’ve never seen or heard before.” 

Méshama Eyob-Austin, President of the McGill Black Students’ Network, expressed that she found the rousing performance to be joyful and personable in a written statement to The Tribune. 

“The Montreal Steppers brought much-needed energy and fun to the room, but also took a moment to make us all recognize how special it was to be together in that moment,” Eyob-Austin wrote.

The panellists subsequently took the stage, featuring Queeley, Concordia Professor Angélique Willkie, a performer and teacher of contemporary dance, and McGill Professor Alex Blue V, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Art History and Communication whose research examines the intersections of race and sound. Blue applauded the dance performance, sharing his interpretation of the call-and-response aspect of step.

“If you think about a word like ‘echo,’ which we typically would understand just the sound that happens after the sound, what I saw in that performance […] embodied echoes whether you want to think of ancestry […] but also the way the sound kind of reverberates around the room,” Blue said. “So really the main connections I see have to do with the energy that’s created by echo in a way that can be embodied by step and can also be heard and felt in very real ways.” 

Wilkie added to the sentiment, expressing her thoughts on the interconnectedness of the performers and the audience.

“What was communicated here for me is a kind of […] existential camaraderie, you know, where the bodies move together, are together, speak together,” Willkie said. “And it’s not learned. It is rehearsed, but it is not learned.”

The panellists were asked about the significance of Black movement, and how the body serves as a tool of connection, change, and power.

“Because Black bodies were objectified as property for so long, and that the labour of Black bodies is what has created the society in which we live, it is extremely important to flip that narrative. We have the capacity to do it here,” Willkie said.

Queeley followed suit and explained the way that stepping has found its place in the world of contemporary dance by shifting the narrative of what dance should look like.

“In step, you could do a double step on one foot, but other art forms will tell you ‘No! You go here, then here, then here’, so [step] shifts everything. I think that’s power in itself. [….] It’s disruption. That’s the intention. It’s too organic, too creative, too dynamic, too exceptional,” Queeley said.

Eyob-Austin told The Tribune that she greatly valued the Steppers’ emphasis on Black resilience and courage. 

“For every harmful, oppressive, and devastating part of Black history, there has always been 100 more moments of Black people finding ways to survive, and this is the legacy that the BSN aims to maintain [….] Creating community and spaces for joy and growth are some of the most powerful acts of resilience, courage, and strength and it is very validating that the Montreal Steppers approach Black History Month with this educational angle,” Eyob-Austin wrote. 

In an interview with The Tribune after the panel, Blue expressed the necessity of centring Black joy and excellence through performance, rather than continuously focusing on themes of hardship.

“One of the burdens that Black art often carries is that […] people think that it’s supposed to be about resistance, always about, you know, hardship, and that sort of thing. Obviously, those things are kind of built into a lot of the art, but there aren’t a lot of spaces for Black joy to be expressed. So that was one of the things that I really enjoy about this sort of performance, it allows for you to see just different facets of Blackness that are not always public,” Blue said. 

Wilkie additionally explained that while Black sorrow should be acknowledged, Black hope and happiness should be portrayed through art as well. 

“I think it’s important to recognize the miseries that have existed historically, many of which continue. Unfortunately, you know, I mean, the forms may change […] but they’re still there. But it’s also important for us to be able to speak, not only from a deficiency point of view, but also from a place of pleasure, joy, excellence,” Willkie said in an interview with The Tribune after the panel.

McGill will be hosting events for Black History Month every week, with Dr. Melanie J. Newton’s Keynote lecture on Feb. 8. BSN will also be hosting events all month, with a screening of the African Cup of Nations finals on Feb. 11 and a panel of Black musicians on Feb. 12.