WILL KARR
Staff Writer
In order to be a dancer, many people believe that one must have classical or formal training. However, Iaisha Babb, a senior dance major and the president of SUNY Fredonia’s EnFusion dance team, is working to change this narrative, showing that anyone can become a dancer.
“I want to make dancing more social, but [I want] to still show how there is training that could be done. However, not everyone necessarily needs it,” Babb said.
EnFusion is a multicultural co-ed dance team founded in 2017. The group started as a part of the Caribbean Student Association, but it has since become its own separate club. The team specializes in a wide variety of styles, ranging all the way from hip-pop and jazz, to salsa, majorettes and vogue. Every spring, the group hosts an event called “Battle of the SUNY’s,” where dance teams from other colleges are invited to campus to compete.
This semester, EnFusion is hosting monthly “Freestyle Fridays,” giving the campus community the opportunity to dance with the team. They will also be hosting various workshops such as a high-heel dancing class.
“At the last freestyle event, we all formed a circle where everyone dances. We all follow, and then the next person goes,” Babb said. “We’re trying to branch out into more recreational areas. Even if you don’t dance, you can still come to a Freestyle Friday and listen to music. We’re trying to make it more of a community environment. EnFusion is a family, and we want to share it with the campus.”
A hip-pop and drill-themed freestyle session will take place Friday, Sept. 23 from 5 p.m to 6 p.m in the Williams Center S222.
“I think that EnFusion in the past was a lot more focused on performing,” Babb said. “Now we are still performing, but we’re also crafting, showing people that anyone can dance.”
The group is striving to introduce people of all ages to dance, showing that you don’t necessarily have to start out at a young age to be a dancer.
“In the dance world, it’s often expected that you start dancing at the age of three and that you’ve been trained in ballet and all these other different styles of dance,” Babb said. “But for me it just wasn’t like that.”
Growing up in Queens, N.Y, Babb developed a passion for dance at a young age, but her family could not afford for her to receive formal dance training. However, as a child, she attended an after-school program at The Police Athletic League, an inner city community agency, where she eventually started participating in free classes. The opportunity gave her the chance to dance for nine hours a week privately with an instructor.
While Babb grew up dancing mosty for fun, through the program, she learned how to do fully choreographed dances and structured routines. She recognizes that her journey as a dancer is somewhat “untraditional.”
“I’m ‘untrained’ in a way,” she said. “I started out dancing when I was about six or seven. I started out doing mostly African dances. I began ballet when I was about 12, and I picked it up again when I came to Fredonia. I’m not trained in the way that I am supposed to be.”
While many colleges require aspiring students to have large amounts of professional experience in order to be admitted, Fredonia’s dance program accepts students with different levels of experience and from various backgrounds.
“Fredonia is one of the only places that wasn’t so strict about needing to have a certain amount of training or about having to look a certain way,” Babb said.
Fredonia’s offerings are mostly focused on contemporary and jazz styles. But through the program, students are learning more than mere dance styles and moves.
“I never wanted to only be on a dance team or to dance. I have always wanted to learn about dance as well,” Babb said. “I wanted to get the training that the people who we’re teaching me didn’t have. A lot of people don’t know about anatomy and things that cause dancers to get hurt — things that could stop if all dancers just had a proper education.”
In addition to movement classes, Fredonia offers students a gamut of other classes such as dance kinesiology, pedagogy and wellness. While pedagogy specifically instructs dancers how to teach dance to others, kinesiology shows them how to move their bodies, bones and muscles in ways that won’t permanently damage them. Dance wellness is all about properly nourishing the body and eating well to stay healthy.
Babb said that taking all these classes help students like her to become well-rounded dancers. “Fredonia is a place where you find yourself as a dancer,” she said. “It’s not about getting your leg up high. It’s not about how many years of ballet or tap you took. It’s more about finding out who you want to be as an artist and guiding you in the right direction to be successful after college.”
Although Fredonia offers dance classes, non-dance majors normally are not enrolled in these courses. EnFusion is working to bring dance to all different types of students on campus.
“We are not looking for super trained dancers,” Babb said. “We’re just looking for people who are passionate and want to do it. We can teach you.”
Photo Gallery: EnFusion in Action by Derek Raymond
