Naming the Work: The Formation of Diaspora of the White Praise Skirt

It’s so funny finally naming this project and being able to give it some type of structural voice.

For a long time, the work has existed in fragments in my mind — like a mental sticky board of visuals, songs, movement, and concepts that I wanted to attach to a particular idea. It’s interesting to see how the manifestation of finally naming this work has made my ideas so much clearer.

It feels like everything I’ve been piecing together for years is suddenly able to sit within a structure.

As many of you know, my mom owned a dancewear store in Chicago for twenty years. Her store wasn’t just about traditional dancewear. It also served people who needed garments for spiritual practices and folklore traditions.

Being around that environment growing up meant I was constantly seeing dance not just as performance, but as something that existed inside of culture, inside of ritual, inside of community.

When I think about it now, I keep seeing this image in my mind: babies dancing at the water’s edge in their white skirts. Both praise dance and indigenous folklore dance.

The same garment appearing across different traditions, across different contexts, but always connected to something sacred.

When I sit with that image, the ideas start to come into focus.

The formation of things just becomes clearer.

I start asking questions like: what are the other cultures where dance functions as a form of resistance for African people within that culture? And specifically, what are the dances that are spiritual in nature and that embody this image of the white skirt?

When I started looking, I saw threads appearing everywhere. From the Garifuna people to traditions in Colombia, there is just so much to explore.

From a travel perspective, it also begins to anchor where I want to spend more time. Where I want to go in order to learn more deeply about these traditions and the communities that carry them.

One thing that surprised me was that I didn’t see much about Afro-Mexican traditions connected to this imagery. I know there is a large community of Black people in Durango and along the Pacific coast of Mexico, and I know there has to be something there. But it isn’t necessarily showing up easily in the history and context that I’m finding online.

So that’s something I’m really curious about.

Because when I really trace the beginning of this journey, it started with my own search for connection to my father’s spiritual legacy.

Growing up, I was always told stories about priest aunties in our family down in New Orleans. They were the ones people went to when they needed healing. They were the ones who could advise you. They were the ones who seemed to carry a certain kind of spiritual knowledge.

There was always something a little mystical about it.

Over time, I learned bits and pieces about our ancestry. I was told that some of these women were connected to Haitian Vodou traditions. Hearing that as a young person made me curious. I wanted to understand where that came from and what those practices actually were.

So I began a journey of trying to figure out what religious traditions might have been present in my lineage and what they might have to offer me.

At the same time, I already had my own experiences shaping my perspective. I traveled to Brazil with my mother when I was young, and later I returned as a college student to study abroad in Salvador da Bahia.

By the time I returned, I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the culture or the spiritual traditions there. But coming from a Christian background, it was still an eye-opening experience.

That’s where I encountered Candomblé for the first time.

Seeing these traditions up close made me start thinking more deeply about how different spiritual practices were weaving themselves into my life. And it also made me reflect on the way I had been taught to think about the body within Christianity.

Within many Christian spaces, there are very specific expectations about the body, about costuming, about what is considered presentable or acceptable.

And it’s not necessarily about saying people should be able to do anything without consideration. But there is a particular way that the body is talked about within Christianity that can create a deep sense of disconnection.

In that disconnection, a very specific idea of what is “correct” begins to take shape: the correct way to worship, the correct way to relate to God, the correct way to experience your body.

If your relationship to your body looks different from that, it can easily be framed as something unholy or inappropriate.

But when I encountered Pan-African spiritual practices, the experience felt very different.

In traditions like Candomblé, the entire body is engaged in the process of communion. Movement, rhythm, and sensation are not treated as distractions from spirituality — they are central to it.

The whole body is seen as holy.

The whole body is seen as necessary.

The whole body is seen as worthy of being offered up in praise.

And there is also a strong emphasis on responsibility. Each individual person is accountable for the mindset they bring into the space. The expectation is that you enter with the intention to experience the ritual in the way it is meant to be experienced — not to create harm through your own misdirected thoughts or perceptions.

Each person is accountable to themselves.

But within many Christian traditions, the responsibility often falls on the dancer to shrink. To minimize their body. To become smaller and more controlled in order to appear as a holy offering within the context of worship.

The dancer is asked to present less of themselves.

And that contrast is something I keep returning to.

Because when I look across the African diaspora, I see so many traditions where the body is not treated as something to suppress but as something sacred — something capable of carrying spiritual knowledge, memory, and connection.

And that is part of what this project is trying to understand.