Buffalo native Naila Ansari choreographed and directed Shea's “Once on This Island”; Shea’s first play with an all Black and Brown cast. Ansari, one of the few Black women to direct in theatre, was invited by the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., last November to perform “The Movement of Joy”,a piece she created that tells the story of Black joy through dance. Recently she was honored by the city of Buffalo for her work in the arts. Also an educator teaching Africana Studies at Buffalo State University, Ansari spoke with WBFO about showcasing Black joy through the arts. The following is the transcript of that conversation.
Preston: You choreographed and directed “Once On This Island” that showed at Shea’s, an all Black cast, how was that for you handling multiple things?
Ansari: It’s a lot. I don’t suggest it if you don’t have to. It was beautiful to be able to have an institution like Shea’s because a lot of us don’t necessarily have access to that kind of funding for an institution that’s been around for so long, that’s been embedded to a city. It was amazing to be able to give Black and Brown artists the space that they can really see a full production in its entirety and you don’t necessarily always have to worry about ‘where is this coming from’, ‘do I have support?’”. So often, particularly in the Black arts in general it always is a struggle to find funding. So to be able to have been a director and choreographer for Shea’s first produced show and to be a Black woman to do that and to have it be a Black and Brown cast on a stage that most people aren’t used to seeing Black and Brown folks was incredible and then to have a Broadway reviewer come and put it at the top in the highest that you can have in terms of reviews not that I care about that per se but it is nice to be able to say ‘this is what Buffalo has, this is who we are, particularly in the Black arts and this is what we can do when we actually have the funds and the resources to do it.
Preston: How did you get involved in dance?
Ansari: My mother put me in dance. She was a dancer and she put me in when I was two years old and I hated it. I was a mess. I went to Miss Barbara’s school of dance and Miss Barbara will tell you ‘if she keeps crying in here I don’t know if this is going to work’. Then I just had a shift around five or six years old my mother kept me in and I think she had always saw that I had something so they never took me out. I got into it because of my mother. Once I realized ‘oh maybe I have a gift for this’.
Preston: Who were some of the women that inspired you?
Ansari: My mother Dr. LaVonne Ansari and it would be my aunt Dr. Muriel Howard. It was interesting to see them because they were both in worlds that Black women just were not leaders and they were the first in their own right. So to be able to see them navigate a world that didn’t look like them was something that really gave me the strength to go into my world of the arts and navigate my own lens. I’m like ‘If you all could do this on a corporate and education and institutional level, I could do this in the arts, I could at least figure out how to do this in the arts.”
Preston: What would you say to little Black girls and little Brown girls who want to have a career in the arts? They want to perform on stage but they don’t see someone that looks like them. What would some words of encouragement be for them?
Ansari: I would say to navigate your own path because I’ve never seen anybody that looked like me in any of the roles that I’ve been in. Everything’s a learning experience. You can’t let fear overtake your hunger or need to put something out creatively. That’s something that I was blessed to have a lot of Black women as mentors around me but they aren’t necessarily in the field that I was in. I took the leadership that I was blessed to be around and turned it into mentorship and said ‘well how I can take these ways of leaders and strong Black women that have been around me and then navigate it into the arts that I know I have a talent for and so it might sound cliche of never giving up but just really keep honing your own path and make it so good so that nobody can tell you no.