Barefeet Dance Tribe at Kent State celebrated their 10th annual Oya Shake Sumthin’ event on Oct. 19 to highlight the inclusivity of dance. 

Barefeet Dance Tribe alumna Kamille Pierce spoke about the purpose of the group, which was originally formed in 2009.

“The purpose is just to spread awareness of African dance,” Pierce said. “It started to become really popular in the states in the early 2010s, so just kind of bringing awareness to that style.”

The Oya Shake Sumthin’ event is held each year to celebrate various styles of dance by inviting different groups to perform.

“Every year they have different companies come and dance,” Pierce said. “There’s the Irish dance coming up on campus, Flashettes doing majorette. We’ve had hip hop dance crews in the past, other Afrobeats and Caribbean.”

This year’s theme was ‘Blast from the Past,’ which led to the nostalgic feel of a mixture of old and new songs. The group performed anywhere from five to 10 songs, each lasting 30 seconds to a minute. They chose songs that displayed the versatility of Afrobeats.

“We do [songs] based on popularity at the time,” Pierce said. “We’ve danced to Sean Paul ‘Temperature,’ all those older songs that people wouldn’t know, but doing the Afrobeats and Caribbean style to those songs just kind of brings back memories.”

To fit the ‘Blast from the Past’ theme, Rebecca LaGuardia, a junior biology major and co-president of the Irish dance troupe at Kent State, shared what her group’s thought process was when deciding what song to pick for their performance.

“We decided we thought it would be kind of fun to do one of the bardcore, like a renaissance style of modern song, because it kind of takes both past and present,” LaGuardia said, “and it was kind of fun that they’re kind of battling within themselves.”

Rebecca has performed at the Oya Shake Sumthin’ event for three years now and is amazed at the talent of the performers and the cultural aspect. 

“I started my freshman year, and we’ve been performing in this for years, and they’re just always so lovely,” LaGuardia said. “I love that it’s just this marriage of so many different dance groups of different styles. They all bring their own sort of finesse to it.” 

Rebecca shared that her hope for this event was to have fun rather than be stressed about their presentation, and to hold that same energy throughout their performance. 

“I think [the goal] is to have fun, because it can be stressful sometimes,” LaGuardia said. “I think that’s what I love about the other groups because you can just see how much they’re enjoying it. I really hope that our group can also have that fun and keep that energy.”

Pierce shared that her hopes for this event were to showcase the Barefeet Dance Tribe, along with other dance groups, to the campus. Similar to LaGuardia, Pierce indicated that she wanted to show the fun and diverse side of dance.

“Definitely a goal would be to just show the campus who Barefeet is, who the other teams are as well,” Pierce said. “Just show how you can just have fun with movement.”

Addison Young is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected]