Dance Iquail’s ‘PUSHERS’: The loneliness of being liked

Growing up in the Mantua area of West Philly, Iquail Shaheed always “looked for things to take me out of the neighborhood,” which for him was the four blocks of the Bartram Village Projects. What he found was dance. Now he wants to offer young people growing up in that same area a taste of what he found by basing his latest work, PUSHERS, on their stories, and inviting them to participate in the production process.

“I’ve always been very autobiographical in my work,” he says. In PUSHERS, he’s drawing not only on his childhood experiences dealing with substance abuse issues in his family, but also the stories of youth from the same neighborhood. It’s a look at how the addictive personality appears not just in drug abuse but in the form of obsession with social media as well.

Fear of loneliness

During the summer, he worked with youth ages 12-16 from the Mantua neighborhood for four hours every Saturday for about ten weeks, using journals and discussions to explore the issues of addiction to social media and to drugs, and drawing parallels. The process not only opened the teens’ eyes about how to look at their own community, but it also opened Shaheed’s eyes. “I thought I knew all about the community, and what I found is that I knew nothing.”

“These kids may come from an indigent neighborhood, but they’re very articulate and bright,” he says. They don’t want to be stereotyped by the challenges of the neighborhood they live in. What he’s discovered through this process is that addiction is about fear of loneliness: “We cope with loneliness by getting high on a substance or getting high on the number of likes we can get.”

Because his language is dance, Shaheed has created a collage-based dance theater production based on the teens’ stories: “It’s composed of different chapters, each with its own specific idea or concept.” Daniel Carlton, a New York City-based storyteller who also worked with the teens over the summer, will read the poetry he created for this work. The music is by composer Charles Vincent Burwell.

A talent show to Juilliard and beyond

Shaheed’s early attempts to leave his neighborhood led his to appearing in a talent show, which led to acceptance at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. He then went on to study with PHILADANCO, then Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, and the Juilliard School. He received a BFA from the University of the Arts and an MFA from SUNY Purchase College, and now he’s about to become a doctoral candidate at Texas Women’s University.

Five years ago, he founded Dance Iquail to use “the art of dance as a conduit for combating issues of social injustice primarily experienced by the disadvantaged.” His recent work, Black Swan, explores how black women are marginalized in society, and his next project will be Public Enemy, using the music of the 1980s hip-hop group, bringing in dancers from a variety of cultures to explore cultural stereotypes of black men.

Dance Iquail’s PUSHERS ($25-$30) runs November 11-14 at the Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine Street, Philadelphia. Tickets are available online.