About

How it started…
We are super excited to finally place our documentary-dance short film into an accessible space! This film was inspired by a qualitative research project that was imagined by Elon ‘18 grad Camaya Miller. I was her research mentor and we collected interviews from 30 Black women who had home births or birthing center births. The initial recruitment was super slow, we collected about 6 interviews in Spring 2018 and then Camaya graduated, went to earn her MPH, and gifted me the responsibility to complete the data collection. I had to wait a year to secure funding to pay incentives and I could not have found the additional participants without support from Ebony Marcelle, Director of Midwifery | CNM, MS, FACNM | Family Health and Birth Center at Community of Hope in DC, and Lacey Price Booth who was working at a local birth center in NC at the time which is no longer here. Data collection was completed in Summer 2019. 

We have presented findings from the qualitative study at conferences and continue to work on a manuscript, but I always remember how beautiful and varied the participants’ stories were and how inspired I was while talking with them. The stories were so beautiful, in fact, I thought I just might need to have another baby so I could have such an amazing experience. That thought only lasted a few minutes :)

Fast forward to February 2021 and I’m watching Elon’s Black History Month Concert produced and directed by my colleague Keshia Wall, Assistant Professor of Dance. I find myself mesmerized by her choreography of Jaki Shelton Green’s poem “I Want to Undie You” (she is the poet laureate of North Carolina), and I’m reminded of the words of the participants in our study. So I reach out to Keshia to see if she would be interested in collaborating on a project to put these women’s words to movement, through dance. She agreed and suggested a documentary-dance film short. I recruited my friend made family, Omisade Burney-Scott, to help with content creation and concept design, cause she’s so dope and brought me into the reproductive justice space. I also recruited my then student, who is now a grad and a whole doula, Queen Assata Stephens who had participated in the analysis of interview transcripts and is so so very creative. She’s also an inaugural student member of the H.E.R. Lab. Keshia recruited filmmaker and cinematographer Jermaine Studwell who is simply brilliant in his craft, and our team went to work.

We decided to film in a pool, in a birth center, and in a field. Elon’s Rec Center agreed to let us use the pool on campus, we promised them no glitter would be used! We were extremely fortunate that Sankofa Birth and Women’s Care in Durham agreed to work with us and we even got to have Tina Braimah, CNM, CPM & Herbalist in the film! From their website, “In 2017, Tina opened Sankofa Birth and Women’s Care in order to be an agent of change and growth in North Carolina’s birth community. She wanted to create a space where people could exercise choices around their birth experience and be treated as whole, worthy individuals.” 

LaShauna Austria agreed to let us use the field on her farm. This was sacred land. Kindred Seedlings Farm is located in Saxapahaw -- the native lands of the Sissapahaw & Occaneechi Tribes. Standing on the shoulders of Mossie & Thomas White, the former stewards of the land, LaShauna has devoted her current professional life to promoting racial equity and building better food systems locally and beyond. Kindred is focused on preserving farmland, natural resources, and Southern foodways.

Those interviewed included some participants from the original study and some new voices as well. We are so grateful for the honesty, vulnerability and willingness to share from Tina Braimah, Omisade Burney-Scott, Jocelynn Hubbard, Yanica Faustin, Ste’Keira Shepperson, and Lauren Huggins. The dancers in the film take my breath away and are all Elon students/grads! Eileena Boyce and Kayla Spalding are dance performance and choreography majors here at Elon and Nyla Rivers was on the National Champion dance team while at Elon and an inaugural member of the H.E.R. Lab (and currently a Charlotte Hornets Honey Bee!). Our filmmaker and editor Jermaine Studwell, aka, JaySnapps did such amazing capture and editing, he even had a drone capture video outside in the field. Four of my people accepted the call to come out to the field, dressed all in white, for the final scene of the film along with me and Omisade - Rose Watlington, LaShauna Austria, Mtende Roll, and Arlinda Ellison.

Keshia and Jermaine worked their magic in editing and a documentary-dance film short titled, Reclaiming Power: The Black Maternal Crisis, was born. We have shared the film at conferences, with organizations, and at film festivals with more to come and we’re building a curriculum and website space where it will live for the longer term. 

It tells an important part of the story of Black maternal health. It does not tell the full story. It tells a part of the story of Black birth using the beautiful arts of dance and film. I hope you love it as much as we do 🖤. Feel free to use this film and share with others. We are trying to track its reach though so would be very appreciative if you complete the Google Form to tell us how you are using it. 

With much gratitude to all who made this possible, 

Stephanie