There’s a magical place in northern Tanzania straight out of a National Geographic special. Here, the waters of Mt. Kilimanjaro flow through a hidden village. People can well this water and have it in their homes. Every plant and flower is medicinal. There are 35 different kinds of bananas. The villagers make your Arabica coffee from scratch, from the bean to your cup. You’re surrounded by the most gracious, welcoming people. You can hike a few miles to a waterfall.
Thea Jones found herself in this unbelievable place as part of a personal journey. Sometimes, when you’re brave enough to leap with a trusting heart, you reap the rewards. Thea’s tale is one of embracing the generosity of strangers. It’s a story of adventure, figuring things out along the way, using your gifts to make a difference in the world. And of listening to the important messages we receive. As she says, “everything is guided.” Her company Skylark Creative Alliance is working on Intimate.See: An Interdisciplinary Project, using dance to empower Tanzanian women. The goal is to dismiss the stigma of dance, using arts to de-marginalize women. She shares some of her life lessons with us today.
Meet Thea: Thea Jones has a 10,000 kilowatt smile and an infectious positive energy. You want to be around her and let some of it rub off on you. I met Thea through a cardio dance class she teaches at Nashville Ballet called Dancefix. After learning more about her story, I was both intrigued and inspired, and wanted to sit down with her in more depth.
Tell us about your dance background: I was born and raised in Nashville and grew up here, but the bulk of my training was in college. I attended Howard University in D.C. as a dance major. Their program blew my mind because it was so comprehensive. They wanted us to know not just what we were doing but why. And historically, how that why connected to the present. They brought in people from all over the world, specifically from the black dance community because they wanted us to know who had to knock down literal walls to allow us to walk through those doors. Who was using dance to protest? Who was using dance to heal, to forge those intercontinental relationships?
It’s knowing the stories of the past and how it correlates to the present.
And after college? I got contracted with Rod Rodgers Dance Company in New York. Simply because I wrote a letter. They told me because I wrote a letter expressing my interest, they wanted me to come. I was with Rod Rodgers full time from 2005-2009, and after that it was part-time. Between 2005 and 2015, I worked with several New York City based contemporary dance companies. When the economy crashed I went to graduate school at Mercy College in New York for Education.
My logic was that arts and education made sense, so I would get the credentials to support the science part of it and then be able to justify my place in the school system. I did a lot of arts residencies where you go into the schools and teach the classes to English Language learners. They would evaluate their language acquisition through the arts to see how it impacted them. I attempted at one point to go into the schools and use dance to help meet those language standards, like the common core standards that are often not addressed because there’s not enough time to do it.
My issue with the classroom is that usually they want you to read and write, do, think, and then create. But for me it made better sense to create with a purpose, and then as you’re creating, think about it. And then analyze it. Maybe step away from it and observe it. Next, converse about it and speak about it critically and THEN write.
My brain went in opposite order, so I struggle with the classroom because they wanted it one way, but I knew it worked a different way too.
So I stepped away from that because I couldn’t figure out how to do it my way with the red tape of the system. I did teach for 5 years. I wasn’t in love with it but I thought that I had to do that to survive up there because the arts funding wasn’t there. So I was educating full-time and dancing part-time.
What made you leave New York in 2015? Life changes. I knew my marriage was ending and I prayed about whether I should stay or leave. Out of the blue, I got a call from a principal here who knew me, asking if I would think about coming home. I told her no, but she kept calling. I just don’t think those things happen by accident.
So I came home and worked in Metro schools for her for that one year. My parents wanted me to live at home with them. I resisted at first (ego). But I learned very quickly that it wasn’t about me, it was more about things happening that were bigger than me. I reconnected with them and with my sister. I needed to shift my attitude and not playing violins like “woe is me, I’m living at home,” to one of service and support. So I think there were a lot of things that were driving me home that I just wasn’t aware of or didn’t know at the time.
So once again, I just feel it was all guided.
After you taught school here in Nashville for a year, then what? I resigned because my heart wasn’t in it, so I explored the arts between here and Atlanta. The work I got included commercials, and dancing in a movie. But it wasn’t enough. I tried my hand at working in nonprofits in the school residency programs, but I found out funding was a national problem, not just a northern problem (like I’d experienced in New York). So I shifted completely into audience development with a theater. I had a unique opportunity to pretty much do things my way. My boss said my job was to put people in the seats. And her words were “figure this out.”
Basically I went from arts education to sales. I would drive around and think about who could benefit from the arts. Who we could connect with, partner with, or help drive business to the theater? So I tapped into the schools and Metro Youth and Recreation, active senior living communities, the police department, the firefighters, the nurses, the conferences downtown. And within six months, there was a complete turnaround. I won’t say it was all me, but definitely by making phone calls and having conversations, it helped to drive new interest in that theater. My job at the theater ran through May 2018 and I was already thinking about what next.
I often questioned: I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I can do these things but I don’t know what they mean, the big picture.
It’s like you knew all the pieces but you didn’t know how they all fit together… Exactly. I was in this place of “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be. I don’t know how I’m going to impact this world.” So I decided to leave — I booked a flight. A travel group had crossed my search engine for a trip to Zanzibar. I considered booking on that group tour. Then, some of my friends were going to Paris. They asked me to come along, and they encouraged me to hop over to Zanzibar from there. So that’s what I did. Everything was guided. The hardest part was hitting the “confirm transaction” button!
And so you went to Tanzania… Yes. I had called the Air B&B host in Zanzibar ahead of time and said, “hey, I’m a traveling solo female, will you be around to help me get my bearings and then I should be good from there?” But once I got there, I was never alone. The Air B&B host and I befriended each other, and then I met his friends. Then I met the locals. I looked like an American because it was Ramadan, and I had these bohemian twists in my hair, and I was wearing all black (my luggage was lost). So for three days, I went around like that.
But the cool part was they perceived me as Rastafarian. And I got approval immediately. “Jambo! Rasta!” and by day three everywhere I went, people are smiling and waving. I felt like everyone in Stonetown knows who I am. Every day at 6:30p.m. they would break their fast and meet on the waterfront for fellowship. They’d eat and talk together, watch the sunsets. And by the third day, I was talking to elders or those my age or the expats, or those in nursing programs or other visitors. It was fantastic — it felt like family and I thought “I just love this place.” It felt right.
I lived in the Air B&B; it was very airy. No locks on the door. I never felt unsafe. Everyone took it very seriously that “this is Zanzibar, no one takes things here.” I eventually met another American who works for Tastemakers Africa (the group on my search engine that I was considering booking with). He had “experiences” he needed to vet and asked me to join him. So now I’m going to the rainforest the spice farm and the northernmost part of the island. He wanted to find this hidden village that makes its Arabica coffee from scratch. So, near Moshi, hidden up in this nondescript area, not easily identifiable, we find it and experienced their making coffee from bean to cup. It was amazing. I could not have planned it if I tried.
After that, we went to Dar es Salaam (the most populous city in Tanzania). I didn’t like it initially — it felt like New York in the 1980’s, very grungy in the city center. Very oppositional to the island of Zanzibar, but the whole time I was looking for the arts. Then I found Nafasi Art Space; it’s a beautiful acre lot with container trucks and each one had its own disciplines. There’s an outdoor stage as well and an indoor gallery space with rotating classes. Still during Ramadan, I took classes; I noticed I was one of only two women in the classes and mostly they were made up of men.
I learned that the women there don’t dance as much because they are taught that it’s wrong, promiscuous, disrespectful, and no man is going to want to marry you because you’re dancing.
The Nafasi director explained they want to encourage more women to dance and dismantle this skewed perception. I told the leaders of Nafasi my story and they told me theirs; they asked if I would come back and said “sure,” not really knowing what that would mean.
I was in Tanzania for 20 days. After that, I came home for a week, and then I left and went to Oakland. Before I left for Africa, I had set up a plan to move to the Bay area. Intertwined in all this were thoughts of going back to New York. But I felt that would be pressing rewind and I wanted to move forward. I had friends in the Bay area encouraging me to come out there and give it a try. So I went.
While I was out there, I met the most amazing perfect strangers who continued to inform my journey.
They introduced me to other great women or people in the arts, and I was able to learn how people did more than one thing. I think that was the point. How are you a dancer and a fundraiser? How are you creating something that speaks to whatever your mission statement is? So I met a lot of people just doing independent work successfully and I think that was important for me. To see that, all right, you can do whatever you want to, really, as long as you have the strategies to monetize it.
Give me one example of someone you met… My first day in Oakland, I was walking around the lake. I met a gentleman who insisted on taking me to dinner. At the restaurant, I said hi to the woman next to me. Her guest came in late and I ended up talking to her at length. She was really the one I was supposed to meet. I ended up having lunch with her weekly. Through her, I met arts advocates, philanthropists, funders, and I learned about how the arts work in Oakland and the Bay area, how they’re shaped, who was doing what, who was funding what. I got insight into that. I went to plays as her guest, met amazing eclectic people from this one random chance encounter. But I think everything is guided.
I couldn’t have designed this trip to the Wizard of Oz if I tried.
The through line is the generosity of all the people you’ve met, but it comes from a place of your openness.. I think about it that way. A piece of me thinks that I did all these things searching, but I had to be reminded that I was already equipped with the things I needed, even though I questioned that. Just like the lion asking for courage and he already had it, etc. I think all of it was already there but I had to see who was doing what and how it was being done.
I found the job search in the Bay area a frustrating one and I decided to come home for a while to save money. My plan was to keep applying for jobs out there from Nashville. So I was only going to be home for a while and had a return ticket booked to go back to Oakland. While I was home, I attended a dance performance in Alabama. Two classmates were there and one said, “You should start your own company.” That night I fell asleep thinking about the Bay. I had my return ticket booked to go back out there the following week. But I got this strange message one night while thinking about it all:
Although courageous in effort, you are working outside of your purpose. You are out of alignment with God.
So it made me stop and I canceled the flight back. Then a friend called that morning and said “you should start your own business.” Next, a woman messaged me on LinkedIn. She said, “you don’t know me, but I was looking at your LInkedIn profile, and you should start your own business.” So three times in a row, people said that. Everything is guided.
So then what did you do? I decided to sit because I hadn’t stopped moving…ever. Something in me prompted me to call the women at the Nafasi Arts Center. “I know I said I would come back but I’m not sure how I would come back.” They told me to call the directors at MuDa Africa. They are a group who trains dancers in contemporary dance styles but also equips them with artist management skills, how your skills are transferable, all those things. They said, “We’re looking to increase the presence of women in dance here and would really love to have women of color come work with our women.”
Their goal is one of empowerment, to in a non-political way address the issues of marginalization and to shift the image about what they’re being taught that “it’s unacceptable to dance.”
In Alabama, I had just seen two works by two former classmates, black women, that dealt with not just women’s issues but human issues we can all relate to. One addressed the pieces of ourselves that we throw away or dismiss. But when we put them all together, it creates art in itself, maybe distorted but still beautiful when we look at them from a place of growth and love. The other was about our inner monologues. She made the internal thoughts the primary pieces so you saw in movement what the single figure was journaling.
I said to the Nafasi people, “what if I brought two women choreographers there and we could discuss themes with your women?” We could discuss these pieces and find commonalities between us within these themes. They loved it; the next day they called back and said they have other women artisans and asked if we would be interested in using sculptors and painters and textile artists to co-create from this space and magnify this message. We agreed and suddenly I have a project on my hands! I started a business, got the LLC. Someone advised me to get a fiscal sponsor, so I did that. Then I started learning how to grant write and I continue to apply for grants on a daily basis. I didn’t know anything about grant-writing and said “I’ll just figure it out.”
It’s all guided.
I didn’t know why Zanzibar was important; I just knew I was supposed to go. And meeting the man who works for Tastemakers Africa, that turned out to be important, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He’s the one who said, “book a flight to the mainland” where I discovered Nafasi Art Space. I did not know that the arts center was around the corner from where I was staying. It was close enough that I could just walk there.
When I told the people at Nafasi, “sure I’ll come back,” I didn’t know that really meant anything. I didn’t know Dar and Tanzania’s countrywide mission is to empower their women and educate them through the arts and to create platforms for leadership. I did not know going to California would boost my bravery. And I certainly did not know going to Alabama and having two random conversations would result in my having a God moment that would make me stop and not go back to California.
Going somewhere by myself and using that same ideology of being somewhere new, learning something new, meeting new people — all of that informs what I’m doing now.
You’re supposed to go to Tanzania in July for the workshop. Otherwise, what are you up to now? In the meantime I’m teaching classes at Dancefix at the Nashville Ballet. I’m doing arts integration and arts outreach for the Nashville Ballet at three area schools. I’m working as an instructional specialist at an elementary school, supporting the students on the cusp of proficiency. I’m helping them push over the hump. I really like it.
I’m a performing in a project at Oz Arts Nashville in May by local choreographer Windship Boyd. She’s exploring Papalagui, the colonization of thought and how it impacts the arts and dance, specifically exploring Black in dance and the European standard of excellence. For me, I won to some degree because I got contracted and the bookings. “I made it” as a contemporary professional dancer, but it didn’t matter. Because when I was on stage I would still have a mindset of, “I don’t look like the rest of the people.” Even at one point in my training when I lost all the weight this body could lose, and my clothes were literally hanging off, my conversation was still, “am I going to be too big on stage?” So it was outside/in vs. Inside/out. It’s about exploring how to make the choice to dismiss that and focus on the inside/out.
And about the future? I’m excited. I think I’ve grown a lot. This process has gone from a phone call to a project. I have no idea what’s next but I believe it’s all guided.
Whatever journey you’re on, maybe hearing from Thea will inspire you to keep exploring, to keep figuring out how the pieces all fit together for you. And to realize that random “chance” encounters may be more meaningful than you think. She makes me excited to keep learning from all the adventures on my own yellow brick road.
For more information:
If you’d like to contact Thea about donating to her interdisciplinary project in Tanzania, email her at thea@skylarkcreativealliance.org. Or for more information, visit the website: www.skylarkcreativealliance.org.