Vanessa Owens started dancing 38 years ago.

Through high school, college and a job, Owens continued dancing.

For 17 years Owens worked at a radio and television station while trying to balance her true passion, dance, on the side.

Then one day in 2006, Owens left her job to pursue dance full time.

“Dance is what my body and mind was able to connect with,” she said.

Owens is the founder and director of the Indianapolis-based Kenyetta Dance Company.

Her dance company will be performing tonight as part of the African-American Heritage Banquet.

The annual banquet helps to kick off the month-long celebration. The banquet will be held at 6 tonight in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. A reception will be held beforehand at 5 p.m.

Owens opened a dance studio with two other dancers in 1998 that would eventually grow and expand to form the Kenyetta Dance Company.

Owens, a single mother of two, said she was unsure if the dance studio and company could sustain her and her family. That’s what kept her at her desk job for so long.

But it came to a point where dance had taken over her work. She said she would often receive phone calls at work from parents about dance class times.

She said she has not looked back yet, adding that dancing is not about money.

Owens said she knows she will never be rich.

She said she never would have received the management position at a job or be as satisfied as she is right now.

“I’d be miserable sitting behind a desk,” she said.

However, with dancing, Owens has met many people and had many experiences she said would not have happened if she were doing something else.

To Owens, dance is pure joy.

It does not even have to be her dancing.

She said she loves to see a young person that’s had a bad week and then take that emotion and distraction to the dance floor and end up leaving feeling much better than when they walked into the door.

Dance is a “therapeutic way of relieving” the problems of the world, Owens said.

She said it’s the artistic viewpoint of dancers, where they can “take a nightmare and create a dream.”

To Owens, the expression of the heart is to dance.

She said through dance one can show the goodness, the badness, the frustration and the joy.

Dancers can say so many things without opening their mouths, Owens said.

The origins of the Kenyetta Dance Company

Owens herself started taking dance lessons 38 years ago and out of all the extra-curricular activities, dance was the one discipline she was passionate about, Owens said.

While at Indiana University, Owens majored in sociology while performing with the African American dance company on campus.

In the summertime, Owens would study dance in New York City.

However, Owens said she has always been more focused on the instructional part of dance, rather than the performing side.

That’s why she said she wished there had been a dance company like the Kenyetta Dance Company when she was younger.

There are currently 10 dancers in the dance company, ranging in age from 15 to 26 years old.

They perform in a contemporary, modern style but are trained in ballet, contemporary, modern, jazz and tap.

All the dancers had to go through an audition process to join the pre-professional company that was formed in the fall of 2004.

After only four years as a company, Owens said they are already recognized locally but hope to someday be recognized regionally and, eventually, nationally.

Coming to Eastern is helping the dance company to spread regionally.

This will be the company’s first regional opportunity to perform what Owens called a “mini-concert” outside Indiana.

The performance the company has planned, Owens said will connect and fit well with the African American Heritage Banquet.

She said most of the pieces they will perform are urban, African-American inspired pieces through the music and choreography.

Banquet and month a celebration for all races

Joycelynn Phillips, chair of the planning committee for African American Heritage Month, helped bring the Kenyetta Dance Company to campus.

Philips, who saw a taped performance of the company, said they are enthusiastic and passionate about their dance and they “just flow.” She described their dancing as “very beautiful to see.”

While the dancers are the entertainment for the night, a soul food dinner will be served.

Philips said the banquet is a celebration of diversity and inclusion.

“I want to make it clear, that this is a celebration of African American history and culture but this is for everyone. It’s inclusive,” she said. “It’s for all races of our students and faculty here on campus.”

Philips said African American Heritage Month validates who African-American students are.

She said it is also a learning experience for many African-American students, as well as an opportunity to share African-American culture with other Americans.

“Diversity – if we really believe and if we’re committed to it – it’s going to be the way we are,” Philips said. “I think really in a university setting it’s an opportunity for young people to learn about one another because sooner or later you’re going to be out there in the work world, working with each other, teaching each other’s children, doing each other’s accounting, being each other’s physicians or nurses or attorneys.”

The planning committee collaborated with many other groups, such as the Black Student Union, National Association of Black Journalists and Minority Teachers Education Association.

B. James Griffin, sophomore accounting and finance major and treasurer of BSU, said BSU bought two tables for the banquet and had to be involved with African American Heritage Month somehow.

“I think BSU plays a big part on campus and we have to lead by example and if we take part, maybe that’ll make someone else take part,” Griffin said. “I think it’s a big thing to come as one and be a big community.”

Griffin stressed that the events during African American Heritage Month are not just for African-Americans but also for everyone.

Chassity Cawthon, junior elementary education major and president of Minority Teacher Education Association, said African American Heritage Month Banquet helps bring diversity to campus.

“People that don’t normally know what it is to be African-American, they can maybe receive some incite and be given a piece of our world,” she said.

She said it is the same with Asian American Heritage Month. Cawthon said she is not Asian but by attending their banquet, she would get a feel of what their culture is like.

“When you’re open to that, you open your heart to different diversity,” Cawthon said. “That’s where diversity comes from – being open to your friends stuff and being open to stuff.”

Fact box:

What: 13th Annual African-American Heritage Banquet

Who: featuring the Kenyetta Dance Company

When: reception at 5 p.m.

Banquet program starts at 6 p.m.

Where: Grand Ballroom in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union

Tickets are no longer available for the dinner portion of the banquet.

It is free to come watch the Kenyetta Dance Company perform.

Arrive by 6:45 p.m. to be seated by 7 p.m.

Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at mailto:eazulz@eiu.edu.