About Onye

My first memory of dancing is standing on my father’s feet, my hands small in his, arms stretched.  He stepped 2 steps to the right, 2 steps left; to Carl Douglas’ Kung Fu Fighting.

I snuck out of my high school bedroom window in the middle of the night to catch a ride to teen night at the Norma Jean night club in Ft. Myers, Florida.

Nia Love coached Trebien Pollard and I to do a lift, I ran diagonally upstage left, leapt up and he scooped me around his left shoulder I turned and rolled simultaneously to the other side and came backwards down his right side he caught me every time, my face an inch from the floor.

I used to fold up the umbrella stroller, with my lapa tie Chi (my son) to my back, backpack (baby bag) on my chest and run for the train on the way to Djoniba’s for African class in New York.

Jackie Villamil, Donald McKayle and Ron K. Brown, changed my life at ADF one summer.  I left early.

For two years I was the Dance teacher at Edison Park Elementary School Fine Arts Magnet.

I began making improvisational dance performance 16 years ago because Manu, my 3^rd child, unlike his brother and sister before him, refused to sit in his car seat and watch me choreograph.

Michelle Ellsworth is my sister from another mother.  We have made 21 dances that don’t exist.

I loved living in Chicago because I could leave an administrative meeting at Columbia College and ride the train over to perform at Links Hall, show up on a packed salsa floor after dishes done, and go hang with the grown and smooth House dancers on any given night.

I am back living in Florida now.  Teaching dancers again after a long time away.  Which I also love.

I have been making dances for presentation to audiences since 1997.