by Bailey Basham, Messenger Staff Writer For César Leal and Courtney World, putting together the newest University Art Gallery exhibit was hardly a piece of cake. It took over a year of research, preparation and numerous partnerships with creatives both on and off the Mountain. The exhibit opens Friday, March 29. There will be two brief talks and a performance at 5 p.m., Friday, March 29, in Convocation Hall. “This Ain’t No Cakewalk,” was created by Leal and visual artist Thom Heyer. The exhibit will invite the Sewanee community to explore the complicated, and often neglected, history of the cakewalk and of the appropriation of voguing. Voguing is a highly stylized form of dance created by black and Latino LGBTQ communities in 1960s New York City. Leal, director of the Sewanee Symphony Orchestra and assistant professor of music, said the purpose of the exhibit is to showcase a part of history that is often forgotten or ignored. “We tend to take pride in the partial meaning of things. Culturally, we erase and ignore the things that make us uncomfortable. It is understandable. We try to claim the history by ignoring and distancing ourselves from certain parts of it, but true awareness is something that is needed for a complete understanding. A complete understanding is one of the ways to avoid that reality ever happening again,” Leal said. One way the curators are hoping to showcase that history is by bringing into consideration multiple and very different moments in history. “The exhibition is about ideas and questions that are relevant everywhere, not just in the South. It’s partly about the cakewalk, and partly about voguing and all about imitation and appropriation and reappropriation,” said Shelley MacLaren, director at the University Art Gallery and visiting professor of art and art history. “Some pieces of the exhibition I hope visitors will want to celebrate and find inspiring, such as the idea that dance can be a form of resistance or a way to find community. The exhibition is also about racism and appropriation. Considering the history of cakewalk is meant to help us better understand how racial prejudice is enacted and reinforced, as well as how appropriation unfolds and is bound up with race and power.” The event will conclude with a performance in the University Art Gallery, led by Heyer and Assistant Professor of Dance, Courtney World. World has been working with students from the University using traditional cakewalk dancing to choreograph a performance. She said the tradition of the cakewalk dance, which is significant in the African-American dance world, was misinterpreted from the very beginning as the cakewalks were done by slaves in mockery of the slave owners. The slave dancers would incorporate moves reminiscent of the slave owners’ strutting, bowing low, waving canes and tipping hats. Some plantation owners would make an event out of the dances, inviting neighbors over to have a contest of the dancers. “And then, the best dancer was rewarded by the slave owner because they didn’t have any idea,” World said. Certain moves characteristic to the African-American cakewalk dances were recorded. World said it is those records taken from African-American oral tradition that she and the dancers are using to create a performance to accompany the exhibit. “We are trying to inhabit the spirit of the work without appropriating it, which is a challenge in itself because none of us come out of that culture,” said World. “While some of the dancers may share identities similar to that of those who participated, they don’t necessarily draw from those traditions. As we are creating, the dancers and I are coming up with movement choices that we have to really grapple with and ask, ‘Is this okay that we do this, that we make this gesture?’ Movement has meaning, and we want to be really careful.” World said she hopes people enjoy the performance and then continue to discuss the history of the dance, as well as the history of our local community. “This is really a celebration of black dance history and American dance history. Cakewalk and vogue are two forms of dance that are American and have become global. Dance is inherently joyous, and I keep coming back to that. The movement itself isn’t going to be what’s challenging. It’s the subject matter that people will come away talking about and feeling differently about because of their own histories,” World said.