Aquilah Ohemeng, known artistically as KHILA (@aokhila), is a 2024 graduate of UCLA World Arts and Cultures/Dance program, with her work focusing on black feminist thought, archival research and embodied practice. Currently, she works as a choreographer and lecturer at Spelman College in Atlanta. KHILA reflects on her time at UCLA and now at Spelman, explaining how these experiences have shaped her creative process and teaching career.
Aquilah Ohemeng spoke with BruinLife’s Hannah Fox about what’s spinning in the world of dance.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BruinLife: How did your experience at UCLA shape your career?
Aquilah Ohemeng: When I found out UCLA had a grad school program for dance … I said, “That is where I’m going.” I was one of two in my cohort, so classes were me and my sister, Kyreeana, and the instructor. It was a very intimate setting. I felt seen and having undivided attention, mentorship and constantly receiving constructive criticism helped me put all of my research interests of black studies and social justice into my final thesis, which was a labor of love, many tears, sweat and a lot of caffeine.
BL: What are you teaching right now?
AQ: I am a lecturer at Spelman College, my alma mater, and teaching hip-hop and street dance forms and dance perspectives and process, which is a mixture of lecture, discussion, embodied practice, choreography and also bringing in guests from around the city. We explore different themes, such as gender, sexuality, race, migration [and] nationhood. I was able to bring my mentor, Miguel Gutierrez, who is on faculty at UCLA, to speak to Spelman students. I’ve also been choreographing at Spelman Dance Company, known as film and dance theater. That class is more of a dance repertory type of class.
BL: How does mixing lecture with dance work?
AQ: It’s a balance. I will be having more technique-based courses, but still implementing the scholarship side of it, where students are exposed to practicing choreographers. My dancing fairy godmother, as I call her, Victoria Marks… introduced me to this term of “dancestors.” That’s something I use in my classroom to expose students to choreographers who have since passed on. This particular semester was my first time teaching the course of dance perspectives and processes, so reimagining that course beyond just reading on paper, doing class discussions, but … experience an immersive space.
BL: How do your research interests shape your dance and choreography?
AQ: The last work I did, I had nine dancers, but I brought in an Audre Lorde poem towards the end. I’m big on having dancers being comfortable with improvisation. But because I’ve been working with college students, mentorship has entered my creative process as well…so kind of embracing that juxtaposition and navigating that is choreography in itself. I say my process is choreographing the thing, but also choreographing life.
BL: What is similar and different about your past projects?
AQ: Thinking about my past work, it was more building off of my research interest in Gen Z protest culture. “ODE(2)PAC/Ode to Pac” is a work that I knew that I wanted to do… I had no idea that he was 25 when he was assassinated. He was an incredible artist, rapper, but I was more drawn to Tupac the philosopher and his political thought. While I was developing “PASS US NOT: Holy Ghosted,” Tupac’s voice was represented…Tupac was the epitome of youth resistance to the system. Even from the grave, he still speaks and I am like, “I want to be in conversation with you.”
BL: What have you learned going into the next one you’re working on?
AQ: KHILADESCOPE is a play off of my name, but also that idea of a kaleidoscope, where the more you shift, rupture, manipulate the thing, there’s beauty and chaos, and it’s always something fresh and new that you can see. And so for me, KHILADESCOPE was this idea of attempts to break out of systems that we personally … and collectively find ourselves entrapped in, but in the midst of that, how do we experience radical joy or preservation in the uplifting of ourselves and of each other? The dancers in the work, it was a new experience for them in the best ways possible. I think it was a dance of unpredictability and I wanted it to feel that way. Things naturally fell into place in a way that it was like a quilt where you get all these different patches and you don’t know what the thing is going to be in the interpretations of the work. I know there were terms of mass incarceration I had with Meek Mill, of him saying that even when you get out of prison, you’re still trapped [in] the system and those invisible shackles and webs that keep you contained.
BL: Where do you see the future of dance going and what’s next for you?
AQ: Thinking about archiving Black dance and keeping track of those origins and histories and our own truths that we’re adding to the conversation of many people that came before us. For me, I definitely will continue teaching in academia, but also choreographing this new work and wanting to allow it to fall wherever it’s supposed to go. I am someone in the process of relaunching my own entrepreneur career through my company, KHILA LLC, so I would love to break into the commercial industry, but then also begin to travel more for concert stage commissions to continue choreographing and working with artists, brands [and] companies across the world. I’m saying world, I’m claiming it, but also not forgetting about children in arts education who don’t have access to that.
To support the development of “ODE(2)PAC/Ode to Pac,” please donate to $KHILALLC on Cash App or through PayPal with this link and selecting “KHILA” before submitting.
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Featured Image Courtesy of Emmanuel K Ohemeng Jr
