A demonstration of the dance stepping was held in celebration of Black History Month for February’s Soup and Substance held in the University Union.
The new club, Driven Toward Sisterhood, led the demonstration and lecture of the history of stepping. Student coordinator of Black History Month and member of Driven Toward Sisterhood, Shauna Kimball said that stepping is a form of dance that involves using the body as an instrument to tell a story.
“Stepping is creating music with your body,” Kimball said. “There is a mixture of footsteps, spoken word and hand-claps that make up the sound.”
Soup and Substance Coordinator Michelle Fox said she had never been to a live show for Soup and Substance.
“Soup and Substance is typically a lecture series about something relevant going on in the world,” Fox said.
After letting the crowd get their soup, Driven Toward Sisterhood started the performance by riling up the crowd and yelling, “Are you guys ready?” With a little introductory dance to show the large crowd what stepping was, Driven Toward Sisterhood then went on to explain the dance’s origins.
“(It’s a) mixture of African dancing, military structure and African gum boot,” Sisterhood member Kando Ogunrinda said to the crowd.
Brittany Usher said that singing and dancing was a way for slaves to communicate, as well as a way to celebrate, praise and recite history. When slaveholders found out that communication was taking place through the dancing and singing, they banned them. Thus, stepping was created.
After an African praise dance, the Sisterhood went on to explain how stepping was also formed from military structure.
Devon Buddhan, a member who has been stepping since high school, said that all movements are performed to create unity.
A performance that started out with only two girls moving in perfect unison gradually brought in the rest of the group. The five girls ended up doing three different dance moves, all with the same rhythm.
Stepping stems from the African gum boot dance. Adonna Anderson said that African gold miners would wear Wellington boots to work in the flooded mines, which they would stomp to communicate. Stomping is a big part of stepping, and some fraternities and sororities wear tap shoes or high-heels to get a louder sound from a stomp.
“Stepping became big in the ’70s because of the Divine Nine,” Kimball said. “The Divine Nine are the nine fraternities and sororities that made stepping mainstream.”
With stepping appearing in movies such as “Stomp the Yard,” which was presented for last year’s Black History Month, the dance form has become more and more popular.
“We’re hosting a step show April 23 that will have some fraternities and sororities from Los Angeles to San Francisco come and show what stepping really means,” Buddhan said.
Until then, Driven Towards Sisterhood will be having an open workshop Feb. 10 demonstrating how to step in Tenaya Hall at 8 p.m.
The performance ended amid applause and Fox said that she was happy with the turnout and that it went really well.
“(This performance) raised the bar on Soup and Substance. We’ll have to keep it up,” she said.