Some people have the luxury and ability to dance their way through life without a care in the world. Stacey Allen has made a career of caring for the world through dance as founder of Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective. But to let her tell it, her real vocation is Black storytelling.
Dance has forever been Allen’s primary medium, mixed with presentations before and after her troop performed their works that told the tale of Black resilience, excellence, and self-determination. However, Allen, a multidisciplinary artist, has recently expanded her ministry’s reach to include filmmaking.
Case in point, “Aesthetic Inheritances,” her debut documentary, made in collaboration with Danielle Mason and Keda Sharber, highlights one of Texas’s freedom colonies with which Allen has a very personal connection – Barrett Station.
“A few years ago, I created a dance theater production called ‘The Fairytale Project,’” said Allen. “It centered on the lives of Jim and Winnie Shankle, founders of Shankleville, TX, their love story, and how they were able to reunite despite the evils of slavery and create a fully functioning town on their own. My husband and children are descendants of Jim and Winnie Schenkel.”
Allen said through that experience, she was bit with the bug to learn more about Freedom Colonies, of which Texas has over 500, because they exhibit the concept of Black sustainability and self-reliance she believes Blacks today have to reconnect with, including the land and agricultural practices to create a viable future.
Allen says “The Fairytale Project” grew from a dance production to an exhibition, which then turned into extended community conversations, which gave birth to the idea of a film, one that truly reflects her divinely inspired passion.
“I think God just put this work on my heart, honestly, to evangelize about all these Black places showing that our people were fully functioning. I’m really, really interested in everyday Black people. There’s so many stories within ourselves.”
The film deals with the idea of land preservation, exploring Ray Barrett’s work in Barrett Station to maintain his family legacy as a Texas Freedom Colony. In the film, Allen also interviews noted multidisciplinary artist and “cultural custodian” Victor Lee Givens.
Allen’s movie takes its name from the bell hooks essay “Aesthetic Inheritances Worked By Hand” which celebrates hooks’ grandmother and other Black women deemed ordinary by society, but who possessed the ability to create extraordinary art in the form of quilts. Allen views Barrett Station and other Texas Freedom Colonies as works of art produced amid horrendous conditions of racial violence of the past, and offering lessons for an empowered future.
The film was made via the Project Freeway Fellowship from DiversityWorks Allen received; a fellowship that challenged recipients to go behind Houston’s 610 and Beltway loops and create works of art in these outer areas. And it’s those outer, rural areas where most of the state’s Freedom Colonies exist, including Barrett Station.
The film, which has done a handful of public screenings, became an official selection at the Denton Black Film Festival and was nominated for the Texas Best Documentary.
The plan is to screen the movie at more festivals, though it can be seen virtually at www.dentonbff.com. Allen and crew also screen the movie for interested organizations, schools, and congregations.
“We would love to come out and really just hold space with people. We like to screen the film in an environment where we can have dialogue and conversation after,” she added.
For more information, visit www.staceyallencde.com.
Future Productions by Allen
