Today we’d like to introduce you to Billy James Hawkains III.
Hi Billy James, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Born and raised in the streets of Motown, dance was not a dream of mine. I didn’t grow up taking dance classes after school or on the weekends at some local dance studio like most dancers did when they were young. That wasn’t my childhood at all. You could, however, find me and my siblings in one or two places – the school house or the church house. And trust me, we were in church whenever those doors swung open.
The Black Church raised me just like the sound of bullets and the stench of poverty caused me to grow up faster than most kids. I was in the choir by age five (per my mother’s demands) and preached my first sermon before I graduated high school. Black and brown bodies running around the church and passing out on the floor as the church mother lavished in all white ran over to cover them with a cloth and fan them back to consciousness was the familiar picture of my adolescent days. And I loved it. I couldn’t wait to get to service on Sunday and bible study on Wednesday, just to be back for Friday night service and choir rehearsal on Saturday morning to repeat it all over again starting the next day. It’s safe to say I was what you would call a ‘bible thumping church boy.’ And you couldn’t tell me anything in my Sunday best. Nothing. I felt a true sense of joy as I sat in those pews hearing the Word of God fervently preached through my cousin’s mouth – a kind of joy I didn’t have or feel at all come Monday morning at school.
I was bullied. Judged. Ostracized. Belittled. Thought a joke, from elementary all the way through high school. Too bad my parents decided to keep me and my sister Olivia in the same school for elementary and middle school. I’ll never forget those halls of Colin Powell Academy. I’ll also never miss them. The tears were heavy in my soul but never seemed to fall. As much as I tried to fade into the background, I always stuck out like a sore thumb. If it wasn’t because of my pants that were either too tight or too baggy, then it was the shoes I wore or the style of my hair or the way I talked or the way I walked; it was always something. People found any and everything they could to make me feel like I was less than. And on some occasions I found myself believing them. Thank God for Sunday though. The little bit of hope I had from my church family allowed me to never give up on myself, and to never succumb to the judgments and assumptions of others – something the Black Church still does for me today.
After graduating from middle school, I decided to apply to the number one public high school in Detroit: Lewis Cass Technical High School. In my eyes, it was a community-college like school because along with taking our regular academic classes, we had to pick a major as well. Among the list of what I perceived to be over a hundred majors were Band, Theatre, Robotics, Math and Sciences, and…Dance. Quite frankly, I wasn’t interested in any of them but I knew I had to pick so I decided to go with dance. Not because I liked it or again, had any formal training in it, but because I thought it would be a piece of cake. Two of my sisters danced in church which gave me the pretense that dance after all couldn’t be too hard if that’s all there was to it. I was rudely and quickly awakened.
My first genre of dance was Ballet and it was excruciatingly rough. I knew nothing about dance let alone Ballet. A simple tendu was the hardest thing for me to do! And once again there I was feeling inferior at the behest of my shining, talented, classmates who clearly grew up studying dance since they entered this world through their mother’s womb. I wanted to change my major so bad, but what else would I do? I couldn’t sing. Robotics was definitely off the table. I wasn’t confident nor vulnerable
My time at Cass Tech was short-lived due to moving to High Point, NC in December 2010 – halfway through sophomore year. My parents just wanted a change of scenery. I’m extremely grateful for my experiences at Cass Tech, especially my dance experience. At the time I wasn’t convinced that dance was something I was going to pursue as a career, but definitely by the time it came for us to move to North Carolina, I had grown so much that I at least knew dance was something I wanted to keep doing, thanks to Anthony L. Smith, my first dance instructor. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. He saw a god-given gift of dance on the inside of me that just needed the right nurturing. Whenever I was on the verge of quitting dance, which was often, he would look me straight in the face and say, “you betta not give up.” His words are still ringing in my ear to this day.
After moving to High Point, I took a semester off from dancing. Not by choice though. Given the timing of our move, I had missed all the auditions for the performing arts schools in the area. That said, I went to a regular public high school with not a dance program or class in sight. That was miserable. Not having dance in my life made me realize how much I actually loved it. I couldn’t wait to audition and get back to dancing. And I did. I got into William Penn-Alfred J. Griffin School for the Arts and was back to dancing in no time. I continued training in ballet as well as modern, contemporary, and a little bit of African. Penn-Griffin was where I met Duane Cyrus, my now mentor and colleague who was recently appointed Director of the Department of Dance at the University of Arizona. He came to choreograph a dance on our class and the rest is history. He’s primarily the reason why I’m where I am today.
I attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where I obtained a BFA in Dance Performance. By then I knew dance wasn’t just something extra or a recreational act – it was my career. UNCSA groomed me into becoming the tenacious and versatile dancer I am today. I was blessed enough to perform works by Paul Taylor (Esplanade), Doug Varone (Democracy), Merce Cunningham (Sounddance – and even performed it in New York), Juel D. Lane (When the Beat Drops), Kira Blazek-Ziaii (18 Planets) and so many more. It was a challenging and rigorous program, and rightfully so. I tell people all the time that UNCSA is a place for artists who know they want to be artists because from sun up to sun down that’s all you’re doing – art. I remember waking up for morning class at 9am and finally getting to bed at 10pm. The days were extremely long, however. I appreciated being a part of a community that upheld the art of dance to the highest of highest standards.
My dance career post-undergrad started immediately. I missed my graduation because I decided to travel to Kyoto, Japan for a dance festival that our dance professor, Abigail Yager, took students to often. Fun fact: me and my sister’s graduation was on the exact same day. Had I made my graduation, we decided our mom was going to attend my sister’s graduation and my dad attend mine. Well, both mom and dad went to her graduation in Florida and I was dancing and rolling and jumping around studios in Kyoto. Traveling to Japan was one of the best things that I could have ever experienced. It was the genesis of me coming into myself as a person and as a dancer. I felt free and open to be who I wanted to be, very much unlike how our Western society forces people into boxes and categories and stereotypes. No one was trying to be better than the next person – we were all there just to learn, grow, and enjoy dancing with each other.
Immediately following my time in Japan, I traveled straight to South Carolina to perform in the amazing opera, Eugene Onegin, as part of the 2017 USA Spoleto Festival. It was my first taste of being a dancer with a real ‘dancer’ job and I had a blast! I enjoyed being around artists of all kinds – dancers, singers, actors, musicians – and the extremely gifted production team that never missed a beat. I still dream of the day I can return and perform in that festival again.
Next up was joining Duane Cyrus’s Theatre of Movement, a multidisciplinary arts organization back in North Carolina. He was preparing to put together an evening-length show and wanted me to come on board as a dance collaborator. I immediately said yes and started rehearsing with the organization that summer. I can’t thank Duane enough for all he’s done for me. He’s taught me, through his words, actions, and tremendous artistry, what it means to be an artist, a black artist, a black male artist, a black male artist in America, and an unapologetic one at that. To be in his presence and introduced to so many incredible people in the field of dance, many of them who are pioneers in their own right was indubitably invaluable. And how can I forget our time performing in Antigua. What a time to be alive! I wouldn’t trade those years for anything.
As I continued working with Theatre of Movement as a dancer, I also started working with Duane as his rehearsal assistant for numerous commissions. And before I knew it, he was extending the invitation to apply to graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he also served as Full professor in the dance department. I always knew graduate school was in my future by the time I graduated from UNCSA but never knew when that time would come exactly. After giving it some thought, I applied to the program and was accepted.
Those three years were challenging, enlightening, and necessary. I say necessary because there was still so much for me to learn about myself as an artist that hadn’t surfaced just yet. My dancing was growing, yes, but my artistic voice was not. What did I want to say with my art? Who did I want to reach with my art? How did I want to present my art? What does my art have to do with the world in which we live in? These were all of the questions I explored and wrestled with in graduate school, and fortunately, I had some wonderful people to help me along the way. People like Duane Cyrus, who I picked to be the chair of my thesis committee. People like Elizabeth ‘B.J.’ Sullivan who always supported my ideas even if that support came in the form of challenging them and getting me to think deeper about my areas of investigation. People like Clarice Young whose dance classes pushed me not just to dance and look good doing it, but to use my body as a microphone to say loud and proud all that I believed in and stood for. People like Janet Lilly who could solve any and every problem brought to her. And people like my colleagues who stuck with me at my lowest of lowest times where I felt, once again, inadequate and not worthy enough to be in the program. I contemplated leaving grad school almost every day. Thank God I stuck it out.
I went back to my roots for my thesis – the Black Church. I decided to focus on the correlations between early African and African American religious traditions and the nature of the Southern Black Church’s worship experience. My general question was, “how did the Black Church become the Black Church?” More in-depth, I wanted to explore the uniqueness of the Black Church’s worship experience and aspects of it such as the kind of shouting and singing and praising and dancing that was privy to black and brown bodies filling up those pews every Sunday. As I was searching my own soul and my own uniqueness and tracing my roots as a Black boy from Detroit, I desired to do the same for the Black Church. What surfaced was a dance work that brought forth awareness, healing, and spiritual deliverance within the souls of my cast that consisted of black and non-black dancers, musicians, composers, and videographers. Generating this kind of dance wasn’t the goal at all, however. What I realized as I watched my work was that the Black Church has always been about healing and deliverance and transformation. So, it was only inevitable that all of that overtook us.
I graduated from UNCG with an MFA in Dance Choreography in 2021 (so yes I was a pandemic graduate). Prior to graduation, I had accepted the Limited-term position at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta as a dance professor. I was so thrilled to join the department and couldn’t wait to start my career as an educator. Performing is my passion, but so is teaching. I love the art of teaching. In many ways, I see it as an extension of my work as a person of Christian faith. Every time I enter the studio is an opportunity to minister – to uplift, encourage, edify, motivate, and inspire my students through our shared love for dance. As long as I am on this earth, I will teach. I will always reach back and pour into the souls of peoples and artists God graces me to meet. I am a product of the relentless pouring out of others into my life and I have no plans to stop that overflow anytime soon.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
You couldn’t find a silver spoon or a crystal stair in my life. I remember days going without food because my parents only had enough money to pay the bills. And then when we did have food in the house, my mom and dad would sometimes drink coffee all day because there was only enough food for their five kids. I was bullied all through school, even in college to some extent. I was book smart but never at the top of my class and was judged for it because people thought I could do much better. You can only imagine what that did to my self-esteem. When I decided to pursue a dance career, I quickly learned how much my black body and hyper arched lower back and flat feet were not celebrated as much in the dance community. And because of it, my early career as a dancer was laced with fear and self-condemnation – I never felt good enough in my black skin.
Moving to Atlanta was delightful but also one of the toughest seasons of my life. I too went without food for days upon days because…bills. To find some humor in it I always told myself, “well I guess God wants me to fast like he did Jonah in the belly of a whale.” So not the case. Living in Atlanta was also the first time I lived completely on my own in 26 years. Never had I ever been so far away from my parents and loved ones. It was extremely hard getting used to that kind of physical distance. In a nutshell, I was forced to grow up. And not that “growing up” is a bad thing, because it certainly isn’t. There was just so much that life threw at me all at once…I just wish my family was there. But I must say, even though they couldn’t be there physically, anytime I needed ANYTHING, they were literally only a phone call away and they showed up and showed out. Massive thanks to my parents who love and care so selflessly. To my siblings, your support is unmatched. And to my kindred, how can I ever repay you for all you’ve done for me. Love you all!
Being a Christian and an artist hasn’t been easy at all either. Christianity continues to be seen as the problem to much of the world’s issues to date. And I completely understand why. I’ve toiled myself with where I stand on abortion and sexuality and gun control and immigration and climate change and education. And every time I have to remind myself that it’s okay to toil. It’s okay to wrestle with what you believe in. Most importantly, it’s okay to be misunderstood. I can remember my time in graduate school receiving so much pushback because of my desire to bridge both my art and faith together in my work. I continue to be questioned as a creative, sometimes solely because of my Christian faith. And if I’m honest, I invite people to continue to question me and my work. I think that’s a vital part of our growth as people, especially as artists.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a creative, choreographer, and a Christian.
I love creating moments where people of all kinds and from all backgrounds and ages can enjoy the art of dance. I’m strongly convinced that dance and the embodiment of dance is transformative and transcendent. If ever one wishes to bridge the gap between communities or races or professions and so on and so forth, they should hold a dance class. Dance is spiritual and communicative by nature; it brings people together to experience life in ways ‘pedestrian’ life cannot. My primary mission as a creative is to generate experiences – dances, workshops, community events and projects, sermons, prayers – that ultimately bring forth the necessary healing and deliverance within the body-mind-spirit that peoples from various nations and languages and tribes so desperately stand in need of.
I choreograph dances. I make dances with artists who each share their own histories and perspectives on the world in which we live in. A part of my creative process is collaboration – I never work alone. I value the opinions and views and traditions of everyone I’m graced to work with, be it a dancer, designer, videographer, musician, composer, and so on and so forth. My creative expression is triggered by my lived experiences as a person of African descent and the wisdom and knowledge I’ve been able to glean from them. Being Black and being Black in America is a unique experience, an experience not everyone knows about. Being wrapped in black and brown skin comes with a history, and that history comes with a question: what will we, as Black individuals, do about it and do with it? My continued work as a choreographer sets in motion my thoughts and questions even, to the inevitable of being Black and Black in America.
My work as a creative and choreographer is filtered through the lens of my Christian faith. Everything I do and make is sat upon the foundation of my faith. Not only does being Black offer a particular perspective on life and the world we live in, but so does being a Christian. As a man of faith, I am constantly burdened with the assignment of unveiling the healing and hope and love and peace God has to offer to any and everyone who would dare take hold of it, but mostly importantly, take hold of Him. And as I continue to live out my Christian faith through my creativity as a choreographer, I pray it serves as an edifying and healing instrument to our nation and all who inhabit it. As Dr. Matthew L. Stevenson III, chief pastor of All Nations Worship Assembly, once said: “Our world is in a crisis. So then, the creative must create. Because the answer to any crisis is…creativity.”
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
People.
I love people and deeply care about their souls. So much is fighting for our attention these days – trends, our careers, social media, money, fame and fortune, titles and the platforms that come with them. And honestly, those things should have our attention some extent because none of them are evil by nature. Unfortunately, they consume almost all of our attention – our minds, our passions, our lives – to the point where people are solely living for the next check, for the next repost, for the next like, for the next gig. What about your soul? What about your legacy? What about the upcoming generations?
I do what I do and care so deeply about the souls of people because at the end of the day – after all the posting on social media and all the speaking engagements and all the performances and all the money and all the recognition – I want people to be free, and to be free authentically. Not a fabricated or conditional freedom that surfaces only at the behest of someone’s affirmation. I want people to be so free that their self-love is more than enough. I want people to wake up knowing the person staring back at them in the mirror is the person they’ve decided to be and not some person they’re forcing themselves to be for the sake of pleasing people or the chorus of culture.
Life is too precious and I pray people have a burning desire to live it unapologetically and unashamedly – breaking barriers and making the impossible possible, and the unimaginable tangible.
Contact Info:
- Website: billyjhawkains.com
- Instagram: @billyjhawkains, @the.iii.collective, @bodyvortex
- Facebook: @ Billy James Hawkains III
Image Credits
All dance photos by: Martin Kane, University Communications University of North Carolina at Greensboro Photos w/ green vest: captures from, ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,’ a solo work Photos w/ red lighting: captures inspired by my thesis, BY FIRE, a film exploring the holism and freedom of African spirituality Headshot by: Peter J. Brown II
