She had everybody’s respect: the musicians, the writers, the dancer/choreographers, like Bill Sommers,
Julian Priester, José Lorenzo, Ishmael Reed, Adrienne Rich, Jessica Hagedorn, Victor Cruz, Nashira,
Raymond Sawyer, Ed Mock, and me. Zake understood; she spoke all languages. For her, the body was
the link: the sacred temple from which the word, the sound, and the movement emerged as one, as the
Original Word must have been; as God herself must be, intact — not many, but one — never
compartmentalized or separate.
Zake heard about my dance classes, and one sweaty evening I saw this high-yella beauty slowly get bold
enough to work her way to the second line in the front. I took note because she had the beat and heard the
drums. I asked, “Who do we have here?” During post-class introductions we made plans to do lunch (well, in
the mid-70s it was “meet for lunch”), and as the cliché goes, the rest is history.
Many different personal and artistic evolutions have taken place because of that fateful Bay Area meeting.
She gave me my name in 1973, offering me an envelope with a piece of white paper with the words: “Halifu—
Swahili for the shooting arrow (which I further researched to mean “the rebellious child in the family”), and
Osumare—Yoruba for the deity of the rainbow. I remember her almost whispering as if it were some sacred
ritual, “You may keep it as a gift if you like.” I meditated on the name for a month before I even uttered the
words to myself. Then I knew Halifu Osumare was me. I had found my African name, through Zake, and now
over these 46 years I have grown into its meaning. Now, living in Hawai’i (I lived in the islands 1994-2000),
each time I see a rainbow appearing in the rainy tropical sky I think of Osumare and remember the first time I
saw the word on that piece of paper that Zake gave me many years ago.
Our relationship resulted in my choreographing and directing several Shange productions. There was
Spell #7 and Boogie Woogie Landscapes for the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco in the 1980s.
That same decade I directed and choreographed For Colored Girls for San Francisco State University’s
Drama Department, in which the students Dominique DiPrima (daughter of Amiri Baraka) and Hollywood
actress Gina Rivera performed. In 1981, Ed Mock, Elvia Marta, and I got on a plane together and spent one
of the most intense weeks of our careers with Zake in New York. Rehearsing day and night, by the end of the
week we were dancing at The Kitchen in New York’s Soho in her two-person play, Mouths, A Daughter’s
Geography, directed by Thulani Davis and choreographed by Diane McIntyre. She and the actor Richard
Lawson never slept, constantly trading lines back and forth as we tried to catch a few z’s, sleeping on pallets
on the floor, before our next dance rehearsal.
Then, four years later, there was the utterly surreal experience of my second time with Mouths, A
Daughter’s Geography, now renamed From Okra to Greens, A Different Kinda Love Story. I was sent by
Zake to direct and choreograph that play at, of all places, Ole Miss — The University of Mississippi. This
was the same university where in the mid-60s Governor Ross Barnett stood in front of the entrance to the
administration building to personally prevent, to no avail, James Meredith from being the first Black admitted
to that “august” institution. In 1985, Oxford, Mississippi, was trying to show how liberal it had become by
having a Ntozake Shange play as part of their university’s theater season. As it turned out, very few were
really ready, neither intellectually nor morally. I made it through this trying experience only because of several
middle-of-the-night calls to Zake and my husband at the time for moral support. Those support calls got me
through the intimidating environment of the Deep South, where Oxford still relished in an annual Ku Klux
Klan parade through the town.
Back in the Bay Area of the 70s, Zake kept up her dance classes. They were equally important to her as
writing at that time. She got one of her first dance experiences on stage in my school outreach production, The
Evolution of Black Dance, which also included Aisha Kahlil who is a member of the internationally touring
acapella singers Sweet Honey in the Rock. I also gave Zake one of her first acting experiences that demanded
movement. She performed in the short-lived Four Women: Images of the Black Women in Monologue, Poetry,
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african Voices