Charlotte educator creates, tells stories through her own dance company

When Elsie Mufuka was a 6-year-old in Gardens Corner, S.C., her dad asked what she wanted to do when she grew up.

“I want to use dance to change the world,” she recalls saying.

Mufuka, 34, is achieving that goal, said Wanda Ebright, one of her former professors at Coker University who is now at Winthrop University. “Elsie is a strong example of what I try to do as a dance educator — create students who find a voice and a means of changing the world through their art form.”

Mufuka didn’t just find a voice, she created a new style of dance. She calls it Afro Russe, and it’s a fusion of Zimbabwean and contemporary dance and ballet. Zimbabwean dance is all about the feet, which remain more earthbound than in other styles. Dancers wear jeweled anklets to emphasize their footwork.

She began telling stories through dance when she joined Ntosana Contemporary Dance Theatre in Johannesburg right out of college. The company creates dances that tell sociopolitical stories.

“I only tell what I know,” said the founder of Charlotte’s MufukaWorks Dance Company, which she established 10 years ago while working toward a master’s in arts administration at Winthrop.

Finding inspiration

Mufuka’s parents are from Zimbabwe – a historically matriarchal society. She spent childhood summers there – a world away from Beaufort, South Carolina, where she spent the school year. “I was one of two Black students in an otherwise all-white school. The other was my brother.”

Dance was an unlikely path. “My dad is an accountant, and my mom’s a nurse,” she said. “My interest in dance was foreign to them.” Yet they fully supported it. “They were happy to pay for lessons – as long as I took dance seriously.”

The dream began to take shape when Mufuka met Ebright at Coker. “She was the first person to tell me I could have a dance career, even with my curves,” she said.

“A teacher once told me dance would be a challenge for me,” Mufuka said. “I felt double discrimination because I’m Black and curvy. Now, I tell all the young girls I teach: ‘Don’t let anyone tell you cannot do something.’”

“I’m a curvy, black woman,” Ebright said. “Some students may be taken aback at first to see a dance teacher who looks like me. But the work of dance is colorless. It’s what you do in the studio that matters.”

Telling her story

Like her college mentor, Mufuka became a dance educator. She teaches in her studio and in public schools, where she’s racked up a number of awards. She’ll move from Union County schools to Charlotte-Mecklenburg this fall, when she begins teaching at McClintock Middle School. She’ll also hold virtual open auditions for her next MufukaWorks classes for kids 8 and up on Sept. 14.

Mufuka shares her 5-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old “bonus baby” with Derrick Nixon, Sr., whom she calls “the love of my life.”

Dancing is her other great love. “Dancing allows me to tell my story without crying,” she said. One such story – a dance/spoken word piece called “Who I Am” – is the story of being raped.

“Rape stripped something from me,” she said. “I wasn’t able to have relationships for a while after it. I overworked myself to cope – 10 hours a day. I’m glad I had dance. That’s how I began the healing process.”

“I used to blame myself,” she said. “But the way I walk through life now (shows) I’m not broken. I’m a survivor.”

“What impresses me most about ‘Who I Am,’” said Ebright, “is that it doesn’t exploit the experience. Elsie created a sense of community between what’s happening on stage and the audience. As a rape survivor myself, I felt part of that community. It’s a difficult thing to pull off.”

She quickly added, “Elsie is equally capable of producing work that’s fun and light.” Not every story, after all, makes you cry.

Thinking differently

Mufuka’s life, like everyone’s, looks different now. Her company performed its first live performance since COVID-19 hit on Juneteenth in front of The House of Africa in Plaza Midwood.

Her dad, still her “most trusted advisor,” told her the pandemic was “just an opportunity to think differently.”

He was right. “Now, I have Zoom students from all over the world,” she said. “And I’m doing virtual performances on Instagram. A ticket to a live performance of mine in Charlotte might cost $15. On Instagram, people pay what they want, and some are paying $100 and $200 for each performance.”

“My dad always told me: Every challenge is a lesson,” she said. And every challenge puts you closer to your dream.

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This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 4:22 PM.