When Ko-Thi Dance Company turned 50 in 2019, Ferne Yangyeitie Caulker thought it was a good time to pass the torch. She founded the troupe in 1969 to teach and perform dances from the African diaspora, and she spent decades staging concerts, collaborating with other cultural groups and educating thousands of young students.
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Then the pandemic hit. New leadership took over. Caulker stepped back in to guide the ship, and that’s when she realized she’ll never leave her life’s work. “Somebody whispered in my ear – one of [my] mentors – this is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life,” she says.
Now, Caulker has a new team and new plans. Instead of staging one major concert a season – drawing a large enough audience to make a big production viable is “almost impossible,” she says – Ko-Thi will spread out a full concert’s worth of material across three smaller shows in more informal settings. “Have dialogue with the audience,” Caulker says. “Have them see the process of building these dances, and why this dance is different from the next dance. … How can they appreciate the history of a culture if you don’t define it for them?”
Caulker’s also writing a memoir to let other founders of cultural institutions know they’re not alone. What drives her to continue all this teaching? When driving to a recent meeting, she found a djembe – a West African drum – thrown out on the street. Shocked that anyone wouldn’t know to not toss something so significant, she got out of her car and grabbed it. “That just kicked me forward. That just made me want to do more.”
