It was a storybook ending.
For months, Stephen Kertis had been working with a group of aspiring filmmakers on a documentary about dance culture in Louisville’s Smoketown neighborhood. After weeks of videography classes and filming interviews, Kertis and the young filmmakers needed to truly illustrate how dance could bring together a community.
“We knew what we were really missing were really powerful images of people doing what we were talking about,” said Kertis, a former producer for PBS.
So they rounded up a few dancers from the local urban dance crew known as Str8 Legit, some of whom were part of the film class, and headed out to the Sheppard Square housing project. The plan was to film the dancers doing their thing against a raw urban backdrop. They hoped a few kids from the neighborhood would hear the music and join in.
But as the beat of hip-hop tracks began to pulsate through the air, the camera crew was soon surrounded by not a few, but dozens, possibly hundreds, of people of all ages from around the neighborhood. Little girls came out to twist and turn their tiny hips. Teenage girls, fresh from getting their hair done, danced so hard they shook the rollers from their heads. Boys did beautiful back bends that could inspire awe in ballerinas. And even some parents had moves to offer, trying to show the young folks how it was done in their day.
Local photographer Rachel Seed was invited by Kertis to be there that evening, and she captured images that speak for themselves.
But behind the photographs there is another story waiting to be told — the story of Marcellus Love, the young man who founded the Str8 Legit dance crew.
Love will quickly tell anyone that dance changed his life, starting with his days as a member of the dance team at Atherton High School. Love said his dance coach’s strict rules taught him “responsibility and dedication, commitment and taking your passion and running with it and not looking back.”
Love did exactly that. In 2005, he started Str8 Legit through the Presbyterian Community Center, where Love works as a youth coordinator. With members ranging in age from 8 to 25, the group regularly performs in local dance competitions, concerts and many other events in the area.
“When you’re dancing, that’s your soul speaking,” Love said.
Dancers like 18-year-old Angelique Shelton said Str8 Legit taught her how to get along with people from all walks of life.
“I’m learning to work with different people,” she said. “I’m growing.”
Dontrace Whaley, 20, was caught up in street violence and had dropped out of school. After he decided to go back and get his diploma, it was Str8 Legit that helped keep him on track.
“It’s keeping me out of the streets and it’s got my mind on a different level than where it used to be,” he said. “When I went back to school, I just kept doing Str8 Legit stuff and it just took my mind off of the violence and the drugs.”
Though he’s only 20, Love is seen as a leader in Smoketown, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, in part because of the work he’s done with Str8 Legit. But Love, a former resident of Sheppard Square, said it’s been through a new local program called ChangeMakers that he’s begun to realize the difference he can really make.
Focusing on career development, civic leadership, mentoring and academic enrichment, ChangeMakers is designed to help people ages 17 to 24 make a positive impact on their communities. Love jumped at the opportunity to be a part of the program, which is also connected to the Presbyterian Community Center.
ChangeMakers led Love to Kertis’ filmmaking class. Knowing they didn’t want to focus on cliché topics like drugs and gun violence, the film class decided to make a film about something positive in the Smoketown community — dance.
On that Friday evening when droves of Sheppard Square residents showed up to show off their moves, they also showed Love just how powerful and peaceful dance can be. There was no fighting, no arguing, no chaos. Just neighbors laughing and dancing until nightfall.
Love said he’s seen plenty of impromptu dance battles break out at block parties and family cookouts. But this was different, and not just because so many people came out that day.
“When I seen everybody starting to come out, I wasn’t that surprised, because I know you turn on music and black people gonna get it cracking,” Love said with a laugh. “But it was just really surprising to see the support that was there.”
Residents came outside, saw the cameras and wanted to help tell the story.
“When I seen all those people out there that day,” Love said, “the feeling that I got was, don’t take your dancing for granted, because this is how many lives you can change.”
