This week’s episode of Black Enough, “#BlackGirlMagicPotion,” explored the relationship between dance, religion and/or spirituality, and magic. The magic of Black girlhood, we see in this episode, lies in your daydreams, in your deepest desires, in what your core essence is made of. And for Amaya, the expression of her very essence is dance.

This is made clear from the beginning of the episode, when a blaring alarm abruptly interrupts Amaya’s otherwise peaceful dream in which she dances alone in a studio. The interiority we see with Amaya is matched by a few shots of 16 mm film featuring a figure playing in substances that we might understand as physical manifestations of Black Girl Magic. The 16 mm scene provides an autobiographical, personal touch that is complemented by the vulnerability of the interview that overlays it.

The Amaya’s narrative then moves forward to her dorm room, where a conversation with Lena is put on pause by a knock on the door. Vaughn, the president of the BSU, and, Amaya’s BSU “Big Sis,” is there, encouraging Amaya to join the BSU. The scene cuts to a hilarious and cringe-worthy sequence of Amaya’s attempts at engaging in the representations of Blackness that she has seen throughout her life. She wriggles around her room, trying to milly rock, and trying out backwards baseball caps, before stumbling over saying “my nigga.” We feel her discomfort and our heart goes out to Amaya when she goes into evasive maneuvers to avoid the invitation.

But she does, in fact, have somewhere to be: church.

Although Amaya seems to understand, at least to some extent, that dancing constitutes the basis for her personal brand of magic, there is still some fracturing of identity that occurs. The religious part of her, the exterior, the diegetic narrative (or the narrative we follow in the storyworld of Black Enough), is depicted through the digital film. It is clear and bright, but we also know that there’s something deeper. This is when Amaya’s “spiritual practice,” her dancing, her rich inner life, begins to infiltrate the image of self that she puts forth to the world while she’s attending church.

She does what one is supposed to do to feel close to God: she goes to church, she prays, she reads her Bible. She’s religious in those moments, following a set of practices that inform her worship. However, when she’s dancing, she is more spiritual–it is the purest form of religiosity in some ways, more freeing. Her particular spirituality is an expression of her religious nature. This, dancing, is how she shows God she loves Him and how God is working through her. Dancing thus becomes a spiritual practice in that it is less about rules and guidelines and more about connectedness, more about feeling.

Circling back to Black Girl Magic and the potion Amaya is concocting on her mirror, I believe it is safe to say, though she likely does not include it on her list, that dancing is one of the ingredients in her potion. Part of the magic for some Black girls is this feeling of infiniteness when you know God loves you. As Elder Ntozake Shange once said, “I found God in myself and I loved her fiercely.”

There’s a spirituality surrounding Black Girl Magic, which I love to think about because it further points to its uniqueness. Everyone’s brand of Black Girl Magic Potion is tailor made to their specifications and unified only by the fact that we all have a bottle, no matter how different the contents. Religion sometimes implies that rules and order regulates worship–spirituality can be the freedom of expression of what you believe, the freedom to dictate and design your own love, in the same way that you brew your own personal brand of Black Girl Magic Potion. So for Amaya, dancing is the purest expression of her spirituality, and by extension, her magic.

Further Reading:

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange

Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, Ntozake Shange

Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture, Tamura Lomax