Amid the stressful times of classes, academic events, extracurriculars and trying to balance time for mental health, many people look for a like-minded community to decompress and have fun with. For some Black dancers, that community is the Khaos Dance Team.
Khaos is a majorette-focused dance organization for anyone in the Black community, regardless of experience. The team was started in October 2023 to increase representation for a historically Black style of dance that did not have much previous representation at OU.
Kaylea Jackson, a sophomore studying hearing, speech and language pathology, is the president and founder of Khaos. She grew up learning cultural dances from historically Black colleges and universities and wanted to continue that education in Athens.
“I started Khaos Dance Team for people like me; especially when I was in the school of dance and there were all these different dance teams, but none of them looked like me or danced like me,” Jackson said.
Majorette comes from HBCU and is a combination of multiple dance styles, including hip-hop, ballet, jazz and traditional African dance techniques.
“For the majorette style of dance, we have different categories of dance,” Jackson said. “We have something called field show, creative dance, stand battle, walkthrough, HBCU, so there is a number of different categories when it comes to the majorette style of dance.”
Khaos creates a sense of community for Black dancers on a predominantly white campus. Jazz Mcghee, a freshman studying sociology-criminology and psychology, is the treasurer of Khaos and feels it provides her with strong bonds and people she can relate to.
“Overall it is a sisterhood for Black girls to come together and to engage in Black culture, get better at dancing, and laugh, and destress from school,” Mcghee said.
Khaos is an incredibly important organization for the dancers; it provides a safe space where they can embrace their culture while working hard and making friendships.
“I'll come in and I'll see these girls and we definitely goof off a bit, but then when it comes down to dancing, we really get down, we get strict and we're able to go and learn a sometimes challenging form of dance,” Mcghee said.
The Khaos dancers are committed to perfecting their craft and practice Tuesdays and Thursdays for around two hours at a time. The number they are currently working on is a creative routine, and it is around four to five minutes long with a remix of songs.
The dancers are preparing for a few upcoming performances; on March 30 they are performing at the Divine Feline Festival and on Mom’s Weekend they will be performing at a Black Barbie event.
Khaos is more than just a dance team, it is a representation of Black culture and an empowering space where anyone is welcome. Jackson has been dancing majorette for 14 years and it holds a significant place in her community where Black dancers learned to embrace their culture from an early age. Jackson worked to bring that same sense of community to dancers in Athens and spread the majorette style of dance through Khaos Dance Team.
“The fact that I could bring (majorette) here to Ohio University, (and) spread a little bit more diversity, I think that was my main goal,” Jackson said.
