Lakeland youth step team helps preserve cultural tradition

LAKELAND, Fla. — You may have seen it — the perfectly timed stomps, the chants and hand claps.

But where did it all begin?

For centuries, stepping, a powerful ritual dance, has inspired generations, including the Lakeland-based step team Taken by Surprise.

The group of girls, ranging in age, practices stepping inside Sleepy Hill Middle School’s gym about four days a week. While winning competitions is the goal, the steppers say they gain so much more.

For 12th grader Aleyah Davis, it’s sisterhood.

“It got me out of my shell because I am shy,” Davis said.

Meanwhile, 11th grader Keyanah Colston says it’s a safe place to express herself.

“If anything is weighing on my mind, I feel like when we come here, it’s just an open space to do you,” Colston said.

Team sponsor Corey Tumer started Taken by Surprise 13 years ago to help build character in young people. As a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, he also wanted to expose them to Greek life — specifically historically Black fraternities and sororities known as the Divine Nine.

“And that gives them more exposure than just being home and the possibility to network with other students across the country and get that experience of what life would be like as a college student,” Tumer said.

Though stepping is widely used throughout Divine Nine culture, the art form didn’t originate there. Longtime dance instructor Andrida Hosey says stepping is rooted in African tradition.

“So a lot of things, like celebratory things like naming ceremonies, and wedding celebrations, and going out for war, we used movement and rhythm, especially the drums,” Hosey said. “But as we came over to America, we couldn’t use the drums as slaves. They started using their body as instruments, and the clapping and the rhythm, and their voices as instruments.”

She says those movements became a way to express feelings during a time when doing so was forbidden.

Today, stepping gives young people that same freedom of expression, something the girls of Taken by Surprise say they don’t take for granted.

Taken by Surprise will host a national step show this Saturday at Kathleen High School. Twenty teams from around the country will compete. Doors open at 2 p.m.