When I'm dancing, I don’t have to talk to people. I can show people how I’m feeling within my body. The same with media. I don’t have to show myself and I don’t really have to speak, I just have to tell a story through the lens. And honestly, the way I think about it, when I’m holding the camera a certain way, that’s a dance. I think everything dances, if you ask me.
Jayah Gomez, North Carolina Central University Class of 2024, and 2022 summer intern at the Nasher Museum
Jayah Gomez, a rising senior at North Carolina Central University, combined her interests in dance and video during her summer 2022 marketing internship at the Nasher Museum. She is pursuing a double major in mass communications and theater, with a minor in dance.
After four weeks helping the marketing team clean up transcripts for two podcast episodes, Jayah left for a four-week intensive dance school at the American Dance Festival. Many of her dance classes took place across the street from the museum at the Rubenstein Arts Center. She visited the Nasher Museum with other ADF students to watch the performance “Echoes: From Here,” a multidisciplinary collaboration between visual artist John Felix Arnold and dancers Michelle Dorrance and Byron Tittle of Dorrance Dance tap company.
Back at the Nasher Museum, Jayah’s biggest project was to create two reels for the museum’s Instagram feed. Her inspiration came from her own TikTok videos. She spent hours in the Great Hall, observing her surroundings: light and shadow, visitors, museum staff. She spent time looking closely at contemporary art on view in the galleries. Then she edited hundreds of small video clips into two lively reels.
Watch Jayah’s first and second Instagram reels for the Nasher Museum.
This internship was part of a joint Duke-NCCU program that started 16 years ago. Next year, the program will be officially known as the Charmaine McKissick-Melton Summer Fellowship, in recognition of “Dr. Mac,” the former chair of mass communications at NCCU, who retired from teaching in July.