Sophomore Danley finds freedom of expression

Sophomore forward Steve Danley has been working on his slams.

Although he stands 6-foot-9 and has the ability to dunk, it is not this type of slam with which he occupies himself. Instead, Danley has broadened his horizons and has become active in another extracurricular organization that employs this vocabulary, Penn's spoken word poetry group The Excelano Project.

A "slam," in the context of spoken word poetry, is the actual event at which members of various groups perform their pieces and compete against one another.

As the only group of its kind on Penn's campus, The Excelano Project has attracted a diverse collection of students, including the aforementioned Danley and his teammate Ibby Jaaber, who enjoy expressing their feelings and opinions through hip-hop-influenced performance poetry.

With basketball consuming most of their lives, many of Penn's basketball players have only been able to participate in periodical activities such as the Big Brother program, as opposed to becoming involved with performing arts groups that usually require larger time commitments.

"It's really easy to get caught up in just going to school, going to practice and sleeping all of the time," Danley said. "But you really need more than that."

Because The Excelano Project is unique in that it is based on individual performances, Danley and Jaaber have been able to fit their writing into their busy schedules and have gotten the chance to express their opinions in a creative forum.

Participating in The Excelano Project has brought out a side in Danley that had not emerged until he arrived at Penn. He had only written one poem before his freshman year and did not even expect to find the opportunities Excelano has since offered him when he committed to the Red and Blue.

After learning about the group at a Kelly Writers House open mike night, Danley went to tryouts and was soon accepted as a member of the spoken word community, which, needless to say, is remarkably different from the normal crowd at a basketball game.

Danley, whose tall stature immediately identifies him as a basketball player, enjoys escaping from his usual identity.

"If I can make people think outside the box on campus, I love that," Danley said. "Any time I can make someone step outside their conception of me, I find that exciting."

Being involved in such different activities can be accounted for by Danley's desire to escape, occasionally, the competitiveness that consumes his basketball career.

"The two things do something very different for me," Danley admitted. "It's a really different feeling going into a game, getting fired up and going crazy, as opposed to a performance, where you're trying to tell someone something."

Although Danley sees spoken word primarily as a vehicle of expression, a competitive element does exist in the slams. After performing a piece, a poet is judged by random audience members on a scale of one to 10.

This standard for judging performances has made way for a national spoken word competitions to arise in Berkeley, Calif., Last year, Penn placed fourth overall, making it the highest ranked group on the East Coast.

Despite Excelano's success, Danley still does not see himself as a major player in the competitive aspect of the performance.

"I've never been much of a slam guy," Danley said. "Part of that is just because I get so much of the competitiveness out of me with basketball, and part of it is that I really see poetry as more of an expression."

While personal expression and athletics seem to contrast each other, Danley has still found places where the two intersect.

Most of Danley's pieces involve topics that affect him in his daily life, namely political and philosophical issues. However, he has been unable to ignore the huge role basketball plays in his life and has been inspired to create intricate basketball situations and shape them into performance pieces.

These specific poems will probably not be a part of The Excelano Project's next performance, but do serve their own unique purpose for Danley, Jaaber and their teammates.

One instance of spoken word having a direct impact on basketball occurred this summer, as Danley found himself struggling to motivate himself to get to the gym and work on his game.

To remedy the situation, he wrote up a piece about basketball and recited it as a spoken word performance on Jaaber's voicemail.

A short while later, he got a call from Jaaber, who said, "I'm in the gym now because of your piece."

Through that simple exchange, Danley accomplished what he always seeks to do in his performances, which is to make the audience come away thinking about and understanding his opinions.

Jaaber, whose similar interest in spoken word inspired him to become a member of Excelano earlier this year, is not the only person to take something from Danley's poetry.

Last year, he and Danley would read each other's pieces in the dorm, locker room and while traveling to games, which caused some of the other players to become interested and even take a shot at writing their own pieces.

Danley sees this contagiousness, which is perpetuated by the players leaving spoken-word voicemails to each other, as a means of bonding together any group, not just a basketball team.

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