Supporting Our Legacy | Cultural Succession | A Message to the Next Generation
Cultural Succession: Receive It, Live It, Love It, Pass It On
A personal letter to Wiz Dancealot and his New Jersey dance team — and to every young artist learning how to receive a culture, add to it, and pass it forward.
By Basil Harris | Co-Founder & Publisher, Dance Mogul Magazine | August 2026
Basil Harris — Co-Founder & Publisher, Dance Mogul Magazine
My gift to you.
Some gifts are not wrapped. This one is a message — from an older man in this culture to a younger one, and to anyone willing to listen. Cultural succession is the quiet handoff that keeps a people whole: the passing of values, knowledge, creativity, memory, responsibility, and love from one generation to the next. I offer these words first to Wiz Dancealot and his New Jersey team, but the responsibility belongs to all of us: receive what has value, make it your own, and do not let it end with you.
The Handoff
This message begins with Wiz Dancealot (Wizdom), dance director of Team EVO, and his New Jersey dance team. But the lesson reaches beyond one crew: every generation receives something it did not create alone. The question is what we will understand, protect, transform, and eventually place into younger hands.
What We Leave Inside People
As I grow older, I think more about what we leave behind. Not just money. Not just photographs. Not just names, awards, accomplishments, or the things we collected along the way. I think about what we leave inside people.
The love someone taught us to have for ourselves. The respect we learned to have for others. The music that moved us. The art that opened our minds. The dances that gave our bodies a language when words were not enough. The people who corrected us, encouraged us, challenged us, made room for us, and sometimes sacrificed so we could have opportunities they never had.
That is cultural succession — the passing of values, knowledge, creativity, memory, responsibility, and love from one generation to the next.
I Do Not Want You to Become Us
Succession does not mean the next generation must become a copy of the one before it. Young people, I do not want you to become us. I want you to understand what came before you. Take the lessons that still have value. Learn from the mistakes we made. Honor the people whose shoulders helped lift you. Protect the history that deserves to be remembered.
Then add your own voice. Create something we could not create. Ask questions we never thought to ask. Take the culture into rooms we never entered. And when the time comes, leave something behind for the generation following you.
I do not want you to become us. I want you to understand what came before you — then add your own voice.
Wiz Dancealot (Wizdom) and Team EVO at Dance Warz, NJPAC — the next generation this message is written for | Photo: KINGSTONE ENT.
The Four Responsibilities
Receive It. Live It. Love It. Pass It On.
Cultural succession becomes real when it moves from an idea into the way we listen, live, value ourselves, and make room for someone coming behind us.
Receive It
Listen. Pay attention to the stories of the people who came before you. Learn where things came from and why they mattered. Someone’s ordinary memory today may become tomorrow’s history.
Live It
Culture is not something we only celebrate when the music comes on. It is how we treat people, how we carry ourselves, how we respond when no one is watching, and how we create opportunities for somebody besides ourselves.
Love It
Learn to love who you are without believing that loving yourself requires diminishing somebody else. Love your gifts, your imperfections, learning, the arts, and the people who genuinely pour into you.
Pass It On
Whatever knowledge, love, opportunity, encouragement, discipline, creativity, or wisdom someone gives you — do not let it end with you.
Teach somebody. Encourage somebody. Open a door. Tell the story. Preserve the photograph. Say the person’s name. Support the artist. Reach back for someone while you are still moving forward.
That is how culture survives. That is how families grow. That is how communities remember. That is how the arts continue to breathe.
We Are Temporary Custodians
I am an older man now, and I understand something differently than I did when I was young: we are all temporary custodians of something much bigger than ourselves. For a little while, the culture is placed in our hands. Our responsibility is to love it, protect it, contribute something worthy to it — and then place it into the hands of the next generation. Hopefully a little stronger than when we received it.
Receive it. Live it. Love it. Pass it on. That is cultural succession.
Know the Term — Cultural Succession
Cultural succession is the deliberate transfer of a community’s values, knowledge, creativity, memory, and responsibility from one generation to the next — not so the young become copies of the old, but so nothing of worth is lost in the handoff. In dance, it is how a step, a story, or a standard survives long enough to reach a stage no one has built yet.
The Next Generation
The Generation Receiving the Handoff
Wiz Dancealot and his team at Dance Warz at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. These forty frames are not separate from the message — they are the message made visible: young artists receiving a culture while already shaping what it can become next. Tap any image to view it full size and move through the complete sequence.
Photography by KINGSTONE ENT. · @rockwiththeking
Why Cultural Succession Lives at the Heart of Dance Mogul Magazine
Dance Mogul Magazine was built on this exact idea. It began in 2010 as a Black-owned, father-and-son dance publication — one generation handing the next a reason to document, protect, and celebrate the culture. The whole enterprise is cultural succession made visible: a father who used the arts to reach his own son, and a son who took the mission somewhere his father could not go alone.
That is why this publication treats a dancer’s story as more than entertainment. Through our Supporting Our Legacy work and The Legacy, we say the names of the people who built the culture so the record does not disappear. Across the Dance Styles Hub and our Exclusive Interviews, we hand younger artists the stories, standards, and shoulders they are standing on — from street dance in New Jersey to every stage the work has reached since.
Cultural succession is not a theme we cover. It is the reason the publication exists. Wiz Dancealot and his team are one chapter of it — young enough to still be handed the culture, and already skilled enough to hand it to someone else.
Reference & Reflection
Understanding Cultural Succession
A short reference section for readers who want to carry the idea beyond this letter.
What is cultural succession?
Cultural succession is the passing of values, knowledge, creativity, memory, responsibility, and love from one generation to the next. It is what we leave inside people rather than only what we leave to them — the respect, the music, the art, and the discipline that outlive us.
Does cultural succession mean the next generation must copy the last one?
No. Succession does not mean the young must become copies of the old. The goal is for younger artists to understand what came before, keep the lessons that still have value, learn from past mistakes, protect the history — and then add their own voice and take the culture into rooms the previous generation never entered.
How do you receive cultural succession?
You receive it by listening. Pay attention to the stories of the people who came before you, and learn where things came from and why they mattered. Someone’s ordinary memory today may become tomorrow’s history.
How do you live cultural succession?
You live it in conduct, not just celebration. Culture is how you treat people, how you carry yourself, how you respond when no one is watching, and how you create opportunities for somebody besides yourself — not only what you do when the music comes on.
How do you learn to love the culture and yourself within it?
Learn to love who you are without believing that loving yourself requires diminishing somebody else. Love your gifts, your imperfections, learning, and the arts — and learn enough of your history to understand that you did not arrive here by yourself.
How do you pass cultural succession on?
You refuse to let it end with you. Teach somebody, encourage somebody, open a door, tell the story, preserve the photograph, say the person’s name, support the artist, and reach back for someone while you are still moving forward. That is how culture survives and how communities remember.
Keep Exploring
Carry the culture forward with Dance Mogul Magazine. Visit Supporting Our Legacy and The Legacy to meet the artists who built the foundation, explore the Dance Styles Hub, or read our Exclusive Interviews for more conversations with the greats.
For a little while, the culture is placed in your hands. Love it. Protect it. Add something worthy to it. Then pass it on — hopefully a little stronger, a little wiser, and a little more open than when you received it.
Receive it.
Live it.
Love it.
Pass it on.
That is cultural succession.
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