DanceAfrica celebrates the African Rainforest
The uniquely dynamic communal dance event that is DanceAfrica brings its annual celebration of African diasporic culture to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) from May 24–27, with a program built around a theme that both celebrates the present and reaffirms the group’s commitment to the future of the global community.
“Every year, we embrace the diversity of the African continent,” said Artistic Director Abdel R. Salaam. “Since 1977, when Baba Chuck Davis founded DanceAfrica, the event has featured a coming together of the communities of the African diaspora.”
Since Salaam has headed the annual cultural phenomenon, it has featured dance companies from Senegal, Guinea, South Africa, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. “We’ve also honored the African American dance companies that joined Baba Chuck Davis when he launched Dance Africa here at BAM in 1977,” Salaam added, highlighting the celebration’s commitment to programs that are both entertaining and engaged with major local and global issues.
“This year, the title of our program is ‘Cameroon: The Origin of Communities/ A Calabash of Culture.’”
Salaam said DanceAfrica is excited to welcome Sirens: Protectors of the Rainforest, a community-based Brooklyn dance ensemble, led by Cameroon-born Mafor Mambo Tse, as well as the percussion ensemble Women of the Calabash, which was founded by ancestor Madeline Yayodele Nelson and is now headed by Caren Calder.
The Women of the Calabash musical ensemble is known for its mastery of such percussion instruments as the Shekere, djembe, and mbira, as well as the calabash, and the creation of complex multilayered polyphonic rhythms that make anyone within earshot want to get up and dance.
Also on this year’s program are the DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers and the talented young artists of tomorrow who comprise the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble.
As DanceAfrica devotees know, the annual festival, established by Baba Chuck Davis back in the 1970s, also features a total immersion in African culture that includes dance classes and more, affording the whole family a fun-filled exploration of the fundamentals of African dance. This year, classes will focus on Cameroonian dance. There will also be film screenings, an art installation, the DanceAfrica bazaar, and much more.
With the ultimate goal of highlighting the interconnectedness of dance, music, and the ancient foundations of human culture, DanceAfrica 2024 is focused on the exploration of Cameroonian cultural practices and the Rainforest. “Protecting the Rainforest is important to protecting our global environment,” Salaam said. “The Rainforest is the breath of life for the planet.”
Tse, head of Sirens: Protectors of the Rainforest, a performance group that started in 2008, couldn’t agree more. “We use our African dance and music as a siren call, an alarm, to alert people to what’s happening in what we call the Congo Forest. It is endangered. And when I say the Congo Forest, I’m not talking about the country [of] Congo. I’m talking about the Rainforest that starts from Nigeria through Equatorial Guinea and goes all the way down to Angola…Protecting it is something that’s been part of our dance company’s work since the beginning. That’s why we call ourselves Sirens: Protectors of the Rainforest. Our main goal is to sound an alarm—a siren call for the environment.”
The rainforest is not just important to her people who, said Tse, traveled throughout Africa before settling in Cameroon many, many years ago at what she calls “the mouth of the forest.” It is equally important to all life on the planet because the rainforest is “the lungs of the earth.” Today, its well-being is even more important. “Protecting it has been our main goal from the beginning, but now countries are pilfering and killing the trees, animals, and people. They are also endangered. That’s why we call ourselves what we call ourselves.”
Tse also described the ethnic diversity of Cameroon, which she said is known as “Africa in Miniature” because “everything you find on the African continent, you find in Cameroon.” That creates a diversity in the dances and dancers that allows them to perform any style.
As Tes explained, traditionally there are two main ethnic groups in Cameroon. “I am an Ewondo woman, and we are one of a few ethnic groups that have played a large part in shaping the national Cameroonian culture,” she said. Nonetheless, she wants DanceAfrica audiences to experience as much of the variety of Cameroon as possible and to come away with, in addition to a foot-stomping, hand-clapping enjoyment of the drumming and the dance, a glimpse of Cameroonian culture. “I want people to enjoy the music and the dance as we perform works like the one whose name translates to ‘My Feet are the Drum,’ which draws from ancestral spirits, because we can’t do a performance without honoring the forest, and this is our way of allowing people to see the gods of the forest.”
Salaam said the message articulated by Tse will be underscored by the DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers as they do a dance Salaam choreographed entitled “Rain Forest: Streams and Reflections.” It will feature the usual physicality that audiences have come to expect.
Salaam said the stage design will capture the ambiance of ecological phenomena that he and a small team of BAM staffers encountered in the fall of 2023 during a trip to Cameroon, allowing the audience to experience something closely resembling the awe he felt in that visit and encountered what he calls “a life-changing experience.”
For more info, visit www.bam.org/danceafrica.
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