On November 18th I performed along with Ngoma African Dance Company in the Celebration of Dance concert. Bringing together many different groups and styles of dancing this concert intended to build and celebrate dance in all of its forms. By including dances of Hispanic descent, African dance, hip-hop, traditional South Asian dances and many others the concert not only succeeded in showcasing talent but introduced many different cultures and traditions onto one stage.
For my specific performance, we performed Kuku, which is a traditional coming of age dance for youth in West Africa. The message of this dance intends to unite young adults as they all move into their next stage of life as adults. By dancing, we tried to replicate the group dynamic that is in the tradition itself throughout our performance. There were a few ways we tried to achieve this: firstly by interacting with each other throughout the performance whether that was by us talking, making small gestures, eye contact or depending on one another to know when our transitions were. This created a group dynamic that was very dependent on each other but encouraged us to work more closely with one another. In addition to simply dancing along with the other performers, there was an extra emphasis on group structure because we depended on the drums for cues rather than counts or a specific accent in the music. Working with the drummers brought the group even closer as we had to truly rely on each other to know what to do and when. Part of this reliance goes back to the nature of West African dancing and music. Our instructor taught us that in dancing to African music it is important that your movements follow the rhythm of the drums but in a way that seems natural and authentic. Although this was hard to envision, personally, because I was used to having choreographed movement, I came to understand his point.
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