African dance has always been and will always be at the forefront of every new style. If you want to understand the culture, study the dance. If you want to understand the dance, study the people.
Rhythm is the soul of our lives. The beats and the vibrations that keep us connected to one time, one sound, one place. And that place is Africa. The African evolution in the Western Hemisphere has been a powerful journey. Our culture, our religion, our music, and our art continues to transform the world.
This is the evolution of African dance. My name is Richard Lawson and I'm the co-artistic director of the Waco Theatre Center. And I'm Tina Knowles Lawson, co-artistic director of Waco Theatre Center. and we are honored to present to you the first installment of the evolution of African dance. The evolution of African dance takes us through the origins of dance in Africa and the influence that it's had throughout history and around the world.
The cultural prominence throughout the African diaspora has had a tremendous impact on Western culture, especially in the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean. Our journey will connect the evolution of African dance to the world. to contemporary dance, from break dancing and its origins, and the power of dance in the TikTok era. This initial installment of the evolution of African dance will provide an in-depth overview of key points in the genre's development. As we tell the story of capoeira from Angola and the Congo.
To the Adowa dance from Ghana. And the Yankadi from Burkina Faso. Each dance has its roots in ancient times, but you will quickly notice that their rhythms and footwork are still used today.
We begin on the west coast of Africa. Where we learn of the importance of music and the movement of the people for their survival. Drum not only creates rhythm, it is created out of rhythm.
That the shape of the drum is in celebration of the birth canal. The idea that the heartbeat becomes the skin and that sound is born. The idea that the shape of a djembe represents the male and female phallic symbols, right? So there's that togetherness, there's that continuation. In hip-hop, what do we talk about?
James bounding the drum. DJs are nothing but drummers. But instead of playing an actual drum, they play a different type of steel or electric drum. When you see DJs and they're going cutting back and forth and they're scratching, that's the drums. You're doing the exact same motion.
You're doing the exact same thing. You don't even realize that's what you're doing. And so it's important to, as they say in Sankofa, to go back and get it.
to go back and look at here is the root of who we were and are as a people to understand how we got here to understand the depths of our legacy to understand why these dance movements are important to understand why this music is important Africa and dance are synonymous and certain dance forms stand out in the history of dance from Africa because of their enduring legacy, namely the Adowa in Ghana, Kapoweta in Angola and the Congo, and the Yankete in Burkina Faso. When you look at dances like the Yankete, you look at dances like the Adowa, you are looking at the legacy and the heritage, not just the history, but the heritage. These are two different things. You look at the history and the genealogy of who we are, who our ancestors were, what made them artists. I am Thaddeus Fozzo.
I was born in Cameroon, located on the west coast of Africa. I am a dancer, choreographer, musician. Let's just say I'm an artist. I'm a multidimensional artist. Dance is the first thing I mastered.
I came to represent my country and the whole of Africa during the soccer World Cup in 1994. I came here with the National Ballet of Cameroon. And I'm a teacher. and just faculty member at the Grand Dance Academy. Five, six, seven, go. One, two, three.
Ladies. One, two, three. And roll.
One, two, three, and four. And give back. Say, uh-uh, uh-uh. But dance is really valuable to humanity.
Why? Because dance is the easiest path from one human being to another. It's the easiest path between two human beings. Dance brings people together. That's the purpose of dance.
Like music, like drumming, African drumming, the celebration of life on earth. That's what dance is about. Celebration, bringing people together. My name is Lula Washington. I am the artistic director and co-founder of Lula Washington Dance Center.
I gave him a job when he first came to my studio. I don't know what year that was, but I have a practice of wanting to have my students be exposed to various different dance styles and techniques. I'm so glad that he is still doing his art and still being creative and still sharing his his love of and passion for dance.
Titus, our most amazing teacher Titus Foetso who's a phenomenal dancer oh my gosh one of the most electrifying performers I've ever seen in my life and it doesn't matter if it's on a stage for 10,000 people or if he's teaching five-year-old early birds at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy that man is magic. He is the essence of rhythm and soul and passion and musicality and strength but also kindness and you know he is just incredible and he really Again, gave us that encouragement to understand that as we take our tap journey, the African base and roots are always within us and are part of what we do and how we feel everything that we move and do. My name is Jade Solomon Curtis.
I am a dance artist, choreographer, and curator. I have a non-profit by the name of Solo Magic, which activism is the muse. In terms of African dance, I think that it has really...
served as a catalyst in making me appreciate all of the good things that are part of who I am as a black woman my hips my butt um and then also connecting that to the trends, right, that are happening in the Instagrams and the TikToks and how everybody is trying to be Black. Everybody is trying to be what I was told I shouldn't be. So it's, it's, it there, it's connecting me back to, again, my ancestral roots. Coming from this time period to this time period to this time period, right, gives us a deeper sense of self.
Again, recognizing our past and our present and understanding that can give us some direction of what we might be doing in the future. Dundumba, what is Dundumba? Dundumba is a strongman dance. He is from West Africa, in particular two regions, Guinea and Burkina Faso. It used to be an exclusive dance just for men.
Nowadays it's inclusive. Men, women, children, we all dance Dumb Dumba. Dumb Dumba is one of the progeny of breakdance. It's really acrobatic.
You have the Women's Pyramid and all the groundwork that you see in breakdance. Yeah, that's Dumb Dumba. This world is full of wealth.
No one can take it away from us. As early as the 1500s, slave ships traveled across the Atlantic, bringing Africans to areas like Brazil, the Caribbean, and eventually the east coast of the United States. The enslaved Africans would bring their culture with them, changing the world. The transatlantic slave trade existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. It involved the unwilling transportation by European slave traders of over 12 million people from various countries, primarily from Western Africa to the Middle East.
the Americas. And these enslaved people brought with them their hopes, their dreams, their fears and talents from their home countries. And we as a people are the descendants of their rich multi-layered experiences.
Through the horrors of slavery, we persevered through our spirituality, adaptability, intelligence, and connection to our ancestral roots. We kept the rhythms of Africa within us, and it kept us alive. The movement of the capoeira developed in Brazil and Martinique. The Adoa transitioned to Trinidad.
And the Yankadie evolved in the Gullah Islands of the southeastern coast of the United States, eventually becoming the Charleston. And our ingenuity and adaptability led us to become innovators in tap dancing. In 1549, the city of Salvador, Brazil was the first slave port in the Americas where many enslaved people were brought from Angola to work in the fields to harvest sugar cane. They brought with them the art form that came to be known as capoeira, which means tall grass.
because the enslaved people who performed this martial art would escape to hide in the tall grass to practice it. When you look at the movement of capoeira, it has been likened to or said to have possibly come from the zebra dance in Africa as well as the ostrich dance that comes from the people of the San in what is now the Republic of the Congo. African traditional dance is the foundation of martial art you can see in capoeira. You know, in Brazil.
When slavery was abolished in Brazil in the 1880s, the government feared that people would join forces and use capoeira to revolt against the government, and as a result, the government banned it. And they would jail anyone they caught practicing it. To keep the Afro-Brazilian martial arts tradition alive, they presented it as a folk dance, and so, therefore, harmless. The ban on it was finally lifted in 1932. And it's currently practiced all over the world. And it led to what we now know as breaking and other dance forms and martial arts such as mixed martial arts or MMA.
One of the things you cannot do is you can't drop culture. Culture is within you. And the idea that you can take that from somebody is incorrect. We recreate whatever is within us culturally wherever we go.
We've probably all heard of the trauma. dance but many people don't know that its origins stem from the people of Burkina Faso who ended up on the Gullah Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. Originally called the Yankety it made its way to South Carolina but but it wasn't given the name Charleston until it traveled to New York. To look at the Adowa, it's a lot of different movements, but there are two movements in particular that we can look at and see their survival in the Americas.
There's no name for those specific movements because the Adowa is in totality all the movements that you do in it. Two movements that survived was a progressive movement where you're walking forward and it's sometimes at a particular pace so you're rolling from through the arch, you're rolling from the heel through the arch. the foot into the toe and you do it pretty progressively and sometimes you would hook one foot behind the other so you have kind of like walk with the right walk with the left hook behind with the right and kind of keep that rhythm going and the other one was a more side to side that thrusts from the hips but uses the feet to move laterally, right? So you kind of have a sort of snaking rhythm to it and movement to it.
That movement in America is really related to the eccentric period in the jazz era, jazz time, and it was popularized by Earl Snake Hip Tucker. And again, you have that sort of snaking motion that really emanates from the hips and explodes out through the rest of the body. And then you have the progressive movement that is, think of one leg being bent and the other leg being straight. And you sort of walk and shift your weight from one side to the other. Again, walking through the heel, through the arch of the foot, into the toe, and then switching to the other side.
During the 1800s, this was known as the camel walk. And the camel walk pretty much kept that name throughout, actually all the way up until the 1800s. People were still calling it the Camel Walk, but you can see different versions of that happening in the late 1800s with a gentleman named Joe Rostis, who was part of a theater show called The Passing Show. And in this performance, he would do the Camel Walk. Now, we have footage that Thomas Edison shot in 1894, which shows Joe Rostis, Danny Tel Aviv, and Walter Wilkins.
three men who were in the passing show. The name of the piece was called Picaninnies, but that's a conversation for another time. And Joe Rastis in this clip can be seen doing the camel walk catacorner across the screen.
And so that movement continued on into the 20th century. And it was very popular with Ma Rainey's song in 1924 called CC Rider. This song was later remade by Chuck Willis in the 50s. And they they sort of changed the name of the Camel Walk to now the Camel Walk Stroll. And this was the popular dance that young African-Americans did.
They kind of called it a basement party. This is when you would have a blue light or a red light on you in your basement, and you line up linearly where women are on one side, men are on the other side, and you meet up with your partner and you stroll down the line. This popularity of the dance was so heightened, but there was was no song to go with this step.
So what happened, Dick Clark. Knew some musicians, knew some writers, and got the idea. Everyone does this song to Chuck Willis'remake of Ma Rainey's song, C.C.
Ryder. But now it's spelled C.C. Ryder.
But Dick Clark realized there's no song to go with this dance they're calling the Camel Walk Stroll. And so he had some writers come up with a song. They gave it to a Toronto group called The Diamonds, and they made the song The Stroll.
And in 1958 it aired on television as The Stroll. Not quite done the same way African-Americans did it, but the white community had now picked up the dance and they were doing it, but it still maintained its name, The Camel Walk or The Camel Walk Stroll. It's very crucial in my opinion for every community to have a cultural arts place, a place where art can live.
A place where art can speak to our youth and our individuals and our city officials and a place that's positive, a place that gives people a voice. During the 1600s, to sort of cultivate community, enslaved Africans would do what we now call a ring shout. It moved counterclockwise and Because of the Catholic Church rule against dancing and crossing, lifting your leg and crossing your feet was supposed to be seen as dancing and you would get in trouble with that. The idea was that the Africans would do sort of a shuffle and not cross their feet so the dancers were more flat-footed and just low stepping if you will and now they're moving counterclockwise and they're creating songs that speak to their agrarian practices so If we're talking about peeling potatoes or picking cotton, you might find those types of lyrics in the songs.
They are also adding words to European hymns, which ultimately goes on to create Negro spirituals, or what we called Negro spirituals at the time, now we refer to as gospel or spirituals. During the ring shout, everyone is traveling counterclockwise, and they're traveling counterclockwise for a very particular reason, because this is related to Yoruba traditions, which is A spiritual practice found in Africa is one of the largest ones found in the continent. And this came to the southern islands and then ultimately came to America. You can make a connection to that and the spiritual nature of dances done throughout African American communities.
So even in the jazz era, you would have a circle and the best dancer goes into the center. right and everybody's watching him so everybody on the perimeter they are a part of the cyclical energy that is happening they are feeding into the center while the center is feeding them that person in the center becomes the person that's sort of at the crossroads and this is the space where one would feel that spiritual energy can come into the existence of that person so it's no longer just that person dancing they are now connected with their ancestors When we think about the relationship between this and the church, and the black church, and again, this is a practice connected to Yoruba tradition. So, in the black church, we might have language like, you've been touched by the Holy Spirit, right?
You caught the Holy Ghost, or you're speaking in tongues. In the dance practice, in our modern day dance practice of hip-hop, you might, depending on where you are, you might hear language like, oh, you blacked out, you went dumb, you went off. It is that space where one is so swept up in the energy of that circle that another spiritual energy takes over.
They allow themselves to be a vessel for a new energy to come in. And that could be their own ancestor, that could be a different ancestor, but there is something about the nature of that circle that is still in relationship to a ring shout. The consistency of doing that, the importance of doing that is just as important as the black church in African American communities.
So there is that continuum of practice that still exists and you may not fully understand why you're doing it. When you talk about the black church and you look at the, say the usher board or the senior choir, they are adorned in all white. And they will come down the center aisle and what are they doing?
They are shuffling side to side. They're not picking the feet up, they got a nice slow tempo. And now they're doing a ring shot but they're doing it linearly. So we're out of the circle and we're in a line formation but we're still doing the same movement.
Tap dance, like jazz music, is an African-American art form and its history is so parallel to the history of African-Americans in America. And why it's so important is because it paved the way for all black entertainers now, whether you're an actor, a singer, or a dancer. without tap dancers paving the way.
Tap dancers like Bilbo Jangles Robinson and Jenny Ligon, who defied the odds and who broke the status quo and who refused to perform in blackface and who refused to perform for segregated audiences. These are the people that changed the future for artists like us. During the transatlantic slave trade or the middle passage, there was a Irish sea captain by the name of I know it's going to sound funny, by the name of Captain Cook.
And when his men would go out on long voyages, he got the idea that they should do the Irish hornpipe. Once he entered into the slave trade, it was his suggestion to have the Africans who were in chains to come aboard and jump around. Now, this got known as Dance de Negros. And this basically meant dance the blacks. And but they weren't necessarily dancing.
They were under the cat 9 whip and they're in shackles and the shackles are cutting into their legs. So you're probably not dancing. You're in a lot of pain, but they're just shuffling around and you don't have movement because of the change.
But this was a practice that was done often to help. keep the cargo, as it will, in shape. We oftentimes hear people utilizing tap dance as synonymous with, like, selling out or minstrelsy, and it has become this negative stereotype, when, in fact, tap dancers were really the freedom fighters of the arts in a time when Black people didn't have a voice.
And, you know, we talk about Bilbo Jangles Robinson. He was the first millionaire entertainer of the time. And Jenny Ligon was the first woman to have a deal with a major motion picture studio.
Black women. Black women. And these were tap dancers.
And so I think it's important that we magnify that history and celebrate that history. Absolutely. And when I think about dance, okay, and I think about our culture, it is just past time.
It's beyond time for us to celebrate tap dance, as Maude said, as part of the revolution, as part of activism. and understand that the grounds that were paved for us because of tap dancers are why we're able to have hip-hop dancing. And, I mean, honestly, if we go back, tap dancing was happening on plantations without tap shoes, rhythmic footwork, percussion out of the feet, speaking the language and communication during a time where people were ripped from their families.
There was the art of making music with your feet to connect to someone else. And that's exactly what we do right now through our struggles, is be able to connect with others through this language. Master Juba was a free black person.
His grandparents and his parents, Master Juba, was raised in Rhode Island. And where they were from Guinea, and they were allowed to practice in their African traditional dances. And Henry William Lane...
grew up he was a child but he grew up around this and he was sent off to new york city to live with a family friend named john lowe henry williams lane other name is master juba or he's widely known as master juba however juba is a dance and juba's a dance done on the continent africa juba is also a dance not necessarily a dance but a percussive rhythm that's done In the Americas, where it's called patting juba, where you sort of pat your body to create a rhythm, a drum rhythm, because during the times when you didn't have a drum, this movement became popular, and the person would dance to them patting juba. For Henry William Lane, he is mixing the dances that he was already learning in Rhode Island. He's mixing them with African dances that he's learned. He's mixing them with the Irish dances that he's learned.
And he continues learning with Jim Lowe. And so at the time, you're talking about jig dances. And this later becomes a derogatory term towards African American people. but he becomes one of the best. He is the person we look to in tap dance that sort of is the progenitor for what became known as tap dance.
And it is said that he inspired a number of people, King Rostis Brown being one of them, Bill Bojangles Robinson being another. And the dance sort of grew from then. And you're also talking about other languages for tap dance, like buck dancing, which...
is a derogatory term given to the African males who were considered bucks. And the dancing they did, so now it's buck dancing. But again, there is that relationship between the African movement and the European movement. English clogging, Scottish Highlander dance, and Irish jigs, hornpipes, and reels. So again, another culmination.
Tap dance is an art form that we as African Americans let go when we did not see the value in it. And so Maude and I and the Syncopated Ladies are dedicated to reclaiming our voice in the field and revisiting the history and celebrating the history and reminding everyone where this comes from and where it's going. In learning a lot about the Adowa in Ghana, Capoeira in Angola in the Congo, and the Yankedi in Burkina Faso.
It's evident that these dance forms are critical to the evolution of dance globally, and there's so much more to learn. From the 16th century fast forwarding to the post-slavery period, the Great Migration starting in 1916, and post-World War II in 1945 to 1968, it's obvious that dance doesn't exist apart from history. It is history. African ballet, what is African ballet?
African ballet is a genre that began after colonization. You know, after colonization, when most African countries, African, we have 54 nations in Africa, when we gain our independence, we create, most head of state created the national ensemble, which comprise of national theater, national orchestra, national ballet. Hey, Music continued to provide a foundation for our growth and survival. Through Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and two world wars, music and dance sustained us and kept our culture alive. During the Great Migration, for the first time, many African Americans were able to make advances with new economic opportunities.
These geographic and demographic changes brought new life and energy into major cities across the United States, transforming the nation. The Great Migration was the movement of over 6 million African American people from the rural southern U.S. to the north, midwest, and west. And during the Great Migration, people relocated based on the train lines from Mississippi to Chicago, from the Carolinas to cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore, from Louisiana and Texas to Los Angeles.
And these people brought music like blues and jazz and also dances with them. For example, the Yankety, which evolved into the Charleston, or the dance of the Roaring Twenties. It was part of the social cultural shift, you know, women's liberation. Freedom of movement, shorter hair, shorter dresses, post-World War II celebration, and women's right to vote was all the rage. In the Yankete or Charleston and other dances are just a few examples of African dances that had a profound influence on dominant culture.
When you look at the idea of even Catherine Dunham going to Martinique and seeing Agia, which is a dance done that's based off of Capoeira but has its own presentation. in Martinique, connected to the rah-rah dances in Haiti, which also has some relationship to capoeira, and just how things change. So once people come to America, and however it's hidden, however it shows up, but during that eccentric period, this, you can see some of that movement existing in the eccentric dances. You also see some of that movement connecting to Lindy hop and how people fall to the ground and some of the movements that they do that become part of the jazz, the knee drops and the splits and some of the spins and some of the they'll call them coffee grinders or some of the breakdown moves, these are related to that idea of moving on the ground right in a fluid way.
And then finding your way back up on your feet. But there's that, you know, some of those movements you can just clearly see in the relationship of Capoeira. We changed the world, right?
Not just dancers, but black people. We influence everybody. And I think that a lot of it has to do with, you know, particularly where we are situated as African Americans, understanding a lot of ways in which we were. genetically engineered to be and to exist, I really feel like we we move the culture. But we have these two different dynamics.
We have these two different aesthetics. We have a Eurocentric aesthetic, which deals more in a heavenward orientated or orientation is verticality, certain patterning, certain geometric patterning, not. really about improvisation, not really about individuality, but still some levels of competition. You have the African aesthetic, which is about being grounded, having this orientation to the earth. It's polyrhythmic, it's polycentric, it's symmetrical and asymmetrical.
There's levels of percussiveness. It's about being an individual. As a matter of fact, Jackie Malone talks about that not only were Individuality and originality appreciated, they were expected.
Versus in European countries, the individuality was not necessarily appreciated. Isolations were not appreciated. So we have these two growing aesthetics, right?
And there's a return to social dances of European people here in America in the 1800s where a lot of dance societies began to pop up. And so there was an idea. this is what we're going to do.
This is how we're going to teach dance. This is the meaning behind it. This is how we teach young people about social decorum. This is how you walk into a room.
This is how you stand. This is how you're supposed to dance. This is what's proper. And so that begins to take off.
What African people are doing is considered savagery, is considered buffoonery, is just entertainment. And Not being looked at as having an aesthetic, but it does. We see this blending start to happen where Africans start making up dances like the cakewalk, which becomes popular not just amongst African people, but amongst everybody. So now white society is imitating a dance that is imitating them. And it's sort of...
It has this kind of blackface idea where blackface, black people would have to wear blackface in order to be on stage. So now you have a person imitating a person imitating himself. The cakewalk was the same thing.
You have a person imitating someone who was imitating them. Thinking about how I appeared in the imagination of white people, and, you know, I have a saying, all white supremacists aren't white. There are a lot of people. who have been indoctrinated into a similar belief system. And I think that in terms of being an artist, being a black woman, and using my body as my preferred communicative form, I feel like oftentimes there are expectations placed on how I'm supposed to show up, how I'm supposed to speak about my work, how I'm supposed to dress, or engage with other people about my work.
And I think oftentimes, too, where I'm situated now, which is in the Pacific Northwest, there are oftentimes people who don't identify with, you know, my history, can't empathize with it, and don't have a desire to do that, who are critiquing the work that I'm making. And so I think it's this constant A cycle of, for me, rejecting and shedding those ideas and those notions and still pushing forward and navigating through it. I have always done what they call now fusion, dance fusion.
I have always included African movements in my work as well as ballet and jazz and tap and hip hop and street dance. social dances, I have always included that. I look at African dance as being the first dance, period, in the world, the first dance, the first movement.
The animal dances pop up in the ragtime era. The turkey trot, the cakewalk, the grizzly bear, the bunny hug. And a lot of these, again, have a connection to African traditions of Creating dances based off of animal gestures. So you're looking at this and it's becoming a thing.
However, the Eurocentric aesthetic comes in to define the structure of these dances. And they would say not to do them like the black people. For them, we're refining what this dance is.
We're making it dignified. What they're doing is just savagery. And so there's this back and forth between aesthetic ideas. Because you think about minstrelsy, you think about blackface and Those are white inventions. And what's sad is that black people were forced to perform under those circumstances, but of course didn't want to perform under those circumstances.
And I mean, we even see it now in film. We see characters and we see that embodiment. And instead of celebrating the way that tap dancers fought through and fought back. And so that's what we're really excited about doing. And we're so thankful.
To people like Beyonce and Shonda Rhimes and Felicia Horowitz who see the value in what we do and who understand the history and the power of it and who give us the space and the platforms and amplify our voices and the art form. Eurocentric people are taking movement and they're based in ballet. They're based in what's now modern dance and they are Bringing in or trying to bring in the conversation from African-American people and communities of movement.
There is no hierarchy in dance even though it's taught in that way. There is no hierarchy. Ballet is not better than the rumba from Cuba and the rumba is not better than ballet. It is all about our social cultural narrative.
Where we were brought up, what we believe in, what we value, where do we belong, how do we behave. These things are different, so it's just about the difference. There was a time when you did not see any ballerinas, black ballerinas, on point. And now you're seeing more. We at My Dance Studio say that the dance is important in all of the cultural styles.
In the ballet, in the modern, in the jazz, in all of the cultural styles, it's important to be... to have yourself represented and seen. So Misty Copeland has inspired and motivated more young black girls to want to be in ballet. Now before Misty Copeland you know there was Dance Theatre of Harlem for all y'all don't know.
Arthur Mitchell created the first major black, all black ballet company Dance Theatre of Harlem and he had ballerinas that ranged the whole shade of colors of African-American people. They were in Dance Theatre of Harlem. They still are in Dance Theatre of Harlem.
So even though Dance Theatre of Harlem and all of its major accomplishments and everything couldn't do what Misty Copeland did. Now Misty Copeland is in American Ballet Theatre. She's all over the world. She's doing all these wonderful things and I am so glad that Misty Copeland has made, has the, has the, uh, What do you call it?
The fame that she has now because that uplifts a lot of young African-American girls who dream of being ballerinas. I took advantage of working with people like Donna McHale, learning about and studying from pioneers like Katherine Dunham, learning and taking class from people like Dan Stude of Harlem, Arthur Mitchell, and legends in the field of African-American dance. Alvin Ailey became my very good mentor and very good friend.
His mother's name was Lula, and so we became very good friends. So those high-profile individuals in the field of dance have helped inspire and motivate me toward all the things that I continue to do to this moment. We would not even have the group without Debbie Allen.
And the thing is that Debbie Allen has always, from day one, advocated for everyone in dance, but particularly making sure that the voice of black people is heard. She is the most prolific African-American dancer and dancer period in our living history and and she's unapologetic. She, you know, she'll take tap dance and put it into any production she's doing.
Because she sees the love, the value, and the culture, and the history, and, you know, she offers it at her academy. And it's just so important for all of the black dance schools around the country to make sure that you're not just educating your students in ballet and jazz, and hip-hop, but that you're including tap and African dance and Dunham. And, you know, just the art forms that are part of our diaspora, but also part of our roots.
that are our roots. African dance being the basis for all that we are doing and tap being, you know, a descendant of African dance, music, and culture. Some of our big names that we go to when we're talking about the lineage is we talk about Henry William Lane, a.k.a. Master Juba, and then we talk about...
King Rostis Brown, Bilbo Jangles Robinson, and then we talk about John Sutlett, John Bubbles, who is known as the rhythm king because he syncopated the feet in a way that wasn't really being done. mostly danced on their toes, which is where the conversation around the influence of Irish jig comes from. When you look at Bill Bojangles Robinson, he danced on his toes. Everything else about him was more of the Africanist aesthetic.
his percussive vocalness, pointing to the foot because he wanted you to recognize, you know, pay attention to right there, what my foot is doing. The sort of aesthetic of the cool where he sits back and, you know, real relaxed and does all this fancy footwork. These are all part of the African aesthetic, but that Eurocentric aesthetic of being upright on the toes, Bill still did that as well.
So we see a lot of that in some accents to the heel, but it was John Bubbles who made that syncopated. way of using the heel that changed the rhythm, so why he's known as the rhythm king. When I was looking at the art of tap, the primary celebrated artists were men.
So you had incredible artists like... Gregory Hines, the Nicholas Brothers, Sammy Davis Jr. But the reality is that there were so few African American women that you could see on TV or on film or even written into history. That war dance is really the advanced level of African ballet where movement is really intricate. We tell the story.
It's all about telling ancient stories. In modern times, in the village in ancient times, you have young people who get initiated to be soldiers, the protector of the village. They form them into traditional martial arts.
So that's why they have shields, they have spears, you know, how to fight. So when we talk about martial arts, martial arts started in Africa before. So that's what war dance is about.
It's showing the traditional African martial art. It travels Capoeira and all these things. So it's just about the contemporary vision of African dance.
Not the level of African dance. That's what war dance is about. It's amazing to see Capoeira's evolution into a new form of art that made its way into the streets of New York City in the 80s, and that will finally make its way into the Olympics in 2024. That dance is called Breaking. The Camel Walk's evolution led us into the Soul Train line. The Charleston to the kick step and light feet.
And these dance steps have eventually made their way into the TikTok era. In the present day, the influence of the Adowa in Ghana, Kapowera in Angola and the Congo, and the Yankete in Burkina Faso are still evident. All of these dances have enduring legacies.
When you look at Kapowera, Kapowera had, you know, you would spin on your head. And it's not so much that they become breaking, let's be clear, it's not that they become breaking, but that movement exists because you are talking about Movement that comes from the islands, from the southern islands, in Puerto Rico, in Cuba, and what comes to America is young people in the 70s watching their elders and still doing this movement. Even when you go back to the 40s in the Palladium Ballroom, and you see the influence, the explosion of Latin music, and you see people dropping to the ground and spinning on the ground and doing this, and you see the exchange between a Harlem Savoy ballroom who people who come downtown and get into Palladium and people from the Palladium who go up to Harlem and you see this exchange of ideas so it is it's existing in the people themselves and so the movement is there and it's now when we get to what becomes known as breaking it is the influence of what these young people are seeing their elders do but then now they add their own twist to it based on their time, based on their environment, based on the gestures that exist amongst themselves, based on the influence of gang culture and gaining movements from that and understanding the drops to the ground that you see throughout Latin music. And so that's where you find that relationship to say like, oh, it's not just the 70s, but we can see this movement in the 60s. You can see in breaking.
What is known as a W, and this is sort of when you sit down and your legs sort of fan out to the side creating a W look in your legs. Well in breaking in the 70s that became known as the W. However, if you go into the 60s and you look at singers like Jackie Wilson, he does the same thing, but that's connected to a jazz dance called Pickin'Cherries.
You can go to the 40s and see Cab Calloway. does the same movement. So there's that influence, that line that you look at.
You have James Brown. James Brown was born in 1933. One of the popular dances of the jazz era was a step called the Applejack. And one of the movements in the Applejack is that you would rise up on one leg and sort of shuffle, scoot yourself across the floor.
James did that his entire career. Now, when you talk about hip hop, who is the main person hip hop looks at as an influence? James Brown. Well, James Brown was imitating tap dancers. So his splits, his knee drops, his falls to the floor, those all mimic tap dancers.
And James admits to it at a young age he said he was a buck dancer. So now James is doing that. That inspires a young hip-hop generation. You also have Charlie Atkins from the tap team Coles and Atkins, who becomes the choreographer for Motown.
What is he teaching Motown? What is he teaching Gladys Knight and The Temptation? Not only did he work with Motown, but he worked with other R&B or other doo-wop groups like the Triniers and the Cadillacs. And he's teaching them stuff from the 20s, 30s and 40s. So now these jazz dances that are popular.
Are being funneled through James Brown. They're now being funneled through the dancers at Motown. That young people are seeing them and imitating what they're doing. And when you look at the Jackson 5, who were also part of Motown, but Charlie Atkins didn't teach kids groups. Jackie Jackson was the choreographer for the Jackson 5. And he would watch what Charlie Atkins did.
And he would take it and he would craft their choreography together. And you can see them 1970 Ed Sullivan show and they're doing the drop Charleston Even when you look at the Soul Train line, the Soul Train line is based off of the Camel Walk Stroll. You're talking about two lines, women, men, originally, and they meet up in the middle and then they dance down the line.
Well, Don Cornelius got the idea from the Camel Walk Stroll, and he renamed it the Soul Train line. This is when he couldn't get all the big musical acts, so he featured his dancers. And he featured them by renaming the Camel Walk stroll the Soul Train line.
But again, we're talking about that going back to 1957 with Chuck Willis, CC Ryder. We can take that back to look at the Spirit Moves footage of the Savoy Ballroom, where we see Al Mends, or Leon James, doing the Camel Walk. In that time period version, we have the 1924 version, we have the 1894 with Joe Rostis in the Thomas Edison footage, and we have the Adowa. And it takes you from off the continent of Africa all the way up into the 70s to this day. You can go to a black folk having barbecue or a wedding and somebody gonna do a Soul Train line, I guarantee.
They're gonna do the electric slide, they're gonna do a Soul Train line. For me, Black vernacular movement is directly connected to community. Black vernacular movement is oftentimes the dances. We don't know, sometimes we don't know where they come from, but they're in all the Black neighborhoods.
Everybody knows what the dance is. I think it's almost similar to the hand gestures and the clapping that we do on the playground. It is, it's oftentimes how we in our, in the Black community, communicate with one another. you know what we call twerking is directly connected to west africa which is a form of oftentimes how we are initiating um mating right and coming like coming together and building relationships oh i i just think about like shoulders and all of the different dances that oftentimes can ice you isolate in your body how those different things connect back to um community and conversations within the community.
So for me, that's what Black vernacular dance is. So again, that social community through line is is looking at what's happening in the environment and with people like James Brown or Charlie Atkins or even Michael Jackson, seeing what's happening in the black community, putting it on stage. And then the world seeing it. That's again how it gets out and beyond these communities, but it is what's happening in the community that keeps the consistency, that keeps the tradition, and it's why we can look at this footage and find a through line and make those connections. Through culture and dance, life can be transformed and society can be inspired to move forward.
Dance is a powerful art form that educates, elevates, and motivates the people who are absorbed in its magic. The impact of dance on the future is very crucial because dance as an art form tells story, is a story, and represents a people, a community, and if you don't have the dance you're not representing that community or the people in that community. Dance is important because it gives another viewpoint about art. It shows another point of view on social issues. It shows another point of view on what's relevant.
It shows young people that you could be a ballerina, you can dance on point, you can be A hip-hop dancer or a modern dancer or avant-garde dancer, you can participate on many different levels because you have the movement inside of you. So movement is very important to survival of all human beings. Dance is life. It is powerful.
It is magical. It is a part of who we are as humans. You can feel that in every Viral TikTok dance that's spreading all around the globe.
It is so visceral, it is so real. And so it's so important for us as a community and culture to make sure that we are always feeding dance in the most loving, respectful, educated, open-minded ways that we can to continue to uplift humanity. Dance is freedom, it is life, it is love, it is humanity.
For me dance is joy and freedom and those are the two most important things of my life and community which is the third most important thing in my life and love. Okay I have a lot of important things in my life. Dance being the culminating of all of the important things in my life.
So I would say that dance has shaped my life. in such a magical and important way. And I'm so thankful that this is what I get to do. It's a privilege every day to be able to say, oh, I'm going to teach dance today, or I'm going to choreograph, or I'm going to go dance with people I love. And this is how I make money.
It's kind of surreal, but dance is life, and life is dance. Dance has been important in that It has created a foundation for me and even in a lot of ways a sanctuary for me to take a moment, pause, and dig deep inside of myself and figure out what's going on. Again, ask myself those questions.
And as much as it has existed in that way for me, it has also existed on the... complete opposite spectrum because again like there's all of these other things that come into play but I you know it's like a metaphor for life right the path and the the way in which you are navigating there's always things that come in but I think for me dances has been the most consistent thing in my life even more consistent than people Looking back through the histories that said we were savages, that we didn't have the capacity and the refinement to create great art. To go back and break that down and educate people on why that is false, and educate people on so many names. that are unsung.
I hope I do my ancestors justice. I found dance through social engagement. I uplift that social engagement. I uplift those ancestors. This is not about me.
Dance is about. Dance is about. Discovering the autobiographical self, negotiating creativity and expression, that is what it's about.
It is about who we are, where we live, how we belong, how we behave, how we think, how we respond. It is life. That is the reason I do it, not for performing. If I never hit a stage, I'm going to dance the rest of my life. And the future is here already.
Because Africa is the future. The past, the present, and the future. That's how it's always been.
Because African dance is the mother of all dance. African music is the mother of all music. You know what I'm saying?
So the future is already here. Get, I'm a little girl, I'm a little girl, I'm a little girl, I'm a little girl, I'm a little girl, I'm a little girl, I'm a little girl, I'm a little girl, I Hey,