`The loftiness of ballet and the earthiness of modern dance” is the description Chuck Davis promised seven years ago when he first brought his DanceAfrica celebration to the Medinah Temple.
Who could have predicted that he was also launching a new tradition that is now one of the most passionately attended events on the city’s annual dance calendar?
“It’s the only place I know where a man (Davis, actually) asks 4,000 strangers to hug their neighbor, and they do,” says Julie Simpson, executive director of the Dance Center of Columbia College, DanceAfrica’s annual presenter. The three performances have proven so successful that the Dance Center has added a fourth this year, a family Saturday matinee, with sales so brisk that a fifth performance is being considered for next year.
Davis, of course, will be back as griot, or host/narrator, and he continues to preside over other DanceAfrica presentations in other cities, including New York, where the tradition predates ours by 15 years. But Simpson argues that Chicago’s popular installment, set to play Friday through Oct. 26 at the Medinah, is far bigger in terms of auxiliary events that occur before, during and after the actual performances.
“This is the largest festival of African-American dance and culture that we know of,” Simpson says. There are some 45 supplementary events, including public programs, school presentations, community workshops, seminars and the ever-popular Medinah marketplace, in which 20 artists and craftsmen present their wares, show off clothing and even demonstrate traditional African cooking. “People know they can dress up in their own traditional garb, if they have it, enjoy the marketplace all day and then see the performance at night.”
Last year, the festival expanded to touch on what Davis calls the African Diaspora, African-influenced styles of dance that herald from the Americas and the Caribbean. Though the move elicited a few grumbles from loyal patrons, Davis is taking an even bigger leap this year, focusing mostly on the sprightly, colorful, island contributions from the Caribbean.
Will there be even more grumbling? “I guess we’ll see,” Simpson says resolutely. “We don’t want to go stale, doing the same thing year after year.”
Meanwhile, the move managed to land one of the bigger names to participate in the festival so far: Garth Fagan. The Caribbean-born choreographer and his Garth Fagan Dance are true originals and one of the most refreshing companies on the contemporary dance scene. Fagan took his own Jamaican roots and combined them with rigorous schooling in ballet, modern dance and post-modern experiment. His full-length “Griot New York” wowed critics and audiences alike, its 1994 Chicago outing no exception. Right now he’s putting final touches on choreography for the Broadway musical version of Disney’s “The Lion King,” which won great acclaim during tryouts this summer in Minneapolis.
But Fagan will come with his company to DanceAfrica, Broadway schedule notwithstanding, saying he wouldn’t miss Chicago and “its quiet opulence.” He promises what could be DanceAfrica’s least traditional offering, an abstract dance featuring performers clad not in island costuming but in plain black leotards.
“The title of the work we’re bringing is `From Before,’ ” Fagan says. “It’s a reference to the point in my own life before I studied modern dance, before I studied ballet, jazz, tap and everything else. It’s about what was there in my consciousness, in my roots. but it’s deliberately stripped down, without the straw hats or elaborate costumes, so that you get the full majesty of the movement.”
Fagan sees his own work as essentially modern but inextricably influenced by traditional African and Caribbean movements — he wanted to illustrate how much such movement actually infiltrates concert dance today. “I’m proud we’re included, because some might find it strange to have a contemporary troupe with a contemporary score at a DanceAfrica fest,” he says. “But even ballet started as a folk dance. We’re modern dancers, used to showing off our sleek, well-trained bodies. Without the costumes, without whatever might hide the movement, I hope you can see the passion, reverence and spirituality that comes from the African soul of the dance.”
Another group of unusual guests making their first DanceAfrica Chicago appearance this year is Marie Brooks’ Pan-Caribbean Dancers, a company who range in age from 8 to 21. They are a combination dance company and anthropological field school.
The Guadalupe-born Brooks herself enjoyed a long career in dance, launched in part with studies at Katherine Dunham’s school in New York. (She later danced in Europe with Eartha Kitt, among others.) Since the ’70s, after serving as director of the junior company of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Brooks has been taking groups of children to Martinique, Trinidad, West Africa, South America and the Caribbean. They spend a couple of summer months on location, studying not only indigenous dance, but geography, history, pop culture and the people and their ways too.
“I learned,” she says, “that you cannot know the alphabet unless you learn the letters first. You can learn technique, but it takes more than technique. You need to know the culture.” Brooks has helped devise enterprising fundraising methods to support the students in their studies, and, in 1996, the troupe was invited to participate in the Olympic ceremonies in Atlanta.
For DanceAfrica, “We’re focusing on a Caribbean carnival from Trinidad,” says Brooks, who was raised in Trinidad. “Our costuming represents the traditional flower of the Caribbean: the hibiscus.”
The festival, whose $286,000 budget is funded half by box-office revenue and half by corporate and foundation donations, will als include three Chicago troupes this year: Sundance Production, the Najwa Dance Corps and the Muntu Dance Theatre. But the cornerstone is the magic spell woven by the program’s interlocking elements, including Davis’ inimitable role as griot, the parade of the council of elders (actually a group of civic leaders who now get together year-round for community projects) and the atmosphere of ethnic carnival.
As Davis likes to say, “In Africa, there are more than 2,000 ethnic groups, each one with its own language, mode of dress and aesthetics. To celebrate that large continent is to celebrate diversity, and, more than anything, the goal of DanceAfrica is to bring the community together.”
