By Carrie Stern
Evidence, A Dance Company, will celebrate its 25th anniversary season next year with two big firsts.
First, Evidence has never performed at Dance Africa, the now 32-year-old Memorial Day extravaganza, until now. “We’re excited,” says associate artistic director Arcella Cabuag. “Brooklyn is our home, but we haven’t performed here for four years.” The company’s been on the road worldwide since February, so “it’s especially nice to come back and share this work with people at home.”
Evidence shares with Dance Africa a mission to explore and share the experience of the African Diaspora through dance and music. “Upside Down” is a section of the evening-length Destiny created collaboratively in 1998 by founder and artistic director Ronald K. Brown and Rokiya Kone, choreographer for Jeune Ballet d’Afrique Noire based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Evidence performed its entirety only once. Addressing the coming together of a disparate community around a loss, a death or other tragedy, Brown thought it suited Dance Africa’s theme of ancestors and community
Brown and Kone share a choreographic sensibility that combines traditional and social dance movement, ballet, and modern dance. Brown, who founded his company at nineteen, has said that he wants to give “evidence of people’s lives.” In Kone he found a fellow passenger. In Africa, explains Cabuag, “that’s when he saw how universal it all was. Some of the traditional dances are seen in clubs, or at a celebration, or a ceremony.”
Community and tradition are powerful forces that drive the Dance Africa structure. Evidence will participate in a “meet-and-greet” with the weekend’s performers and organizers, and be introduced to Dance Africa through a telling of its history and structure. The company is especially excited to meet the Dance Africa elders, to “give respect to the people that made it possible for us to do this. This is not just a showcase, there’s a lot of structure in-between. We dance together to pay homage to the ancestors. I feel like that’s very important because the work we do is in celebration of the people who came before us. It feels perfect for us to be part of this.”
Evidence’s role in the performance is perfect in another way. For the past six years they have been the resident dance company at Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, the year-round home of the programs that feed Dance Africa. Evidence’s rehearsals end as young students arrive for lessons, an overlap that allows the students to watch and interact with the professionals. Brown has taught classes and set work on the student company. During Dance Africa, special rehearsals bring all performers together to learn the processional and libation that start every performance. “It will be very special for us to dance with the children from Restoration in the opening and finale of the show. They are part of our family.”
Evidence’s second “first” will take the company to Africa in 2010 as part of DanceMotion USA, a new program conceived and funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, produced by BAM with supplementary educational support by Pfizer. Along with Urban Bush Women (Latin American) and ODC/Dance (Asia), Evidence will perform, teach, and enter into discussions and interviews with local artists and audiences sharing its vision of “American Dance.”
“It’s very exciting! All of us feel really honored that we were on the list to be part of something like this. The fact that we get to go to Africa to share work makes it even more special. This will be the first time [the company] performs in Africa. We hope to meet a lot of people, touch them with our work, and come home learning more about the traditional dance of the countries. Most of us take traditional class here, but to take traditional class in Africa and learn the role of these dances from the people who live them, to fully absorb the aesthetic, will be so rewarding for all of us. It will take the work we do to another level. That we go during our 25th Anniversary season is the icing on the cake.”
Dance Africa takes place May 22—25 at BAM. Further information at www.bam.org For “Dance Brooklyn” interviews with Baba Chuck Davis, founder of Dance Africa, see May 2006 and 2008.
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