AMERICAN CHOREOGRAPHER NAMED TRIBAL CHIEF IN GHANA.

NEW YORK CITY--A lifetime of studying and living among diverse cultures. A career as a choreographer, dancer, teacher, and scholar. A goal of "breaking barriers and building bridges between people of different cultures through the arts." A peacemaking framework facilitated by the art of dance. And recently, a sizable grant.

On July 6, 1997, Scott Douglas Morrow became Nana Kwasi Scott Douglas Morrow, after he was "enstooled" as a traditional tribal chief of Kwamang in the Asante Nation, Ghana. But it's not for the above reasons that King Nana Barimah Abeyie Ntori Nimpah II of Asante Nation performed the sacred rites associated with the ancient tradition of Asante chieftaincy. It is for the modest gift that Morrow and his wife, Nanahemaa Kosua Brenda Berg-Morrow (also enstooled), brought to Africa as a way to thank the Africans for their invaluable contributions to the world.

"I created a special dance with my wife, who performed it," Nana Morrow--now Nana Kwasi Scott Douglas Morrow Aboafuohene of Kwamang, chief and special advisor of education and human development--says. "It traces abstractly the journey of the African people to the New World."

With years of personal research and commitment to the study of foreign cultures behind him, Nana Morrow, in June 1997, was awarded a $250,000 grant by the Josephine and Randolph Stewart African Heritage Fund for Education and Research to continue his research and study of traditional and contemporary music and dance of Africa. This led to his trip to Ghana, his performance, and finally, his enstoolment. Although Morrow considers the enstoolment the highest honor, he also believes it is a culmination of a lifetime of work dedicated to improving relations between the United States and Africa.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Nana Morrow has a stellar resume. He made his debut at the age of seven at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He has had a multifaceted career as a dancer, ballet master, choreographer, artistic director, documentary filmmaker, educator, and scholar. His awards are numerous, beginning with a choreographers' fellowship from the National Festival for the Performing Arts, at which time he was the sole choreographer invited by the Smithsonian Institution to premiere a work during its Duke Ellington Festival. Interestingly, many of his subsequent honors involved international endeavors, such as being the sole 1994 arts educator/artist at the Global Education Summit.

However, it was ten years ago, when he founded the Jazz Dance Ministry for Racial Reconciliation, Peace, and Healing, that he began to utilize dance as a vehicle for educating all peoples about diverse cultures. Through movement and lecturing, Morrow traces the roots of African, European, Latin, and Caribbean cultures. "The purpose of this is to show how the cultures enriched each other and how they came together as spiritual and artistic soul mates," Morrow says. "In reality there was bloodshed, but artistically they were soul mates from the beginning."

Nana Morrow's enstoolment is already having a ripple effect in the U.S. and Africa--a New York office of the Kwamang Council of State and a Pan-African Institute for Peace and Culture in Ghana are being planned. In addition, a documentary capturing the royal performance and the enstoolment ceremony, Of One Blood: Returning Home to Africa, was scheduled to begin screenings at the end of last year.