DANCEAFRICA'S RHYTHMS REASON TO REJOICE.

DANCEAFRICA'S RHYTHMS REASON TO REJOICE DANCEAFRICA 2001 BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC BROOKLYN, NEW YORK MAY 25-27, 2001

With verve, fervor, passion, and panache, the twenty-fourth annual DanceAfrica Festival presented African-rooted visual arts, films, cuisine, music, and dance. Originated and curated since its beginning by Chuck Davis (founder and artistic director of the Durham, North Carolina-based African American Dance Ensemble), the festival this year had the theme of "Rhythms From the Circle of Life."

Three professional companies performed: the Manhattan-based Forces of Nature; Brooklyn's Sabar Ak Ru Afriq Dance Theatre (or SARA), performing Revival, a premiere created for the festival; and the Ndere Troupe of Uganda, in its New York debut. They were joined by the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble, a youth group arising from the partnership between the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and Brooklyn Academy of Music (Education and Humanities arm), which for the past five years has collaborated with DanceAfrica.

The festival began with an open-air ceremony: official blessings, the pouring of a drink offering to the ancestors, and a procession with two male dancers dressed in traditional Watusi garb (raffia headdress and skirt, bare chest, and six-foot spear) told spectators that this performance would follow African precepts. Through Davis's ingenuity and showmanship, a sense of community pervaded the evening.

A poignant memorial ceremony allowed audience participation by calling out names of deceased loved ones. Candlebearers clothed in white made their way down the aisles to the stage, complementing the star-studded backdrop. The sense that death is not an ending, but transition, was achieved through simple stretch, reach, and lunge movements.

Davis transformed the concert stage into an African "dancing ground" by changing theatrical rules. Dances didn't end with a blackout and exit. Instead, ensembles' entrances and exits meshed, spilling over and linking together by continuity devices: While a poet recited a love poem, the Forces of Nature's exit overlapped SARA's entrance; in turn, SARA danced in a welcoming, jovially challenging style at stage right while the Ndere company paraded through the audience and gathered at stage left to observe and "comment" on SARA's performance. All groups converged for an exuberant, celebratory finale.

There was a scenic eleganceto this production, particularly Forces of Nature Artistic Director Abdel Salaam's vividly stunning decor and costumes for his company's Terrestrial Wombs. In gradated shades of blue, with intricate makeup that transformed the performers' faces into masks, the stage picture was strikingly beautiful. As The Great Mother, Dina Lynn Wright astounded by the sheer exquisiteness of her movement, epitomizing the sinuous, lithe flexibility that African dance brings to the spine. In excerpts from Salaam's Rhythmic Legacy, two gigantic African bird sculptures dominated the stage and were then removed to the background, but stood as reminders of the African legacy in contemporary hip-hop and club dancing.

SARA's Revival created a village, With its many populations, from children to elders. The diversity of body types in this group was astonishing, and spoke worlds about an aesthetic that values all anatomies and allows movement talent to triumph over stage stereotypes. Co-Artistic Director Andara Koumba Rahman-Ndiaye's dancing as the Healer Woman had the audience on its feet and the Elders in the front row smacking the edge of the stage in enthusiastic response. The company specializes in sabar, a Senegalase dance and drum style. With bent knees turning in and out and arms windmilling in a counter-rhythm against swiveling hips, the awkward became beautiful.

The program highlight was Ndere, whose dances and musical instruments are practically unknown beyond their homeland. Their indigenous style has commonalities with South Sea Island dances. Raffia peplums for both men and women emphasized the hips, and the pelvic area was articulated with an amazing variety of subtle, lissome movements.

DanceAfrica and Chuck Davis were recently added to the Dance Heritage Coalition's list of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100." Go to BAM for their twenty-fifth season next May and you'll know why: They earned it.