African American Dance Company to perform recital

IU’s Arts Week Everywhere has featured events to display the variety of local talent, and more are still to come — including a performance by the African American Dance Company.

The Dance Company will present its annual spring concert Saturday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

This semester’s production is titled “Collaborations 2012: Finding Freedom.”

The concert will feature students performing their own choreography in the pieces “Four Women,” “Behind the Wall,” “Hard Boiled” and “A Free Man.” 

Student collaboration groups developed the dances and worked to tell different stories relating to the overall theme of freedom, bringing to light issues of identity, incarceration, abuse and the human condition.

The students had creative freedom when developing the dances, deciding everything from the costumes to the storyline.

“Hard Boiled” was based on an Ernest Hemingway quote, freshman dancer
Geneva Moore said.

“The piece is about acknowledging the human condition that exists in all of us, and this condition is all the negatives and fears that plague our minds,” she said. “While choreographing, we sat down and wrote down our own personal conditions, such as anxiety, fear of loneliness, disconnect with nature and consumption, and from there, we began choreographing.”

Another piece, “Four Women,” tells the story of four black women and their experiences. The dance focuses on finding freedom to identify who you are without external restrictions, said graduate student Monica Fleetwood Black, one of the dancers and choreographers of “Four Women” and the company’s road manager.

“For me, my inspiration for this piece is being myself a black woman and the diversity that comes with being black and female,” Black said. “The piece gets at that blackness (that) can’t just be draped over experiences. These are all individual experiences in the black diaspora.”

The second act of the concert will be a full company production called “The Circle Will Not Be Broken,” which was choreographed by African American Dance Company Director Iris Rosa.

The production is made of works the company performed first semester in “Potpourri,” but the choreography and music have been altered, reconstructed and extended and dancers have been changed to tell an even more in-depth story, Rosa said.

The story and choreography focus on the significance of circular formations in African traditions and African-derived dances.

“The whole concept of ‘The Circle Will Not Be Broken’ is I’m using the circle as a metaphor for unbroken promises,” Rosa said. “The tradition of the circle, after going through the middle passage to the new world and Africans were dispersed all over the world, even after this disbursement, they came back to this circular configuration.”

For Black, the circular configurations show the connectivity of African descendants across cultures and space.

“For me, the theme behind it is the global connection of blackness,” Black said. “We are dealing with bigger themes of African-Americans and black people. We are talking about black diasporic experiences from all over the world and how we can use dance to express that global experience.”

“The Circle Will Not Be Broken” takes viewers on a journey of the African-American diaspora, starting with the piece “In the Beginning,” continuing to “Middle Passage” and concluding with “Escape.”

“In the Beginning” is the newest piece within Rosa’s production. It is supported by a grant from Arts Week Everywhere and features original music composed by Bernard Woma. The piece also features a guest dancer, Evelyn Yaa Bekyore, from the Saakumu Dance Troupe, which is based in Ghana.

Bekyore helped the company explore and incorporate traditional Ghanaian dancing into their movement expression, Rosa said.

“We start with traditional Ghanaian movements that Yaa has taught us, fusing them with contemporary modern, jazz and ballet movements,” Rosa said. “The fusion of dance styles is something that I always like to do. It gives a different type of aesthetic to the dancing, as well as gives an opportunity for students to showcase their own strengths.”

Black said she hopes the audience recognizes and appreciates the diversity of the dance styles and of the company dancers themselves.

“People often label us something that we are not,” Black said. “We don’t just do hip-hop or jazz or modern. I hope the show conveys the diversity of what professor Rosa provides for us. And I hope people are taken aback by our creativity in our collaborations.”

Rosa’s goal is for everyone to find something he or she can connect to in “Collaborations 2012: Finding Freedom.”

“Each piece is really unique and has a profound message,” Moore said. “I hope the audience is receptive to that and gains something from each piece.”