African American Dance Company

Fanga is a traditional West African dance of Welcome from the Kpelle people of the country of Liberia. Of the various categories of traditional African Dances, it fits within the social and ritual categories. Fanga was embraced by the African American community in the United States and, thus, it has a continuing history here.

Mama Pearl “Omowale” Primus was a renowned dancer, teacher, choreographer, anthropologist, and a contributing pioneer of early modern dance and African dance in the United States. In 1948 she received a Rosenwald Foundation scholarship to travel to Africa to study dance. She learned Fanga during her time in Liberia.

When she returned to the states, she began teaching and staging Fanga. In one instance of cross-cultural interaction circa 1950’s, Mama Pearl taught Fanga, and the Yoruba priests, from Nigeria in West Africa who played for the class, began to sing in their language, “Fanga, Alafiya, Asé, Asé.” While the dance is from Liberia, the word of the chant we now sing were inspired by the Yoruba’s of Nigeria.

Commonly known as the South African Gumboot Dance—or simply Gumboot—in many contemporary and popular dance communities globally, IsiXathulo is a traditional based dance & music style originating with the Zulus from South Africa. The production of music within this dance comes from complex unfolding patterns of rhythmic stomps, slaps, claps, chants, and other body manipulations—all generated from the human dancing bodies.

The history of IsicaXulo traverses time, function, place, and bodies. At first a South Africa regional Zulu dance performed to acoustic instruments, IsicaXulo made its way to the country’s diamond mines during its colonial initiation. Laborers in the mine shafts would employ the dance to maintain their morale thru otherwise physically and spiritually oppressive work conditions. When the dance made its way to the trade loading docks of the Cape Town coast, it incorporated the rubber Wellington boots the dock workers wore for protection, hence the name “gumboot”. Like Tsoi-Tsoi, the fist-pumping march of solidarity, IsicaXulo served as embodied resistance during the abolishment of Apartheid, a governmental system of institutionalized racism and oppression in South African from 1948 to the early 1990’s.

Many traditional agrarian communities in Africa employ ritual practices to ensure a plentiful harvest year after year. These practices are customarily serious, critical business; for their success helps sustain a community’s livelihood.

Mhandé is a traditional Southern African dance for rain from the Karenga People, a subsect of the Shona and Ndebele people of Zimbabwe. Of the various categories of traditional African Dances, it fits within the ritual category. Traditionally, dancers wear module seed pods on their legs to mimic the sound of rain and, thus, amplify the collective voice of the community and their request. Mhande is a complex ritual that, when executed properly, creates a symphony of sound from drum rhythms, foot stomps, leg rattles, choral chants, and furious dancing. These musical dynamics of the dance are built around a 6/4 time signature.