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Our teacher very systematically taught us steps piece by piece, that seemed silly at first; it took me a while to start taking myself seriously watching myself in the mirror, since it’s not every day that white girls do traditional West African dance. Once I got into it though, the movements started to flow and really feel natural. Each step was not difficult to learn, but it took several tries of practice for me to master them, for the dance to start feeling natural.
This free expression of the body, the big, loosely structured movements of hands, feet, head and back was a contrast to ballet and tap dancing that I had taken classes in for nine years when I was younger– the restricted motions, still posture and “turned out” poses are still pretty engraved in me, so it was a conscious effort for me to dance in a completely different manner.
I couldn’t help noticing, as we were learning certain motions, similarities in quick sharp movements such as back popping and turning had striking similarities to hip-hop dancing– though the hip-hop culture is clearly very different from African culture, the roots of the current dance are clear when watching and performing African dance.
On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed the class at the Alvin Ailey Center. Our teacher was patient and talented, and the the drums added to an excellent experience. This is probably something I will not have the chance to experience again, and I am thoroughly glad that our class was able to participate in the class.
]]>Another interesting point to consider is the overwhelming universality of appeal music and dance have. To tell the truth, the dance experience reminded me of a lecture I attended at the New York Academy of Sciences last year. At that lecture, a scientist shared with us the incredible universality of emotional expressions. There are some facial expressions, he argued, that are recognized and understood throughout the world despite tremendous regional and cultural differences. Dance, I think, is another type of expression that can link humanity. I understand a number of students were unfamiliar with West African dance (and dance in general), yet a majority of us were able to respond to movement and rhythm seemingly foreign to us. The more I danced and sang, however, the more similarities I noticed between West African music and the 1970s disco beat. The dance we learned could easily be configured to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”!
On the whole, the dance experience was as fun and exciting as it was enlightening. It opened my eyes to a world of dance I would probably have never experienced. **I also noticed a Fitness Series class in West African dance on the Brookdale Council’s November calendar. I look forward to experiencing more aspects of the culture in a few weeks.
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