The beloved annual Atlanta African Dance & Drum Competition celebrates conventional African dance and music. (Images by Benjamin Shepard)
On the Atlanta African Dance & Drum Competition, the regular beat of the drums and the grounded actions of the dancers converse a language older than phrases, one which restores our connection to residence and honors who we’re.
Hosted by the Afrikan Djeli Cultural Institute, the annual celebration has develop into one of the crucial anticipated summer season festivals. Now in its sixteenth yr, the occasion returned to East Level with three days of music and motion workshops, an artisan market and a high-energy finale live performance that includes the acclaimed St. Louis-based firm Afriky Lolo.
From July 25 by way of July 27, dancers, drummers and households from throughout the nation got here to Atlanta to have a good time the cultures of the African diaspora. Workshop choices included conventional Haitian dance, Afro-Cuban/Orisha, Sabar and dance types from the international locations of Guinea, Mali and Ivory Coast.
Diádié Bathily, the Ivorian-born founder and creative director of Afriky Lolo, was one of many featured skilled dance instructors for the Competition. “People, particularly African People, need to know their tradition,” he instructed ArtsATL. “It’s so various. I can’t be numb to it. That is my mission — how I can carry Africa to African People who can not go there.”
Bathily based Afriky Lolo in 2003 after he got here to the USA and taught within the African dance program on the College of Missouri-St. Louis. After three months, the college determined to increase his keep. “The neighborhood demanded that I keep longer, together with among the universities and dance studios,” he defined. “They felt like what I’d been educating was fully new and it got here with unbelievable info African People and People wanted. They felt like I used to be a bridge between them and Africa.”
Since then, his firm has grown right into a motion for preserving conventional Ivorian and West African dances and educating their which means to audiences across the U.S. Afriky Lolo’s efficiency, The Goddess Zaouli Lives, which facilities on the multi-colored wood Zaouli masks, a logo of female magnificence and communal unity among the many Guro individuals in central Ivory Coast.
The Zaouli dance, created within the Nineteen Fifties, was impressed by a younger Guro lady named Djela Lou Zaouli. It’s historically carried out at vital celebrations and funerals and is believed to carry prosperity to the village the place it’s showcased. Famend for its swift footwork and hypnotic rhythm, it takes a performer a number of years to good their approach, and lots of begin studying when they’re youngsters. Throughout a efficiency, the dancer engages in a psychological duel with the viewers — holding their physique nonetheless whereas their legs carry out a collection of fast-paced strikes.
“Zaouli is versatile like a snake, however you must be mild in your toes like a fowl,” Bathily defined. “Within the Guro nation, you’ve totally different tales of Zaouli. I did some analysis to do a form of adaptation of this story. There’s a ethical on the finish, and it’s about a good looking lady and the way her coronary heart was damaged by a man. If you wish to see the entire story, you must come to see the present. However by the top, her coronary heart is damaged and she or he’s dancing superbly to precise herself.”
Whereas many African dances have been tailored or modernized for the stage, Bathily stays dedicated to cultural authenticity. Each step, gesture and drum sample is grounded within the historical past of this dance and the nation wherein it was created.
The Afriky Lolo efficiency featured a forged of greater than 40 dancers and musicians from ages 6 to 60, together with Bathily himself, with reside drumming and elaborate costuming introduced from Ivory Coast. Bathily says having a large age vary of dancers is a pivotal a part of the expertise.
“It’s a part of the tradition. I really like that as a result of it’s representing a village in Africa. It’s a must to be humble as you might be studying. Dance is okay, music is okay, however training within the dance exists additionally, and folks neglect about that. To maintain individuals collectively, you must educate them on how one can keep collectively and how one can respect one another. That’s crucial.”
Bathily’s dedication to honoring custom mirrors the values of the Afrikan Djeli Cultural Institute (ADCI). Based by artist and entrepreneur, Aiyetoro Kamau, ADCI has been instrumental in nurturing an area for diasporic African arts in Atlanta, not solely by way of the Competition, however by way of seasonal courses, youth training and neighborhood engagement. What units this pageant other than others is its grounding in African spirituality, intergenerational information and grassroots organizing.
Over time, its mission has remained the identical: to honor the ancestral traditions of Africa whereas making them accessible to trendy audiences. “We have now to maintain supporting the humanities, particularly presently when the present administration is taking funding away,” Kamau stated to the viewers on the conclusion of the finale live performance.
For Bathily, the Atlanta pageant holds private significance. “Atlanta is likely one of the superb locations in America. They’ve an enormous African American neighborhood and have been doing African dance for a really, very very long time earlier than even I got here to America. We really feel like we’re a neighborhood, even with Atlanta individuals, as a result of the dancers, we all know one another; the leaders, we all know one another. So the village retains increasing.”
Bathily hopes the viewers leaves the present not solely entertained however impressed. His last piece of recommendation? Maintain dancing!
“I’ll advise everybody to bop. Please dance,” he stated. “No one is an efficient dancer or a nasty dancer. Dance is expression. It’s remedy in Africa. You may have individuals having lots of issues. However as soon as we arrive in that place with all people, they neglect about what’s going on, and they’re sharing that second. That second you’re feeling like you might be in heaven; you’re feeling like you might be on high of a mountain whenever you go in the midst of that circle, individuals cheering and clapping for you, therapeutic you from every little thing. That is conventional remedy. And I’m saying remedy, however it’s greater than that. As a result of African dance and drum is a therapeutic factor for human beings. It’s your soul.”
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Tyra Douyon is an Atlanta-based journalist, content material author and editor with a grasp’s in skilled writing and a bachelor’s in English training from Kennesaw State College. Along with freelance writing, she is a broadcast poet and a workers editor for an unbiased literary arts journal.
