Learning In SituLast summer, aware that "it's very easy for African dance to become Americanized," Sharpley took a group of student dancers and drummers to Mali, Senegal, and Gambia to learn the basics of their art form in situ.
"What they develop is presence. Speaking of appearing in front of a group used to terrify them. But performing taught them how to hit that stage, how to work an audience. Dancing taught them how to shine."
The best-kept secret in Oberlin may be Dance Diaspora. For good reason. Created in 1992 as a touring ensemble, the College's semi-professional dance company has broadened access to Africa's rich cultural heritage by performing in venues up and down the Atlantic seaboard, garnering repeated invitations to schools, churches, and a variety of dance venues.
Whether it's 400 filmgoers getting in the groove at a gala party launching the 20th International Cleveland Film Festival last spring or at Tufts University not long ago, enthusiastic audiences greet the troupe wherever its members perform the colorful and vibrant traditional dances of West Africa.
"Oh when the drums sound, the earth shakes," said a fan before a recent performance at Cleveland State University. "The hall is going to be packed."
And it was. "We blew them away," says Adenike Sharpley, the company's director and choreographer. "We had standing room only."
Learning In Situ
Last summer, aware that "it's very easy for African dance to become Americanized," Sharpley took a group of student dancers and drummers to Mali, Senegal, and Gambia to learn the basics of their art form in situ.
"I wanted them to learn not only the precise steps as they are done in Africa, but also to observe the way dance is used in the context of African culture."
Sharpely, drummer Matthew Hill, and dancers Sheri Burnett, Johanna Almiron, and Christopher Lawinski '98 worked intensely with Gambian dance and drumming master Momodou L. Jarju at their home base in the coastal city of Serrekunda, Gambia. During their two-week stay they spread out to villages in the interior to observe a wide variety of dances at their places of origin and to study with other dance masters. The rhythms and movements they absorbed during the African sojourn were translated into Diaspora's unique idiom for the company's December on-campus performances featuring Burnett and Hill's drumming group, Iluiaiye.
Regardless of how often Dance Diaspora performs off campus, the company's annual home concert is the year's peak - for the company and for the Oberlin community. The audience, a rainbow coalition from all parts of town and gown -and probably the widest cross section at any College or Conservatory arts event - crowds Warner Center almost to the rafters. From the moment the musicians strike their drums, the entire audience is involved. It's not every day they see dancers so enjoy the act of dancing.
Moving Round
Hunched over and alert for lightning rhythm and weight changes, the graceful, exuberant dancers spurt into staccato bursts of movement, then whip and fly through fast collage-like phrases. Steps and torso contractions erupt and end and erupt again, like the torrent of drums accompanying them. The onlookers, feet tapping and bodies swaying, resonate to the natural frequencies of the performers. They simply must move.
Developing and orchestrating this circuit of feeling is Sharpley, who founded Dance Diaspora. A lecturer in African-American studies, she came to Oberlin with a wealth of experience as a choreographer and dancer, including work with the legendary Katherine Dunham.
"My father used to play Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis for me," recalls the Cleveland native, "and I would dance in my crib, holding on to the rail."
Despite a dispiriting attitude toward African forms in the dance community, Sharpley's passion took her from studying ballet and modern dance to leading several professional troupes.
"The classically trained sometimes judge African dance from a European value system that can come across as, 'you are different, but definitely not equal,'" she says.
"I've been asked, 'Why do you move the pelvis? Why do you all have to shake your butt like that?'
"Why? Because we put it down there. The body's center of gravity is lower, then the pelvis is isolated and it can move on its own. In African dance, the feet are straight forward from the form, and parts sometimes move separately. The ideal is round. The body looks round. It moves round. So you get a whole different line."
"Dancing is a living tradition. Should I be tempted to ease up, seven teachers behind me are urging me on. When, some 20 years after working with Katherine Dunham, I've got the dance up, and it's presentable, and I hear some little girl out in the audience say, 'I want to do that!' then I know I've done my job."
Entrance into Dance Diaspora is by audition only. Courses in Sharpley's West African dance, and jazz and blues improv courses also help.
"Or they can tell me they can fly!" she chuckles, then says seriously: "The most important qualification is desire. A few years ago a junior came to me with no experience, but she wanted to dance, badly. She had to reconfigure and retrain her entire body. She worked and worked and by her senior year she was the top dancer."
Some Dance Diaspora graduates go on to dance careers in New York. Those who go into other professions still benefit from the experience.
"What they develop is presence. Speaking or appearing in front of a group used to terrify them. But performing taught them how to hit that stage, how to work an audience."
She pauses, then smiles: "Dancing taught them how to shine."