Dance

Watch a "Funga" performance by

New York University's African Dance Class

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Read Katie Weindler's Commentary on African Dance:

I first started taking African Dance because I started listening to a lot of Afro-beat music (Fela Kuti specifically).  My ex-boyfriend was a djembe player and before I even started talking to him, I thought the djembe made the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.  It sounds cheesy, but in Africa, they believe drums hold magic.  After all, instruments do contain healing power and in most African cultures, the djembe is the most powerful.  Thousands of years ago, the djembe was used to make announcements to the community since it could be heard from such large distances.  In Africa, drums don't just make noise. They talk.  In traditional ceremonies, most often males play the drums, which dictate the movement of the female dancers' hips. I began taking classes at the CDC dance center in West Philadelphia.  I found African dance to be such a natural movement, much different from ballet and the highly-choreographed dance classes I had taken as a child.  Often the same movement is repeated until there is a break in the drum beat.  Because there are live drummers present at any decent African dance class,you don't learn by simply memorizing the song and the steps that go along.  You dance in the present.  Good dancers can change their movement with anything the drummer plays.  African dance is a celebration of life, dating back thousands of years, mimicking everyday actions like fetching water and sowing seeds.  It is a celebration and spiritual praise of "the everyday."  I moved on from Philadelphia and the djembe player but I will never get over my love for African culture.  My love for African dance brought me to study abroad in Ghana through NYU.  There I learned the style of dance specific to this region.  I even wrote my final paper for my class at Ashesi University, "Conflicts in African States," about how dance competitions and performances are the key for peace and unification on the continent.  From Senegal to Cape Town, it is truly remarkable to see the similarity in the traditional dance movements. This video is from my dance class I took in my final semester at NYU.  This dance is called "Funga" and is a welcome dance originating from the Vai people of Liberia.  We choreographed the dance to fit our group and chose to sing the "Funga" song first while performing everyday chores like washing clothes and sweeping.  The words of the "Funga" song cannot be translated exactly, but most people translate the words with a highly spiritual messages, meaning something like "welcome and peace to you."  We performed a polyrhythm and then carried out the movements.  The dance is dictated by the clave beat that grounds our polyrhythm and the entire dance.  We chose an Ivorian song that is also grounded in the clave beat to accompany the dance.  The dance symbolizes welcoming anyone into the community, and that message is grounded in every movement.  The movements from left to right indicate a sweeping and clearing of the land in order to make room for a new person or group of people.  The hand movements above the head indicate a blessing from the sky and the movements toward the ground indicate a blessing from the earth.  When we walk two at a time in a line, our movements mimic feeding a new guest and "welcoming someone with both heart and mouth."  The hand movements up, down, left and right indicate welcoming someone from the North, South, East and West.  As a group, we changed the music at the point where we added our own choreography.  We all collaborated in finding African-like movements to blend with a modern step and sound.  We used a modern Trinidadian song for the final part of the dance to symbolize the influence of Afro-beat all over the world as a result of the African Diaspora.  The Trinidadian style of music and dance called "Soca" is closely related to African music and relies heavily on the clave beat specifically, just like "Funga." I try to take dance classes whenever I can, because just five minutes of dancing never fails to put me in a great mood.  You just can't hold onto stress and negativity when you dance and a truly special connection is formed when you dance with others. One of my former dance teachers used to repeat this African proverb: "Good dancing restores the community to wholeness."  I truly believe that.

Katie Weindler graduated from New York University in 2007 with a degree in English. She spent a year in Philadelphia with the AmeriCorps and studied abroad with the NYU program in Ghana. She is conversational in Spanish, French and Twi. Katie is currently living in New York City and remains passionate about music, literature, African studies, and dance.