24th Annual Collage des Africaines March 7-10, 2019 at Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts in Oakland

Sharon Baird in "From Drum to Steel Drum!
(From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

The 24h Annual Collage des Africaines concert Sat. evening, March 9, 2019, opened with a wonderful film, featuring excerpts from the "Alice Street" documentary, directed by Spencer Wilkinson, that highlighted the history of the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. Many of those interviewed were in the audience tonight.  In the morning, March 10, from 9-10 a.m. is the annual community breakfast potluck followed by a day of drum and dance workshops. It is the conclusion of another wonderful Collage.

Sharon Baird
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Sharon Baird
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Val Serrant on djembe in "From Drum to Steel Drum!
(From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Val Serrant on djembe with Sharon Baird and Paul Snagg in
"From Drum to Steel Drum! (From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Paul Snagg in "From Drum to Steel Drum!
(From Africa to the Caribbean)
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Prescott Circus Theatre Dancers
Photo: Wanda Sabir

This year the theme: "Resilience through Resistance" echoed in the various company performances from the youthful Prescott Circus Theatre dancers to the more seasoned elders who could still cut the rug (smile).

Prescott's "Higher Ground: A Tribute to West African Roots of Stilt Dancing!" featured an amazing cast of dancers who were twirling on piney feet of varying heights.  As each dancer took his or her solo, the oohs and ahhs were audible. Their performance, choreographed by Ceara Walton to live percussion, reminded me to the days when the Bay Area could look forward to The Africans Are Coming pageantry at Calvin Simmons Theatre when at the start of the evening dancers on stilts would come into the auditorium as the audience stood and clapped as these tall dancers boogied African-Diaspora style up and down the aisles.

Prescott Circus Theatre Dancers
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Prescott Circus Theatre Dancers
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Dimensions Dance Theatre, Inc. presented an excerpt of a new work, a tribute to General Harriett Tubman, "Ain't No Turning Back." This is precisely what the fierce warrior would say to those people who decided to board her train to freedom. LaTanya d. Tigner was Harriett Tubman, however other Tubmans joined her as the vision and its reach grew larger covering more landscape. This is Andrea Vonny Lee's work which we saw a shorter version last year.

Dimensions Dance Theatre, Inc. in a tribute to
Harriett Tubman, "Ain't No Turning Back."
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Just before intermission, Diamano Coura West African Dance Company gave us an excerpt of "Diola," music and dance of the Mandinka people. Years of living together developed a fusion of dance styles characterized by the "'flying bird dance'" with hand clapping, sometimes amplified by wooden sticks which the women dancers used to hit the floors too as another dancer blew a whistle. This dance was also from last spring choreographed by Danielle Delane and Nikka Maynard. It was high energy and featured solos by some of the famous teachers who are here this week for Collage.

LaTanya d. Tigner as Harriett Tubman (DDT)
in a tribute to "Ain't No Turning Back."
Photo: Wanda Sabir

Sister Linda Johnson as Program Host

Sister Linda Johnson, the emcee-- her presence a libation, introduced the program and the companies. We also got to meet Diamano Coura Board members before intermission. The Drum Call was another treat, the men and women really skilled in percussion this evening whether it was the participants in the drum call or the steel pan drummers who performed first: Val Serrant on djembe with Sharon Baird and Paul Snagg on steel pans in "From Drum to Steel Drum! (From Africa to the Caribbean) or the wonderful Dandha Da Hora in "Amor Negro: Forçe e Resiliência/Black Love: Strength and Resilience (Brazil) or the many  cajón percussionists in De Rompe Y Raja's "Afro Peruvian sounds. 

Reginald Ray-Savage's Savage Jazz Dance Company featured its women dancers in a work, "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, A story about searching, seeing and survival" that had the audience affirming loudly as the dancers performed in stunning solo work, as well as larger ensemble work -- characters struggling together and alone to overcome barriers. It was fitting for the moment we are currently facing as women are standing up and demanding a safer world, a more just world, a world where women and girls can live free of fear, oppression and pain.

In the Rompe Y Raja work, there was a section when different dancers performed a little soft shoe choreography combined with hambone. I'd never seen dancers from elsewhere in the African Diaspora perform this kind of dance before. I wonder if the dance developed in Peru just as it developed here in North America.

The evening closed with another wonderful Diamano Coura work, this one, "Resilience Medley, A Tradition of New Cultures" is the work of choreographer, Ibrahima Diouf. He says in the program notes that his work looks at what has happened to colonial Africa when parceled landscapes meant national cultures co-existed along porous borders. Countries like "Guinea, Liberia and the Ivory Coast represent a shift and a re-imagining of identity reflected in the Soko, Kuku, Jomokai, and Mandingo rhythms."

The colorful costumes and the even more colorful rhythms had all of us tapping our feet as dancers flew in the air. I guess at the November performance after Thanksgiving we'll be able to see the complete work.

It was a wonderful evening as all Collage events are. So many members of the audience raised their hands when asked who was attending for the first time. Also many people raised their hands when asked if they'd traveled to attend the evening concert. Just the capacity audience and the wonderful vendors in the lobby selling cloth, clothes, soaps, baskets and jewelry lent the warmth of home-- Africa in America.  Thanks to events like this in a space like the Malonga Center for the Arts traditions are established and institutions created to hold such traditions such as Diamano Coura's Collage des Africaines.

Collage is one of the many reasons why Oakland is truly a home away from home for so many Diaspora Africans. Diamano Coura is one of the many reasons why the link between the Diaspora and home cross generations grows tighter each passing year. The work Diamano Coura does and by extension the work of the other Pan African companies represented in Collage do collectively is to repair what was lost while we were separated from one another.

Collage is what reparations looks like. I am not saying we don't want the money; however, mending the riff is a multi-tiered process.