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The Washington Post Company Nov 13, 2006 Alittle goes a long way with percussive dance. Whether it's tap, Irish step dancing or other forms of musical footwork, choreography generally takes a back seat to rhythm, the body is less involved than the shoes, and the sound can become overwhelming. Yet in an engaging, richly textured program last weekend at Dance Place, Step Afrika! demonstrated that the stomping, body-slapping art of stepping has boundless expressive possibilities.
Step Afrika!'s work stems from both traditional African dance and its distant cousin stepping, a competitive dance practiced on college campuses among black fraternities and sororities. The group was founded in 1994 by Brian Williams, a Howard University graduate and Alpha Phi Alpha stepper who was struck by the similarities between stepping and what he saw on his travels through Africa. Generally, his troupe performs stepping and African dance side by side, or mixes the two forms. For this program, however, he wanted to bring both dance forms into the 21st century, which is how "Nxt/ step" came to be.
In "Nxt/step" the performers were both onstage and onscreen, as the dancers responded to video images of themselves. In creating this clever work, choreographer Jakari Sherman picked up pointers from the New York-based Bridgman/Packer Dance, which has also performed its brand of interactive video dance here. It was a good match for Step Afrika!, whose members are aces at syncopation. This was critical when, for instance, the onscreen dancers, projected on the backstage wall, laid down one beat, and the live dancers interwove their own. At one point, the video imagery that joined the live dancing showed some of the live dancers, creating a complex web of images and rhythms. Pulling off this challenging work required stamina -- stepping is extraordinarily taxing for a few minutes, let alone 20 -- and coordination, and there were a few glitches Saturday night. But these aspects aside, the tricks of the camera and the way the dancers reacted were great fun to watch.
"Nxt/step" was the closer in an evening that showed the blistering power of percussive dance as well as its softer, more introspective sides. The group's desire to see stepping taken seriously was reflected in "Can You Dance?," in which one of the dancers displayed his smooth, slithery abilities while a recorded voice-over asserted that steppers are not just "Greeks from school days" but legitimate artists. The narration ended with a taunting shot at the audience: "Can you step?" Ooh. Take that, skeptics. Except that it seemed strange to kick the show off with such a defensive posture -- presumably, the ticket holders who sold out the performance had already accepted the troupe as an artistic enterprise. The weekend's performances were sponsored by DancePlace and the Washington Performing Arts Society.
The works that followed "Can you Dance?" demonstrated the power and undeniable cool of stepping, as well as its relation to African dance. "Ndlamo," inspired by Zulu traditions, was a tidal wave of fierce muscular energy, as one dancer after another pounded and thrashed to the thunder of three drummers. Bits of character study and comedy were skillfully woven into "Sebenza," drawn from the dancing of South African miners, who make percussive use of their tall rubber work boots.
"The Deacon's Dance" and "Wade," first seen in September at Dance Place's season-opening program, turned stepping into an aching expression of spiritual anguish and redemption, accompanied by low, purring gospel singing onstage. More than any of the others, these two works took stepping into rarefied territory, where dance is not just physically or rhythmically impressive -- it feels essential. Stepping's awesome coordination, aerobic energy and noise were all stripped away, and what remained was quiet white-hot fire.
Credit: Washington Post Staff Writer
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