A quote from the front page article on African Dance in Sunday’s Times from Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: ”It’s a gradual process. In New York, I find the dance audience is very segregated except when I go to the Ailey company or to Harlem Stage. But there’s a growing sense of diversity, of different kinds of heritage.”
I think this is a nice testament to our mission at work.
This follows a very informative look into some of history and context for what we typically think of as African dance and how it has gradually become part of our awareness over several decades of exposure here and through the work of some diligent artists and scholars who have spent countless hours on the continent reaching into the past and gleaning from the present landscape. It talks of how this engagement and exposure has affected what it means to be African American, or just to be American. It talks about how far that thinking has come and how we have yet just scratched the surface.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/arts/dance/23african.html?th&emc=th