Harbus

Issue date: 12/10/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Karibu Nyaggah (NB) The African Dance Squad prepares to take the stage

On an otherwise frigid night, Burden Auditorium radiated tradition from the soulful and spirited show gracing its stage. The audience was treated to a delightful and educational exposition of African Diaspora's art, culture, and history as the African-American Student Union (AASU), the Caribbean Business Club (CBC), and the African Business Club (ABC) collaborated in bringing us their annual production of Sankofa.
For the second year in a row, the show was an unquestionable hit, leaving the 500 members of the Harvard Business School community in attendance impressed as their sectionmates and friends unveiled hidden talents. The audience soaked up the energy of the performers and readily showed their appreciation with frequent laughter, applause, and vocal encouragement. The entire night, including the pre-show reception and the post-show celebration, was a clear example of this community at its best.

The show takes its title, Sankofa, from the Ghanaian Akan-Twi language. Roughly translated, the word "Sankofa" means "We must look back into the past so that we can move forward into the future." This year's production, led by Ciara Gary (OD) and Matthew Brewer (OF), was deeply adherent to its title both thematically and in detail. The beautiful cover of the Sankofa program was a prime example of this nuanced yet consistent approach with its eponymous "backward looking, but forward facing" bird. The quilt work of acts was neatly stitched together by a series of interludes featuring a fictitious present-day African-American family sharing a Sunday dinner. Through their dialogue, the members of the family guided the audience while providing both context and comic relief.

This family of guides was an elegant way of bringing out some less apparent, but no less important, cultural and historical themes. For instance, the mid-show introduction of an interloping boyfriend, named Tyrone and played by Damien Hooper-Campbell (NC), provided an opportunity to engage some of the tension that exists between tradition and progress. The ensuing inquisition of Tyrone by Father, played by Harold Martin (OE), evolves into a broader table-wide discussion contrasting generational differences in reverence for and allegiance to our traditions and history. In juxtaposing this archetypal, contemporary family and performances behind them, Gary and Brewer masterfully divorced their audience from the notion that the evolution of African-American culture is strictly linear and compartmentalized in genre and era. The end result was a mosaic yet cohesive exploration of African Diaspora's culture that forced its audience to not only draw lines between obviously connected acts, such as two dance routines. But also, to see the more subtle influence of, for instance, traditional spirituals on modern-day Greek stepping.

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