Urban Bush Women & Companie Janti-Bi @ BAM

I'm confident in saying this is the best dance of 2008. Hands down. The collaboration between Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi was seamless, powerful, provoking, exquisite, and absolutely beautiful. I apprenticed for Urban Bush Women in the fall of 2007 just before they set out for Senegal to begin the process of creating Les écailles de la mémoire (The Scales of Memory) with Germaine Acogny's Compagnie Jant-Bi.

In the Artist Talk just before the performance, the choreographers discussed their creative process, citing their immersion in the harshest, most blatent evidence of African and Afro-American history to develop a truly awesome work. When asked what each had thought of the other's homeland prior to their collaboration and what they'd learned after the project, Germaine stunned me when she said, while slavery was always a part of African culture, she and her Company never imagined the horrors suffered by the Africans brought to America. She learned of the harshness of America's brand of slavery after visiting a museum in Tallahassee, FL last year. It never occurred to be that Africans wouldn't know our side of the story. The two also talked about how much they enjoyed the creative process of the project because it was a collaborative effort. They felt they were joined spiritually and they truly admired and respect each other as artists. They talked about traveling to slave dungeons, rehearsing in Germaine's open air studio overlooking the savanna and how the creation of the work was a healing experience for all involved.

The piece is filled with incredibly powerful imagery. And while Jawole said there wasn't a narrative, I did sense that it was moving with history. I'm currently reading a book by dance anthropologist Lynn Fauley Emery, Black Dance: From 1619 to Today. In the beginning chapters, she discusses the earliest recorded dance history of African slaves and she mentions that slaves were forced to dance to maintain their health. She also mentions the emergance of the Black bourgois and slave dance parties, their structures, and their importance. I found these images, among others, in Les écailles de la mémoire. It isn't surprising that Jawole would take an anthropologic approach to this work. Her last work was inspired by the life of the famed dance historian, Pearl Primus.

The piece asks questions of identity. I think these 14 dancers have come far in answering them.

Two thumbs up.

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