UNGANISHA

As part of Black History Month, this diverse performance piece demonstrates

just how much modern dance owes to Africa.

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World Wide Web Unganisha is a Swahili word that means “together.” For Wunmi Idowu of the Woezo Africa Music & Dance Theatre, it’s the perfect phrase to encapsulate what she’s doing with her ambitous dance showcase. “Basically, what we’re trying to do is connect the diversity in modern dance styles that we feel were influenced by an African-dance diaspora,” she says.

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Your Roots Are Showing The show features 45 dancers and nine choreographers and also includes theatrical pieces and documentaries. It’s a decidedly dense show, but it almost has to be. After all, Unganisha seeks to demonstrate how African dance has inspired styles like tap, jazz, hip-hop, samba, capoeira, step, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Caribbean and salsa. “I’ve always wanted to show how African dance has brought the modern dances to the present,” Idowu says. “It was something that was brewing in my heart.”

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Danceable Logistics “The biggest challenge we have is time,” Idowu says. “We have so many different choreographers and so many difference dances. One of the dances has 20 dancers. So finding time, making sure everybody has time to come to rehearsals whether it’s once or twice a week, that’s been the biggest challenge.” Fortunately, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks and the YMCA are among the organizations that have donated practice space.

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In Good Company Collaboration lies at the heart of Unganisha. “We have master choreographers in the dance styles we have mentioned,” Idowu adds. “They’re prominent in the community. They teach classes, they travel all around the world, they have their own dance companies, so we are leveraging the knowledge and the expertise they have to be able to teach others.

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Living History That Really Moves Ultimately, Unganisha seeks to celebrate the melting pot of dance styles while paying tribute to the African culture from which they descended. “That’s why we decided to have it in Black History Month, just to show some historical facts,” Idowu says. “We feel like Calgary is such a cultural city that it would help all the choreographers and dancers and people who compete in these dance art forms…. This will give them that chance to see exactly where it came from and to see that connection. So when they’re performing, it gets to a different level of intensity.”