State grant backing mother, daughter to preserve West African dance

When Nailah Bulley was two years old, her mother knew that she was a performer. Bulley would cry when she couldn’t be on stage, so her mother decided to make her performance costumes and do up her hair since she seemed to be a natural already.

Now Bulley, a Bremerton resident, and her mother, Afua Kouyate, have been selected as an apprentice and master artist pairing in the Center for Washington Cultural Traditions’ 202324 Heritage Arts Apprenticeship Program. This flagship program for the center is co-sponsored by Humanities Washington and ArtsWA to preserve traditional arts, crafts and skills that are at risk of being lost, by funding their installation into the next generation of artists.

One pairing among 15 in the program’s sixth cohort, Bulley, 32, and Kouyate, 65, will spend at least 100 hours together in one-on-one time throughout a year to intensively study and practice traditional and authentic West African dance and its folkloric preservation.

“African dance is a global folkloric method of communicating culture – it’s a way of life,” Kouyate, who lives in Seattle, said. “When we look at African dance, we’re looking at an intergenerational movement and a movement of therapeutic engagement that keeps a community healthy.”

A bond between mother, daughter and dance

Kouyate views her life in five phases. “Identity” saw her examine the importance of culture to her as an adolescent, “recruitment” marked her mission to teach her peers about African culture and dance as a teenager, in “engagement” she traveled worldwide to learn from cultural experts,

PROVIDED BY AFUA KOUYATE Nailah Bulley, 32, and her mother Afua Kouyate, 65, pose in traditional West African clothing. The duo will work in an apprenticeship program to study, perform and preserve West African dance.