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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Dances Describe Struggles of Living in Africa
By Jennifer Noyer
For the Journal
Friday evening, Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project, founded by the husband-and-wife team Esther Baker and Olivier Tarpaga, came from Los Angeles to conclude the Wild Dancing West festival at VSA North Fourth Art Center. The project has roots in sub-Saharan Burkina Faso in Africa and California. Two works, “Arbre d'Adaptation” and the new “Sira Kan,” demonstrated political dance-theater at a strong emotional level. The focus was on the suffering of poor immigrants forced out of West Africa.
Accompanied by Tarpaga playing on the lolo, or mouth harp, Wilfried Souly performed Esther Baker and Tarpaga's choreography for “Arbre d'Adaptation (Adaptive Tree),” blending West African movement with contemporary dance. The vibrating sounds of the lolo mimicked Souly's tremulous body.
He rose from the floor to slowly advance toward the sound, each footfall accentuating sudden strikes of the drum. It was a journey in which the dancer grasped and twisted a leg, foot or arm, to rearrange himself in a new adaptation. This motif varied with convulsive torso movement and frantic gestures of hands and arms. Frightened, nervous and repressed, Souly laughed, stumbled, then broke out in a frantic war dance. It was a political message. Josette Sheehan of the World Food Program said, “People have only three options: They riot, they emigrate or they die.”
“Malik and Sukeyna” was a five-minute film by Baker and Tarpaga about a love story. Malik, a Senegalese man, goes to New York while his wife waits in Africa. Images of city streets, subways and barren flats contrasted with colorful women in Senegal dancing and embracing, head to head, with their men. The rap music was a collaboration among Senegalese hip-hop artists.
“Sira Kan/On the Road” is a new work bringing together stories of youths risking their lives to reach Europe. A stunning set design by the project divided the stage into four parts, three by small mounds of sand, each surmounted by a tin-can toy airplane lit from above by a solitary hanging bulb, and the fourth space by a djembe drum and a chair. Aboubacar Kouyate both danced and drummed as one of the trio of men who navigated, suffered and even died voyaging from one small island to the other. Michael West's sound design and a song by Amadou Kienou enriched the traumatic mood of struggle and desperation.
Tarpaga and Souly choreographed and performed with Kouyate in this wrenching work. Tarpaga appeared first on his knees before the mound down stage left. Panting and breathless, his hands behind his head, he described the escape from Morocco, surviving the ocean, and landing in the Canary Islands. He exclaimed, “… and now I am, and now I am, and now …” and the dramatic story began.
Tarpaga and Souly began playing with the toy planes, pretending to fly them in the air as they ran in circles. Kouyate joined as the three ritually wiped their feet, stepping into another element. Watery sounds accompanied them as they sat, backs to the audience, facing the island/mound at stage right, rowing with their arms across what seemed an endless expanse. They tumbled off, saved each other and continued, never arriving, then gasping and crying out.
This was very physical dance-theater. The movement progressed from chaotic disarray to synchronized group patterns. The men changed places clinging to a leg, being dragged across the floor, or being lifted up before sliding down the other's body.
Finally, Souly died at center stage, and Tarpaga ran to each mound/island, destroying it before returning to his position. Panting again, with hands behind his head, he exclaimed, “Now I am ... now I am … and now,” then blackout.
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