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The Indiana Daily Student

arts community events

African American Dance Company to present 22nd Annual Dance Workshop

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The African American Dance Company, based on campus, will bring dance and percussion professionals for its 22nd Annual Dance Workshop on March 6-7 in Indianapolis and Bloomington. They will teach contemporary, African and Afro-Cuban dance techniques to people ages 12 and up. 

The workshop is open to anybody interested in black dance styles and forms, director Stafford C. Berry, Jr. said. No experience is required for registration.

“As an educator, I love facilitating and watching all kinds of students learn about something they didn’t know before,” Berry said. “To see that happening in dance is an active transformation, movement-wise, be it big or small.”

For the first time, the workshop will teach classes in Indianapolis. Many current members and alumni of the African American Dance Company are from Indianapolis.

This workshop also serves as a recruitment tool, events and communications specialist Hannah Crane said .

“The dance workshop is our chance to invite people in to experience what it’s like for us,” Crane said. "This is a learning space, so anybody is welcome to join us in that experience."

On March 6, dancers will work at the Indianapolis Movement Arts Collective. From 6-7:15 p.m. that evening, Qarrianne Blayr and Quentin Apollovaughn Sledge of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company will teach contemporary dance. Then, at 7:30, Berry will kick off the workshop with a Bantaba, an African Diasporic dance and drumming celebration.

On March 7, participants can attend two morning sessions and choose between three dances for each session. In the afternoon session, participants can choose to learn one of three dances. These classes will be at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center.

Dance professionals, including Danzel Thompson-Stout, Milagros Ramirez and C. Kemal Nance, will teach hip hop/street dance, salsa/casino, Afro-Cuban and Umfundalai technique.

Professional percussionists will also attend the workshop, including Andre Rosa, who drums for the African American Dance Company. 

In 2012, during her undergraduate studies at IU, Hannah Crane, the events and communications specialist, danced for the AADC under Iris Rosa, the former director. She said she will never forget seeing her first African American Dance Company performance.

“I was just hooked,” Crane said.

At 6 p.m. on March 7, there will be an Annual Dance Showcase at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center featuring dancers who learned choreography in the Saturday afternoon classes.

“That’s a high energy, really fulfilling experience for everybody,” Crane said.

She said performing can scare participants, but she encourages it because learning choreography in a couple hours and then performing it is a transformative experience.

This year, there will be a panel of dance and percussion professionals at the showcase. This allows audience members to see the dances and then talk about them, Crane said.

This showcase is free and open to the public.

Participants 12 and up can enroll in a single class, a single day of classes or complete, full registration. Prices range from $30 to $125. Registration information can be found on the African American Arts Institute website

Berry said all of the movement styles taught at the workshop start with Africa as their birthplace. By extending the lessons to Caribbean and contemporary dances, it gives participants a more complete picture of variations in black movement forms. 

“When you look at black dance and black movement, you can’t always focus on one specific place or location,” Berry said. “It would be doing the looking a disservice."

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