Kusum Africa

Kusum Africa is an original work, inspired by historical events and fed by African tradition, religion and modern sensibilities. It is a passionate theatrical piece that by conception, explores the nature of Africa, and unexpectedly evolves into a highly integrated work of that spirit of Africa.

Conceived by CK Ladzekpo, director of The African Music And Dance Ensemble, Kusum Africa, grew out of a three-year collaboration with Francis Nii Yartey (artistic director of the National Dance Company of Ghana), Kemoko Sano (artistic director of New York's Ballet Merveilles de Guinea) and Malonga Casquelourd (artistic director of Oakland's Fua Dia Congo).

Kusum is the centerpiece of our African Choreographers Forum, an event designed to showcase and examine the state of the art in contemporary dance-drumming in Africa and abroad.

The cast of Kusum Africa is a stellar and seasoned group of 48 drummers and dancers drawn from four extraordinary companies from both sides of the Atlantic - The Ghana National Dance Company, The Africa Music And Dance Ensemble, Fua Dia Congo and Ballet Merveilles de Guinea.

The story of Kusum Africa is unique. It is a social commentary on the struggle for leadership in Africa, south of the Sahara. There is a serious crisis of responsible social and political leadership in sub-Saharan Africa. The region is replete with wars, military coups and acute poverty. Kusum Africa draws on historic events of the mid 20th century, when a group of young people occupied a square in the town of Accra, Ghana to protest irresponsible leadership, using dance, drum and song to convey satire and revolutionary commentary. At one level, this is a story about the ongoing struggle for political power on the African continent. But the phenomenon of young people reacting to a sense of powerlessness and trying to take back that power is universal. People want to be free, and repression will be challenged-if not by this generation, then by the next one.

On another level, this work is about the modern African choreographer. Sub-Saharan dance-drumming is a living and still very productive art form, sustained by highly skilled master artists whose experience encompasses both the depth and subtlety of the traditional performance context and the demands of performing to modern audiences in a changing world. To artists such as these, the challenge of adapting their art form to a new environment is an act not of concession and reduction but of creation and vitality. Kusum Africa will provide the national forum to highlight these internationally significant artists and their art forms and, by extension, help the American public know more about African choreographers today.

The National Dance Company of Ghana
F. Nii-Yartey, Director

Profile

The high profile of The National Dance Company of Ghana marks the culmination of a development initiated by the first president of the Republic of Ghana in 1962, when the Ghana Dance Ensemble was established under the directorship of Professor J.H. Nketia at the Institute of African Studies. Professor A. Mawre-Opoku was its first artistic director and his traditional choreographed pieces still remain part of the standard repertoire of the company. F. Nii-Yartey took up the artistic director position in 1976. In 1992, a law moved the ensemble to the National Theatre as an autonomous body.

Under the artistic direction of Nii-Yartey, the company has enlarged its standard repertoire to include the creation of extended works.

Mission

• To preserve and enhance the quality and presentation of traditional dance forms through research and creative development.
• To study, experiment with and develop innovative works of traditional dance-drama.
• To explore the functional use of dance as a commentary on social, cultural and political issue.

Afican Music And Dance Ensemble
CK Ladzekpo, Director

The founding and development of The African Music and Dance Ensemble is closely associated with the development of the Pan-African consciousness of African-Americans in the United States. The Ensemble in fact emerged from a tradition of African music and dance activities set by CK Ladzekpo from Ghana, West Africa through his scholarly research, teaching and performances.

Since its inception in 1973, the Ensemble, based in Oakland, California, has sought to broaden access to the knowledge about Africa's rich cultural heritage across the United States, Canada and Europe. At university and high school campuses in California to Great Britain's Black Dance Development Trust's special summer schools for Black Dance Professionals in Europe, the Ensemble has taught the skill, artistry and philosophy that inform the African music and dance traditions. In community ethnic festivals in California, to sold-out season at the world-class Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, the Ensemble has pioneered the emergence of works by African choreographers on the modern concert stages of the United States with colorful and vibrant tapestries of authentic traditional dances and percussion ensemble music from the West African countries of Ghana, Togo and Benin.

The African Music and Dance Ensemble stands for tradition, but it also stands for creativity. It stands for the qualities that Africans cherish and admire in their music and dances. We are glad to share these with you.

CK Ladzekpo

C.K Ladzekpo (Home Page) is the director of the African music program at the University of California at Berkeley. He has combined a brilliant career as a performer, choreographer and composer with teaching and extensive scholarly research into African performing arts. He is a member of a famous family of African musicians and dancers who traditionally serve as lead drummers and composers among the Anlo-Ewe people of southeastern Ghana in West Africa.

C.K. Ladzekpo has been a lead drummer and instructor with the Ghana National Dance Ensemble, the University of Ghana's Institute of African Studies, and the Arts Council of Ghana. He joined the music faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in 1973 and remains an influential catalyst of the African perspective in the performing arts.

In 1973 he founded the critically acclaimed African Music and Dance Ensemble. As the company's artistic director, choreographer, and master drummer, he has led in many pioneering African dance and polyrhythmic percussion ensemble music presentations at major venues in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has been artistic director of the Mandeleo Institute in Oakland since 1986. He is the artistic director of the Northern California's African Cultural Festival, popularly known as The Africans Are Coming. The Africans Are Coming is the largest seasonal professional African Cultural Arts Extravaganza in the United States.

C.K. Ladzekpo's modern concert stage rendition of Atsiagbeko, a traditional war dance drumming suite of the Anlo-Ewe is one of the features in the television documentary African Dance at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival which continues to be a popular broadcast since its national premiere in 1988 on PBS.

The Company

Drummers:
CK Ladzekpo
Kwaku Ladzekpo
Gideon Allorwoyie
Moddy Perry
Trevino Leon
Kwaku Katamani
Keith Norman

Dancers:
Betty Ladzekpo
Caprice Armstrong
Tiffany Graham
Mawuli Ladzekpo
Nailah Hepburn
Letitia Powell
Alicia Chatman
Isabeth Landeros
Amber Todd

Fua Dia Congo
Malonga Casquelourd, Director

Fua Dia Congo is a company of thirty dancers and musicians dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the Congolese culture through the artistic interpretation of its daily life and rituals.

Fua Dia Congo was established in 1977 in Palo Alto, California by its Artistic Director Malonga Casquelourd. Since its inception, Fua Dia Congo, which means, Congolese Heritage, has astonished audiences with its unique repertoire of more than twenty Central Africans dances, musical numbers and songs. The repertoire of the Fua Dia Congo is drawn from the music and dance traditions of the people of the Central African countries of Congo, Zaire, Angola and the Central African Republic which exemplify the dynamic blending of music, song and dance in black Africa. The company’s repertoire reflects the religious, social and military traditions of several cultural groupings from these Central African countries.

The company has appeared in many ground breaking performances at major venues in the U.S.A. These include seven seasons at the nationally known San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival at Herbst Theater, Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts, Washington,D.C., a sold-out season at the world class Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, several seasons at the African Cultural Festival in Oakland, California and Harambee African Festival in Houston, Texas.

Malonga Casquelourd

Malonga Casquelourd is a distinguished African choreographer, dancer, master drummer, singer, actor and teacher. He was a principal dancer of the National Congolese Dance Company from 1965 - 1968 after several years of apprenticeship as a child protege at Community Fetes, which are indigenous Congolese centers of learning, devoted to proper assimilation of the younger generations into the cultural traditions of society. As a member of the National Congolese Dance Company, he has toured and performed in several countries of Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.

In 1969, Malonga moved to Europe as a resident choreographer and principal performer with Le Ballet Diaboua, a rare and privileged Congolese repertory company resident in Paris, France. From this base, he led Le Ballet Diaboua in three successful annual performance and touring seasons (1969 - 1971) introducing some rich dance artistry of the Congo and other Central African countries to the European concert-stage.

In 1972, he came to the United States and co-founded Tanawa, the first central African dance company in the U.S.A. while concurrently pursuing a distinguished career as a faculty member of several higher institutions of learning at the east coast. These institutions include Hunters College, New York (1973 - 1974) Clark Center For the Performing Arts, New York (1973 - 1976) York College, Queens, N.Y. (1975) New York University (1974 -1975) and New Jersey State University (1974 - 1975).
In 1976, he moved to California and has since taught at Stanford University (1977 - 1979), San Diego State University (1980) and San Francisco State University (1977 - present).

In 1977 he founded Fua Dia Congo, an African repertory company dedicated to broadening access to the knowledge about Africa's rich cultural heritage across the United States, Canada and Europe. As the company's director, choreographer and principal performer, he has led in many ground breaking performances at major venues in the U.S.A. These include several seasons at the nationally known San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival at Herbst Theater, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., a sold-out season at the world-class Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, several seasons at the largest African cultural arts extravaganza in the United States: The African Cultural Festival, Calvin Simmons Theater, Oakland and Harambee African Festival, Houston, Texas.

Kemoko Sano
Ensemble Director, Percussionist, Teacher, Choreographer
Kemoko Sano is recognized in francophone West Africa as one of the foremost exponents of traditional music and dance. For nearly forty years, he has directed large music and dance ensembles from Guinea in regional, national, and international venues, beginning with the Prefectural Troupe of Macenta in 1960, the Ballet National Dzoliba from 1973 to 1986 and Les merveilles d’Africains of the Republic of Guinea, the national company, for which he rehearses and makes new works, performing with them in Guinea, Ghana, Europe, the United States, Mexico, Colombia, and Australia.

Kemoko Sano has trained some of the finest Guinean artists of the generation which came of age after Guinean Independence in 1958, including the director and most of the original members of the seven-member Percussions de Guinée, which has toured widely internationally in recent years in the revue "Africa Oyé" and Mamady Kéita, now resident in Brussels. At the time of his transfer from Les Ballet National Djoliba to Les Ballets Africains, he was asked to select the ten best musicians and dancers from the former troupe to join Les Ballets Africains, where they became principal artists.

Kemoko Sano’s international projects have been increasingly varied since 1989. He played the doundoun riding sixteen meters above the Champs Elysées at the very top of a pyramid of 115 Guinean percussionists on a float in "La Marseillaise, " the evening parade extravaganza conceived by Jean-Paul Goude for the Bicentennial Celebration of the French Revolution in 1989, seen live by television viewers around the world. In 1991, he was asked by the Guinean-born theatrical director Souleymane Koly to collaborate as Director of Percussion on a French-funded production, Waramba: `Opéra Mandingue for Koly’s troupe Kotéba, which had its international premiere in Paris in October 1991 and its U.S. premiere in Atlanta in July, 1994. He taught a performance workshop at San Francisco State University in the spring semester of 1994 a Fulbright Artist-In-Residence. In March 1994 he spent one day in Los Angeles assisting Debbie Allen in integrating two of his male dancers into her choreography for sixteen dancers from eight world-famous companies for the 1994 Academy Awards Oscar Show.

Born in 1942, Kemoko Sano had a traditional upbringing in a village near Macenta, in the Forest Region of Guinea. His legal name is Mohamed Kémoko Sano, but his stage name as a performing artist has always been Kemoko Sano. Although many of the artists he has trained have emigrated to Europe or the United States, Kemoko Sano continues to live and work in Guinea. He has been passing on to the members of his troupe the cultural legacy which he inherited in daily rehearsals for twelve years. His own troupe does not receive material support from the government of Guinea, and he is now obliged to even pay for its rehearsal space in a neighborhood cultural center in Conakry. Twenty five members of his troupe, known then as the Merveilles, performed at the Marché Africain des Spectacles à Abidjan (MASA) in May 1995.