UAA professor traces jazz dance from Ghana to Cuba

She chased the roots of jazz dance from New York City to Ghana, West Africa, only to find herself, years later, in Perico, Cuba, dancing with the possessed.

Through a dozen years of fieldwork in both countries, University of Alaska Anchorage dance professor Jill Flanders Crosby now understands that the artful steps in Cuba echo those of Ghana, physically retelling the dislocation narrative of a people -- the Ewe (Eh-vay) of West Africa -- as they were tricked into slavery and sent sailing across the Atlantic as a labor force for the New World.

Arriving in Cuba in the 1800s, the Ewe worked in sugar refineries while preserving their African roots in a danced religious experience called Arara.

The steps, the percussive drums and rhythmic gourds, the sacred objects called "fodunes," the exotic chants -- all are elements of centuries-old religious rituals. According to their beliefs, participants invite deities to teach lessons and heal by "possessing" (the word is used in the supernatural sense, here) dancers at community ceremonies.

Crosby's collected oral histories of Cuban elders and the work of her other collaborators -- UAA dance professor Brian Jeffery, San Francisco visual artist Susan Matthews and Alaska videographer Brendan McElroy -- will converge as an art installation at the Ludwig Foundation in Havana, Cuba, in December 2010. From there the work will travel to venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco and eventually to Anchorage. Crosby plans a book within two years.

Crosby herself has danced among the Arara, watching spirits take hold of dancing worshippers. "It was humbling to watch," she said, "to see the body change."

Read the full article by Kathleen McCoy at http://www.adn.com/life/arts/story/899804.html