Brazil

Brazil is the largest country in South America, both in area and population. It has more people than all other South American countries combined. Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are Brazil’s two largest cities. Brasilia is the capital city of Brazil.

Brazil boasts amazing geographic features, including tropical rain forests, vast deserts, lush plains and mighty rivers, including the Amazon, the world’s second longest river.

About half of Brazil’s population are descended from German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish settlers. Others are of African (or a mix of European and African) ancestry. Indians, the original Brazilians, make up less than 1 percent of Brazil's people.


Capoeira
The majority of African slaves brought to Brazil came from the Port of Angola.  However, they were captured in different regions of Africa.  They spoke many different languages and they had many different religions, customs and traditions.  The slave traders mixed the African people up so that they could no longer communicate with each other, so that they would be less effective at organizing rebellions.  As a result, many peoples were brought together that had never had anything to do with one another before. They shared with each other many of their traditional practices, and it is believed that capoeira is one of the fruits of this mixture of African cultures.
 
Most of the enslaved Africans in Brazil worked on huge tobacco and sugarcane plantations. They were forced to work most of the day in extreme heat and under cruel, inhumane conditions. They needed their cultural traditions, such as capoeira, to keep their spirits alive. If you were to travel to Angola and other parts of Africa today, you find fighting techniques, music and rituals similar to some of the elements in capoeira, but capoeira itself was created in Brazil.
 
Many enslaved Africans in Brazil rebelled and fled to remote areas in the mountains and rainforests to be safe.  It was in these Quilombos, or places of refuge, that the Africans created and practiced fighting techniques in order to protect the Quilombos and free other slaves. On the plantations, music, song, dance, and ritual helped disguise the deadly martial art from the slave owners.
 
The recognition of Capoeira as a respected art form began with the efforts of Master Bimba Manuel dos Reis Machado in 1937. He was granted permission from the government to open the first school of capoeira, thus allowing the art form to be practiced openly. It has since flourished throughout Brazil and is becoming increasingly popular throughout North America, Europe, and areas around the globe. (Thanks to Abada Capoeira for information on this discipline.)


In People Like Me 2007: Motion Commotion, ABADA Capoeira presents a rousing circle of capoeira virtuosity. With live music and master capoeiristas, the spirit of Brazil engulfs the stage, embracing the entire cast by the end of the show!

Europe


Europe extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Mediterranean Sea in the south and from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. It is one of the smallest continents in area, but one of the largest in population.

Europe is made up of 47 countries. The largest is Russia; the smallest is Vatican City. Compared to other continents, many European countries are quite small. Europe’s five smallest countries—Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City—are smaller than many cities! Over 50 different languages are spoken in Europe, along with over 100 different dialects.


Romani dance forms
The Romani Trail

Linguistic and anecdotal evidence suggests that the Roma or "Gypsies" originated in India and first migrated into southwest Asia approximately 1000 years ago. Continued persecution from local populations dispersed the Roma further through Europe and North Africa in the 14th century. The path created by the resulting migration is often referred to as the Romani or "Gypsy" Trail. Romani dances some from (among other locations) India, Turkey, Russia, Egypt and Spain. The slang term "Gypsy" originated from an early mistaken belief that the ethnicity originated in Egypt and is generally considered a pejorative term, the preferable self-identification being Roma or Romani, which may also be spelled Rroma, Rromani or Romany.
 
Roma music and dance is as varied as the number of countries in which the Roma dwell. Yet each form of Roma expression retains some common characteristics. These include a knack for improvisation, unabashed  self-expression, playfulness, wit, and themes of persecution. The dance  incorporates fancy leg movement, quick and rhythmic footwork, playing with the skirt, coy facial expressions and arms held high. Roma music and dance is a community expression, where both performer and onlooker experience the lamentations and celebrations of Roma life. Here are three dances that are part of the Romani Trail dances performed in People Like Me 2007:
 
Turkish Rom - Sulukule is a legendary district of Istanbul known for centuries for its famous Romani musicians and dancers. Expressing passion and joy, this lively dance in the Turkish 9/8 rhythm is characterized by playful hand gestures that often mimic events from daily life.  

Russian Rom - The Russian styles of Romani dance are famous for whirlwind spins, flamboyant skirt flourishes and graceful arm movements influenced by Russian ballet. Also drawing on the tradition of Russian Character dancing, the performers often act out specific situations in "character" using pantomime and comedy, and marked variations in tempo, from slow and deliberate to a frenzied finish.

Spanish Flamenco - Under threat of persecution from church and state authorities in Spain during the 16th century, "Gitanas" (the Spanish name for the Roma or Gypsies), Muslims, and Jews came together to help each other survive, and within this melding of cultures Flamenco was born.  Flamenco dancers physically interpret the music of the singer and guitarist through percussive footwork and intricate hand, arm and body movements, conjuring the "duende," or magic, of the dance.  (*Thank you to Shuvani for information on Romani Trail dance forms.)


In People Like Me 2007: Motion Commotion, Shuvani presents three separate female dancers, Director of the group Amy Manderino, along with Katy Alaniz Barnhill, and Elizabeth Strong, who will follow the Romani Diaspora from India, through Turkey and Russia, to Spain. The long, full flowing skirts featured in each form are traditional costumes, and further connect these diverse cultures.
(Thank you to Yaelisa for her help on flamenco choreography for this piece.)

United States

The United States of America is the third largest country in the world in population and the fourth largest in area. It stretches through the middle of the North American continent, from the Atlantic ocean in the East to Alaska in the far northwest and Hawaii in the Pacific.

For the purposes of these pages, we discuss the United States separately from regions of North America that relate to Native American Indians, even though geographically these regions overlap. When talking about the dance and movement disciplines that originate in the United States, we are discussing dance and theater forms that began here since its independence, including contemporary genres. Many of these forms have influences from other lands, since the United States is a land of many immigrant peoples.


Clogging and Tap
Southern Appalachian dancing - clogging, flatfooting and buckdancing, is an amalgamation of a variety of older percussive dance styles marked by complex footwork. They are really dialects of the same form. American step dancing, and the old-time string band music that accompanies it, arose from the combination of cultures that lived in the Southern Appalachian mountains as this country was born. The community arts of English settlers, Scotch-Irish farmers and African slaves created what we now call clogging, and other forms of American social dancing, such as square and contra dancing. Clogging and old-time music were born of the hybrid culture that shaped the United States

In the British Isles, from the 1720's through the turn of the century, various forms of step dancing were practiced. But it was from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, in the latter part of the 18th century, that clog dancing took firm hold. Workers in the wool factories in Lancashire, Northern England, wore clogs, thick soled wooden shoes, to keep them above the mud of the factory floor. It is said that the rhythmic workings of the machines, coupled with the sound of the hard soled shoes on the floor inspired the creation of the dance.

Both the quadrilles (predecessor of square dancing) as they originated with the upper classes, and the clog dancing of the lower classes were accompanied by various types of fiddle music, and followed immigrants to the New World starting in the 1600's.Fiddle music remained at the center of the later development of American old-time music in the Southern Appalachian mountains into the 20th-century.

In the 18th century Africans were brought from their lands in Africa, and from the Caribbean, to work as slaves on plantations in the South, subjecting them to restrictions and conditions that inadvertently spawned new dance and music expressions. The fusion of European and African styles on plantations and on the minstrel stage influenced American clogging practiced in both white and black communities. Stylistically, the common posture of African dancing (wide stance, bent knees) influenced the more rigid and elevated clogging practiced in the British Isles, making American clogging more relaxed and looser than its European predecessors, while maintaining many similar steps.

In the 1920's and 30's, nightclubs opened in major cities, and the minstrelsy era gave way to vaudeville. Metal taps on leather shoes instead of the clogs worn in clog dancing spawned clogging's more theatrical cousin, tap dancing. Dance halls began opening in cities in the 1930's and 40's and the syncopated rhythms of tap were reproduced in big band or swing music.

These days, Tap is notable for its flexibility as it is mixed and performed in combination with other contemporary styles of dance. Clogging is now performed not only in social dance scenes and competition, but on stages in music festivals nationwide, and is considered one of North America's traditional dance treasures.

North India

North India is one of India’s three main geographical regions. The Vindhya mountains mark the southern boundary of North India and the Son river and the Kosi river marks its eastern border. North India consists of thirteen Indian states: Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. India’s capital, New Delhi, is in this region.

Kathak
Kathak is among the six major classical dances of India, originating from the temples of North India. The word kathak is derived from the Sanskrit word "katha," meaning story. "Kathakars," were nomadic storytellers who used a combination of music, dance, and acting to narrate religious tales from the Hindu epics, MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA. 

The Muslim conquest of India led to the Mughal Empires of the 15th through 19th centuries, creating a distinctive Indian-Islamic civilization, manifested largely through the arts. Here, the Hindu Maharajas and the Muslim Mughal leaders hired Kathakas to entertain them in their lavish courts, transforming kathak to more secular entertainment.  Due to the Islamic ideology, which forbade the representation of God in human forms, the dancers needed to modify and disguise religious movements. The simple Hindu storytelling style was also enhanced to reflect court entertainment etiquettes, including a high degree of formalization and style, rhythmic footwork, fast pirouettes, and subtle intricate movements.

Footwork and "Bols" - Tatkar is the basic footwork of kathak. While the origin of this footwork still remains uncertain, it is considered to have been derived from the natawari bols (syllables) ta, thei, and tat. In kathak, the idea of worship through dance involves the spiritual relationship of the dancer in contact with the earth. Tatkar is also a study into the power of energy. The soles of the feet generate a flow of energy which streams through all the cells in the muscles and bones of the body as the body moves in tune with the energy. The energy flows up to the crown of the mind, dissolving thought as it unites with the energy, and a harmony of body and mind is realized. It is at this level that dance becomes a yogic practice. (*Thanks to Parna Basu, Chhandam / Chitresh Das Dance Company and Miriam Phillips for their contributions to this page. Top photo by Betsy Bourbon.)

Ghana

Now known as the Republic of Ghana, this land was originally comprised of several distinct regions, occupied by many ethnic groups. The union of these traditional states was created by the British government during the historical period of the Western European partitioning of Africa. Formed from the merger of the British colony of the Gold Coast and the Togoland trust territory, Ghana in 1957 became the first sub-Saharan country in colonial Africa to gain its independence.


Kpanlogo
Kpanlogo originated in Accra, the capital city of Ghana and the traditional home of the Ga people. This land occupies the southern corner of the modern republic in an administrative region known as the Greater Accra Region.

Kpanlogo is essentially an urban youth dance-drumming of the Anlo-Ewe people, and a symbol of the commitment of a rapidly growing Ghanaian urban neighborhood youth in advocating their perspective in shaping the political vision of post colonial Africa.
Thanks to CK Ladzekpo for the photo and information.


In People Like Me 2007: Motion Commotion, Umoja Clique will perform a unique collaboration between African (Ghanaian) dance and Hip Hop. The juxtaposition of traditional and popular African movement with urban contemporary African American street dance highlights little-seen connections and roots.

Cross-Continental

Some forms of theater and dance have influences from many artists and many environments. Some traditional dance forms absorb influences encountered by people as they migrate over time. Contemporary forms often develop with many diverse cultural influences, as travel and communication create a more global society.


Physical Theater