Brian Williams has a request of anyone planning to attend Colorado’s first full dance concert by Step Afrika! at Macky Auditorium Sept. 19: Get loud and get moving. “We love the ballet,”says Williams, who founded the first dance company dedicated to African American stepping 20 years ago, “but we aren’t the ballet. We don’t want you to sit and be quiet. We want you to make as much noise as you want, yell, scream, clap and holler. The more energy you have, the more energy we have.”
The group also offers a free public workshop in stepping from 10 to 11:30 a.m. the day of the concert in the Charlotte York Irey Theatre on the CU-Boulder campus.
“We’re all about the relationship with the audience, so we really do want everyone to make music with us,” Williams says.
Step Afrika! fuses the unique, percussive tradition of stepping in which dancers use clapping, footwork, and athletic maneuvers to create music and high-energy rhythmic dance — with strikingly similar traditions that developed independently in southern Africa.
Stepping traces its roots to campus marching bands, military drill teams and traditional religious call-and-response in African American churches. It came into its own as a ritual for fraternities and sororities at traditionally black colleges and universities in the early 20th century. The form was virtually unknown outside those communities until it was shown in Spike Lee’s 1988 musical film, “School Daze.”
Step Afrika! 7:30 p.m. Fri., Sept. 19 at Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado Boulder campus. Tickets: $14 and up,
Info: www.cupresents.org or 303-492-8008.