“Creating Community”

"Creating Community" Benefit for the Guinea Land Project

Agate Hall is a trip. It's a square auditorium with antiphonal balconies. There is installed seating at the back of the first level under the balcony, and temporary seating set up in the "orchestra." Everything seemed dusty, and rarely used as a proscenium performance space. But it was my first foray onto the University of Oregon campus for an arts performance and the hall deserves mention.

"Creating Community" featured six drummers from Guinea, West Africa. Songs and dance also presented, but the drumming was most noteworthy. With so many drums and drummers at it at the same time, the sound produced is very dense, always loud, against which comparatively subtle variations in accents and rhythms slowly manifest and disintegrate within the larger stream of sound. Somewhat mechanical, somewhat mesmerizing, yet the blast of energy coming from the stage commands attention.

Two dances, the Tantamba and Boa were performed by students from Alseny Yansane's six week dance intensive, in groups of six to eight women. Being familiar with West African dance only as a student myself, I was particularly impressed with the gestural quality of the head and torso of these dances. Not quite as narrative as classical Indian dance, it seemed more like Hula, from Hawaii, pleasant, propitiative and feminine. Meanwhile the feet and lower body mark the square rhythms in place, with very little movement across the floor.

Interspersed through the evening, several men put down their drums and performed solo movement, quite different from the women. With heightened athleticism, the men engaged in flashy tumbling and capoeira-like engagements with one other. This was very high energy and won applause from the spectators.

Overall, the performance was a fundraiser, to purchase land in Guinea for the future home of an international arts center, a space for Guinean cultural performance artists to work, teach and preserve their cultural heritage. Nice. Even abroad, the core musicians and dancers did not stop creating community.