DanceAfrica 2025 is America’s largest festival of African and Diasporic dance. The Festival features an elder’s roundtable, dance, film, art, a bazaar, and lots of community at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn on Memorial Day Weekend.
It’s an important festival because in traditional African and Diasporic communities (Indigenous as well), dance and music are the core organizing principles of our communities. Dance is how we pray.
48th DanceAfrica 2025
The 48th DanceAfrica 2025, led by choreographer Abdel R. Salaam, celebrates the culture of Mozambique with The Song and Dance Company of Mozambique, Mama Coumba Saaraba, The Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, and the DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers; in a festival of dance with community workshops plus film, art, a bazaar, and lots of community at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; from Friday-Monday, May 23-26, 2024. 🇺🇸 🇨🇲 🇸🇳
Abdel R. Salaam, the Artistic Director of DanceAfrica and Executive Artistic Director of Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, is a leader in African dance in New York City. Through him, we learned that “forces of nature” is a coded reference to traditional African Diasporic spirituality.
The Song & Dance Company of Mozambique has been preserving and reinventing traditional Mozambican culture since 1983. Their work is important because we are losing our heritage traditions to the onslaught of mobile phones and social media.
Mama Coumba Saaraba is a Brooklyn dance and drum ensemble that specializes in Senegalese traditional culture.
Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble preserves African Diasporic culture in Brooklyn.
DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers are a division of Forces of Nature Dance Theatre that blends African traditions with modern, hip-hop, and contemporary dance.
Mozambique is a country on the southeastern coast of Mother Africa. It’s really part of Bantu Southern Africa, but the country’s position on the Indian Ocean gives it East African, Arab, and even South Asian influences. It has many Indigenous traditions, plus Islam brought by Arab traders, and Christianity brought by Portuguese colonizers. The official language is Portuguese, but many Indigenous languages are spoken. Mozambique is known for its great writers. The marimba is native to sub-Saharan Africa, but you hear it a lot in Mozambican music. The most famous Mozambican dances include Xigubo, a men’s warrior dance; Mapiko which derives from Makonde puberty rituals; and Tufo, a dance with Arab origins. Marrabenta is considered the national music and dance. It’s a Mozambican fusion of traditional music, Portuguese folk music, and South African pop music. If you get into Mozambican music and dance, you may feel like you are in the Caribbean or Latin America, but you’re actually in Mother Afrika.
47th DanceAfrica 2024
The 47th DanceAfrica 2024 celebrates the culture of Cameroon and the symbolic calabash; in a festival of dance with film, art, a bazaar, and lots of community at Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza, and mostly at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; from Saturday, May 18-31, 2024. 🇨🇲 🇺🇸
There are many elements to the Festival:
- DanceAfrica Tribute to the Ancestors is a drum, song, and dance ceremony led by Artistic Director Abdel R. Salaam and the DanceAfrica Council of Elders; at the Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; on Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 10am. FREE. bam.org 🇨🇲 🇺🇸
- DanceAfrica Community Day, the DanceAfrica Festival kickoff, presents the Billie Holiday Theatre’s Youth Arts Academy for the 27th year; in Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza; on Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 1pm. FREE. bam.org 🇨🇲 🇺🇸
- DanceAfrica Memorial Room, an altar to the ancestors, at the DeVitre Lounge in the Peter Jay Sharp Building in the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; opens on Thursday, May 23 from 6-10pm. Through Monday. FREE. bam.org 🇨🇲 🇺🇸
- DanceAfrica 2024 celebrates the dance and music of Cameroon with “The Origin of Communities / A Calabash of Cultures,” featuring the DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Billies Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, and the Women of The Calabash singers; at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; from Friday-Monday, May 24-27, 2024. From $25. bam.org 🇨🇲 🇺🇸
- FilmAfrica, part of the New York African Film Festival, screens and talks films from and about Cameroon at BAM Rose Cinemas in the Peter Jay Sharp Building at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, (BAM), in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; from May 24-30, 2024. $17.50. bam.org 🇨🇲 🇺🇸
- DanceAfrica Visual Art commission “La course 2” by Cameroon-born artist Salifou Lindou, is on view in the Dorothy W. Levitt Lobby at the Peter Jay Sharp building at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; from May 7-31, 2024. The piece explores the conflict between challenge and play. Life is challenging at times. We can be upset about it which makes us more likely to lose, or turn it into a game which makes us more likely to win. bam.org 🇨🇲 🇺🇸
The Festival is led by Artistic Director Abdel R. Salaam in collaboration with the DanceAfrica Council of Elders, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), and the Billie Holiday Theatre.
Cameroon is an interesting country because it is a Central African country next to West Africa, so it is influenced by and influences both regional traditions. In the Americas, Cuban Abakuá traditions which are important in Cuban rumba and salsa, come from the Cross River region whose port city is Calabar. When salseros sing about “Carabalí,” they are singing about this region, or people whose ancestors came from this region. Today it is in Nigeria, but right next to the Cameroon border. African borders make no sense because they were drawn by the colonizers to divide regional powers.
The calabash is a gourd, similar to a pumpkin, that is used in African and Caribbean food (it’s delicious), for utensils, and to make ceremonial items and musical instruments. Both Indigenous Taíno maracas and Cuban shekere are made from calabash. Some of them are quite big. Big ones can be used as an amplifier. Put a kalimba thumb piano in one, and suddenly you have a big sound. It’s native to Mother Afrika. Atlantic tradewinds and ocean currents flow directly from West Africa to the Caribbean, and from Central Africa to South America. The calabash floated to the Americas around 80,000 years ago.
We are really struck by how Indigenous African culture and Indigenous American culture are so similar. We do the same things in traditional community gatherings in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, across the Amazon, and at Native American pow wows. The DanceAfrica Memorial Room reminds us of religious altars in the Caribbean and Day of the Dead ofrendas in Mexico.
46th DanceAfrica 2023
DanceAfrica 2023 celebrates Ghanian and African Diaspora dance; at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; over Memorial Day Weekend from Friday-Monday, May 26-29, 2023. From $25. 🇬🇭 🇺🇸
The 46th DanceAfrican 2023 is a choreographic and musical journey through ancestral and contemporary Ghanian culture. It has a lot of influence on both Caribbean and African American culture.
Artistic Director Abdel R. Salaam leads a great group of performing artists.
- National Theater of Ghana Dance Company
- DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers
- Arkestra Africa with Musical Director K. Osei Williams featuring Afropop vocalist Amma Whatt and BAM Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble
When you dig into the ancestral dances of Mother Africa, you can’t help but notice that this is where many of today’s dance moves come from. You’ll see all kinds of afro, jazz, hip-hop and even perreo. There is nothing new under the sun. Most American music and dances originate in the African Diaspora.
In Indigenous Africa and traditional cultures worldwide, dance is a core expression of family, faith, community, and a way to find love. Everyone dances to show that they belong.
It is hard to understand how big and diverse Africa and its countries are. Ghana is a relatively small country, but has over 80 different languages. Every ethnic group and even every community has its own unique traditions. It’s cool to see the old ways, and cool to see how they have become the new ways. Pay attention and you may recognize some of our own American culture.
DanceAfrica
DanceAfrica brings African Diasporic traditions to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). There are dance classes, workshops, performances, and after parties. There is art, FilmAfrica, and an outdoor bazaar.
It’s important because in Indigenous tradition of both Mother Afrika and the Americas, dance is how we pray. It’s the glue that holds our communities together. A community gathering such as a bembé, Indigenous Caribbean areíto, or Congo Square in New Orleans, was THE place to find family, faith, community, and love. It was also a place to buy and sell things. The people would gather on market days where there would be drumming, singing, dancing, and selling. On ceremonial days, there would also be storytelling about the ancestors. They were history lessons presented in a fun way.
This was the way of all cultures around the world, until the Colonial Era imposed European traditions of the time on everyone. Older European Pagan traditions are also very similar. People are people everywhere. Now that many of us are recovering our heritage traditions, DanceAfrica provides a beautiful connection with our past, and a ticket to our future.
Social Media
X @BAM_Brooklyn
Facebook @BAMstage
Instagram @bam_brooklyn
YouTube @BAMorg