MUNTU DANCE THEATRE OF CHICAGO
Choreographed by New York dancer and dance historian Mickey Davidson, Juba Jig re-creates slaves’ clandestine nighttime gatherings to dance and make music. Slave owners feared African Americans’ drums as methods of communication and took them away, so slaves played their own bodies–ham-bone rhythms–or washboards and tubs. Juba Jig opens with dozens of performers in colorful “country” clothes slapping their bodies in unison in increasingly complex rhythms, adding different body parts to the mix like instruments entering an orchestral arrangement–slapping the butt produces a deep bass tone, the chest a hollow, flatter sound, the shin a sharp tenor note. The dancing that follows is filled with struts and kicks, the women lifting their skirts to free their legs: some of it looks like a hoedown, some of it looks like a chorus line, all of it is joyous. This is the cakewalk, which originated in parody of the master’s and mistress’s mannerisms and evolved into one of the most popular entertainments of the 19th century among both blacks and whites.
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Another, older work on this program, artistic director Amaniyea Payne’s Thru Mandela’s Eyes, is even more explicit about the effects of racism. Less a dance than a dramatized prayer, it features texts that describe the oppression of African blacks and call for African reunification and freedom. The dancers and musicians wear military dress and point imaginary rifles at the crowd (and for the first time during this concert I felt unwelcome); like guerrillas planning strategy, they unfold an invisible map and trace it with their fingers.
