Synchronicity Anniversary: Step Afrika! hosts the first ever VIP Gala in honor of the Company’s decade-long success

On November 22, 2003, Step Afrika! hosted its first-ever VIP Gala in honor of the Company’s 10th Anniversary. A portion of the proceeds were donated to the family of Step Afrika!’s International Cultural Festival’s co-founder Mouyiselua Jackie Semela, following his passing in August of 2003.

Synchronicity Anniversary

Written by Lisa TRAIGER for the Washington Post, published November 24, 2003

“You can step, but can you dance? That was the challenge a young viewer once threw down to the dancers of Washington’s Step Afrika! They can dance indeed. They pound the stage in churning syncopated rhythms, they rock, they break, they flip, they roll, and best of all, they step—the percussive art form made popular by the black fraternity and sorority movement at Howard University and now making its way to concert stages around the nation.

*Stepping, a uniquely African American dance form, relies on hard-driving foot stomps, syncopated hand clapping and body slapping, and, most interestingly, a form of call and response that both maintains discipline and pokes fun at competing groups or pop culture. There’s also a fiercely competitive streak among the fraternities and sororities, which turns many step-dance competitions into elite displays of physical, rhythmic, and oral dexterity.

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A Step Afrika! program demonstrates these connections through rhythm and spirit. There’s a humorous evocation of the now-defunct pledge line, where willing fraternity pledges once subjected themselves to demanding, even militaristic brigades charged with complex steps: and chants. The women whip out some sharply precise moves of their own. In “Wade,” the spiritual—a baptism—merges with the secular, percussive gumboot dancing—to a cappella rendition of “Wade in the Water.” Black knee-high Wellington boots figure in “Sebenza” (“Work”),  demonstrating how men find release from the hard labor of the South African mines with boot-slapping, foot-tapping variations as crystalline as cut diamonds. Lesole Maine, a South African modern dancer, took inspiration in the natural environment of the African savannah for his evocative but long solo, “Uginisufokotho” (“Brace Yourself”).

The program also commemorated the life of Mbuyiselwa’ “Jackie” Semela, founder of Soweto Dance Theatre and co-founder of the Step Afrika! International Cultural Festival, who died earlier this year. The youthful exuberance of the Young Extreme Steppers, a high-energy group of 9-, to 16-year-olds, opened the evening, and the fierce energy of the Step Afrika! traditional Zulu dance closed it.

VIEW THE 2003 VIP GALA INVITE HERE

VIEW THE FULL 2003 ARTICLE HERE