Bringing the art of step into the spotlight

REESE ANDERSON thedmfeatures@gmail.com

In celebration of Black History Month, the Gertrude C. Ford Center welcomed Step Afrika!, a Washington, D.C.-based dance company that fuses traditional African dance with contemporary African American stepping.

Last Tuesday, audience members of all ages clapped, cheered and whooped their way through Step Afrika!’s interactive performance.

Step Afrika! is the first professional dance company dedicated to stepping, a dance form with roots in the Black greek organizations on college campuses. Step is a dance without music where the body becomes a percussive instrument. Steppers produce their own rhythms with footsteps, clapping and spoken word.

“We define stepping as a highly energetic polyrhythmic percussive dance form,” Mfoniso Akpan, the group’s artistic director (and a former Step Afrika! dancer herself), said. “It started with members of the National Panhellenic Council, which are African American sororities and fraternities.”

The National Panhellenic Council is made up of nine Black sororities and fraternities, also known as the Divine Nine.

“It didn’t start out in the way that you see it today with all of the intricacies of the movement, but it started out a little more simply on the college campuses, where people would be stepping around a tree or singing around a plot, real simple movements. They were really just showcasing their love and pride for their organizations,” she said.

A committee of faculty and students voted to book Step Afrika! as part of the Ford Center’s Artist Series.

Julie Aubrey, director of the Ford Center, realizes that it is crucial for the University of Mississippi to showcase Black cultural exports like step, as UM is a predominantly white institution.

“They look for shows that are diverse and ones that our community would not necessarily have the opportunity to experience,” Aubrey said.

C. Brian Williams, who founded Step Afrika!, stepped with Howard University’s chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. He lived in South Africa post-graduation, where he was struck by the similarities between stepping and the South African gumboot dance, practiced by enslaved gold miners to entertain each other during the work day and to warn when a supervisor was approaching.

The two dance forms are not actually linked, but the connection Williams made spurred him to merge African dance with step. This first took form in 1994 as a cultural exchange festival between South Africans and Americans. Members of the Soweto Dance Company of Johannesburg taught dances like the gumboot and Zulu styles to African Americans, who in turn shared their knowledge of hip hop and step.

Under Williams’ leadership, the cultural exchange grew into a dance company of international prominence. Step Afrika! serves as a cultural ambassador for Washington, D.C., representing the nation at events around the world. The company has performed in 49 U.S. states and on several continents.

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“We traveled quite extensively across the nation and internationally sharing our culture and our love of the art form,” Akpan said. “We’ve been to South America, Europe, Asia, Africa. You name it, we’ve pretty much been there.”

Feb. 13 was not Step Afrika!’s first time in Mississippi. The group has also completed an educational residency in Tupelo and performed at Jackson State University.

One does not have to wait for a Step Afrika! show to experience stepping locally, though. The University of Mississippi has five active chapters of The Divine Nine, who have their own robust culture of stepping and dancing.

“Step and dancing first and foremost is a way for NPHC sororities and fraternities to set themselves apart from Panhellenic sororities and fraternities,” Ren Hite, a third-year journalism major and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, said.

Members of NPHC chapters also stroll, a dance form related to stepping, but that’s less percussive and where danc- ers are accompanied by music.

“Within NPHC, every sorority and fraternity also has their own individual strolls and steps to set themselves apart from other chapters within their organizations and across the nation,” Hite said.

The active chapters of NPHC at UM performed during halftime of Monday’s women’s basketball game. They also perform on the Union Plaza at Union Unplugged, hosted by the Student Activities Association.

“At Union Unplugged, you see strolling. It has music, different songs. Stepping is totally without music. The rhythms come from your feet and your hands clapping,” Sedric Scott, assistant director of UM Fraternity and Sorority Life, said. “So some of it intertwines, but they’re two different things.”

Both stepping and strolling are vital to the Divine Nine.

“Dance is a way to express our culture,” Taylor Lampkin, a senior biology major and first vice president of UM’s chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, said. “It also brings unity to the NPHC community. We can be as creative as we want to in order to showcase ourselves. We don’t have to worry about being judged or misunderstood because this is a concept that our community was taught.” Community is a universal value in stepping, as Step Afrika!’s Akpan also emphasized.

“It is an interactive, energetic experience. It’s not just about us on stage, but it really is also about community. It’s about our audience members, too,” Lampkin said. “You’re not just someone who comes and sits back and politely claps, you’re actually interacting with us and there’s an exchange of energy that happens.”