Nightlife

By NOSSAYBA ODESANYA

Special to the AmNews

For years African dancers from all over the country and the world have come to Brooklyn’s DanceAfrica over the Memorial weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, affectionately known as BAM. Founded by the late, great Baba Chuck Davies in 1977, it has been a popular annual event which the community has missed for two years due to COVID.

BAM said, “It is a wonderful festival of dance, music and culture which honors the spirit of the traditional and contemporary companies from its first decade, recognizing their achievements over the years and celebrating the artists who now carry the torch.” Their presser said that the performance featured five different guest companies from Brooklyn, Harlem, the Bronx, and Washington, D.C., each offering a homegrown vision of traditional dances. They have brought to the stage movement and musical styles from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and the Caribbean, supported by the Arkhestra Afrika, created by members of each company. Plus, the beloved BAM RestorationArt Dance Youth Ensemble marked their 25th anniversary and the DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers’ return! Going 45 years, it was a delighted and proud, African-inspired outfit-wearing crowd who came daily as DanceAfrica celebrated its “bright future and its deep roots.”

From Friday, May 27, to Monday, May 30, audiences flocked to BAM to enjoy performers Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, LaRocque Bey School of Dance, Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater, Farafina Kan: The Sound of Africa, and the Harambee Dance Company.

And then outside the fun continued; people came from all over the five boroughs, the tri-state, and the country to buy from the many, many vendors. There was delicious food—African, Caribbean, and versions of some soul food. You could buy clothes, jewelry, watches, art, African sculptures and music. There was dancing and drumming outside. It is, as always, a really great community event. Come on back for 2023.

(Daniel Goodine photo)

(Nayaba Arinde photo)

Cultural Graduation Class of 2022, STAND UP!!!

Graduation Class of 2022, STAND UP!!! The obstacles and circumstances that were placed in front of you during your trek to this destination were an unprecedented test of mettle, and congratulations on the achievement. These are the good ole days my friends, live it up!!! Hopefully, your futures will be productive and distinctive enough that your alma mater will be as proud of you as you are of it. Double that sentiment if you rep an HBCU!

As a Howard Bison glad to see we once again made a significant move that has historic consequences as Howard University and The Gordon Parks Foundation today acquired 252 photographs representing the arc of Gordon Parks’ career over five decades. The breadth of the collection, which spans Parks’ earliest photographs in the 1940s through the 1990s, makes it one of the most comprehensive resources for the study of Parks’ life and work anywhere in the world. The Gordon Parks Legacy Collection, a combined gift and purchase, will be housed in the MoorlandSpingarn Research Center. Organized thematically by subject into 15 study sets, the photographs serve as a rich repository for the development of exhibitions and multidisciplinary curricula that advances scholarship on Parks’ contributions as an artist and humanitarian.

Howard University’s acquisition is part of The Gordon Parks Foundation’s commitment to supporting initiatives that provide access to and deepen understanding of the work and vision of Parks for artists, scholars, students, and the public. Building on this partnership, the Foundation and Howard University are exploring future projects that draw on the collection to catalyze new research and joint programming. In layman’s language, if you’ve ever picked up a Canon or Nikon to express yourself artistically and document this moment in time for historical prosperity, you owe a debt to the legacy of Gordon Parks.

This is better articulated by Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., executive director of The Gordon Parks Foundation, who said, “This landmark collection of photographs by one of the great chroniclers of Black American life provides artists, journalists, and scholars at Howard University with a new resource to study and embrace the lasting impact of Gordon Parks. As a photographer working in segregated Washington, D.C., in 1942, Parks established his first connections with Howard, which then embodied many of the values that his work came to represent. For him that was a learning experience, which makes Howard a fitting place to keep his art alive.”

“Howard University is proud to be the recipient of such an important collection of work by African American artist and photojournalist Gordon