“Les Ecailles De La Memoire”, better understood as “The Scales of Memory” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, better known as “BAM”, was a disconcerting piece of African interpretive dance.

An enviably muscular dancer in her late twenties wearing an turban oddly reminiscent of an onion proclaimed “Je suis Creole!” to start off the night. “Ben, Je le crois!” I murmured back to her half jokingly, half in earnest. Loosely translated in English she said she was Creole, and  I said I believed her. Swelling slighty with a strong sense of self satisfaction I reflected on my French. It is a strong point I am rather proud of.

Yet there is little room to be irreverent or cheeky when it comes to the forehead creasing issues of African history that danced before our eyes at this performance. Featuring seven Urban Bush Women and seven men of the Senegalise compagnie Janti-Bi respectively, it was a mixture of interpretive dance, historical retrospection, and yes a bit of romance for entertainments sake.  A company collaboration between leaders of African interpretive dance Jawole Willa Joe Zollar and Germain Acogny proved nothing short of visual and moral punch in the face.

There was no clear story line or narration but later we learned from our programs that it was meant to reflect the social and geographic journey of African Americans. It spanned the time of freedom, diaspora, slavery and the general cultural diffusion of the race. The Senegalese men flexed their ripped limbs in crouching positions all the while uttering shiver inducing guttural grunts. Their physical antics were undestandibly difficult and thus appreciated but it did not address clearly its purpose in the play.

One moment in particular where I felt befuddled was when five dancers were positioned separately so as to fit the points of a five point star and they all proceeded to execute steps deserving of a solo performance.  Audience members winced as one member of Janti-Bi proceeded to beat his bare back with a long wooden rod. It was taken to be a reflection of the abuse and hardships African Americans went through in slavery. Elevated on platforms of different levels these numbers were really an overdone visual assault.

There was too much matter and not enough art. The actual number of the dancers detracted from the attention to their execution of dance steps. Women were separated and distinguishable from the men with billowing robes of various rosy hues.  The men, in togas of varying cuts made a comical picture as they strenuously danced their way into couples. After all the hardships that they suffered they still were connected by their culture and dancing chops. In one mellow moment the couples relaxed the difficulty of their steps and just swayed along to a soft drumbeat, like the padding of feet on a bare floor.

Considering and conceding all the drama, pain, confusion of the African experience, The Scales of Memory left us oddly at peace and curiously looking to the future. Of course the future could be choreographed by Ms. Zollar and Mr. Acogny or we could write it ourselves.

Performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Urban Bush women displayed African American culture and traditions as well as the struggle that came with African Diaspora, migration of Africans to America and later on to the world, through expressive dance performances. For many members of the audience like me, it was difficult to understand the story of the dance performance.  Only in the end did I realize that there was no plot. Without sufficient introduction in the beginning of the performance, Urban Bush women confused its audience.

Instead of focusing on the theme of the performance, I decided to look at the dancers, persuading myself that it was not as dull as it seemed. Penetrating on the struggle of many Africans, the facial expression of the dancers matched the tension of African descendants, battling to accept the heritage and adjust to the new culture. For the most part of the performance, individual performances weren’t as fluent as group performances. The female dancers were often times too dramatic in their interpretations of the meaning of tension. To show internal conflict, the female dancer did not have to show the contortion of arms and wild movements.

Though I felt I was exposed to a different genre of dancing performance, the Urban Bush Women did not affect me. I would recommend the dance performance to people who wanted to see the dance techniques. But the theme of the performance was no where to be found.

As the performance started I was intrigued but nothing glued my eyes to the stage.  There was a lack of coherence, that new age “dance to the music you feel, not what you hear” style throwing me off.
Then the dances and dancers slowly came together, built up a story and took off with it.  When they all started working together with the audience I became enthralled.  I could find the story and I appreciated their movement so much more.  Their limbs were sentences and torsos paragraphs.  Their hands took the music and molded it into life.  I hadn’t been able to concentrate on the dance through the music before hand, yet as the dance came to a crescendo, I found the music through the movement.  As the story took shape the performers brought out benches and stools as props, and used them almost as other dancers.  The objects moved with them, set the stage and accentuated the lighting that set the scene for each story told by each dance.  Both the lighting and the props had distinct purpose, a reason to be onstage, just as each of the dancers did.  That is what made the performance worthwhile.  Each person had a reason to be on stage, to be telling their story, lifting their bodies higher then their voices ever could go and telling a story for whoever was watching.

As soon as I saw the stage light up at BAM, my imagination was captivated. The music and light from the first scene created a serene atmosphere and I was reminded of the ocean, as if the dancers themselves were placed on the shores of Africa. When I watch dance performances, my mind usually lingers, and linger it did in a sense, but my eyes were still drawn to the stage. My favorite part of the performance, done by the Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi, was when a group of guys came on stage. This was partly because from afar, before that I could not entirely tell which of the performers were male or female. The men danced raucously but with graceful and synchronized movements.

Movement was the best way to describe Les Ecailles de la Mémoire. I loved when the men danced with their red cloths, bringing color and unity to the stage. The red cloth set my memory in motion once again, because one of my good friends once wore a shirt of that color during a significant time in my life. Even though the story was a little hard to follow, I thought there were several motives that infused the plot with meaning. Kinship, joy, relationships, and the past were all touched on at different times. The onlookers were provoked to think. The dancers portrayed playful and complex people in a graceful manner. The combination of the Women from Brooklyn and the others from Senegal created a dance style that was impressive, unique and memorable, leaving a memorable impression on the diverse audience.

            I feel that Urban Bush woman was an exhibit of brilliant dancing combined with no real comprehension of what it should all mean. The dancing itself was exquisite. The name would lead people to believe that there are only women in this performance when in fact it is evenly split between men and women. There are many skillful sequences dance sequences, which will leave you wondering, how did they do that? I was less curious about how they did their actions but what they all meant. I felt that their movements were supposed to mean something but it was intensely difficult to decipher it. Words were few and far between and when the performers did speak it was either not in English or indecipherable. If one just focuses on the dancing however, you will be pleasantly surprised. The dancers were fluid in their movements and incredibly acrobatic. The props and set design are worth noting for their supporting roles. They were background elements and did not really stand out but they did their job.

            Urban Bush Women overall, was a disappointing show that did not do justice to a good concept. The original purpose was to reflect upon African life. This is noble goal but I would have liked to see it better executed. If the purpose of the performance was simply to be a dance exhibition than it achieved its goal. I am not saying that there should be a full plot with heroes and villains. I respect symbolic performances and I generally like the way the real ideas are expressed so creatively. That is what I was expecting from Bush Women but it is not what I received. I would recommend this performance for those who are only interested in skillful dancing. If you are looking to experience a true education about this culture than this is not the show for you.

Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi, as a part of the 2008 Next Wave Festival, collaborated on the production of Les écailles de la mémoire, or The Scales of Memory.  Sadly, despite the involvement of award winning choreographers and world-renown dance companies, Les écailles de la mémoire proves be a disjunctive work that is far less than the sum of its parts.
Les écailles de la mémoire is a dance performance without a central plot, instead trying to convey themes regarding segregation, slavery, and French colonialism in Senegal.  While choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Germaine Acogny both intended to explore the cultural similarities and relations between African Americans and West Africans, the laudable intention actually works against the production.  The problem here lies not in the individual skill of either the choreographers or their respective dance companies.  Zollar’s Urban Bush Women have a repertoire of over thirty works and are trained in a variety of styles, including ballet, hip hop, Capoeira, and other African Diaspora forms.  As for the males, Compagnie Jant-Bi, were all trained at Acogny’s professional workshop at the International Center for Traditional and Contemporary African Dances in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal.
Therefore, one can be sure that the technicalities of the performance will not be lacking, which they most assuredly aren’t.  If one were to look at how either company’s dancers carry themselves when performing with the members of their own troupe, they would be hard pressed to find even a single lapse in step.  That fluency, however, is lost when both companies’ dancers come on stage simultaneously, at which point the choreography falls apart.  The men from Jant-Bi clearly adhere to the rules of African dance; most of their moves, such as the cartwheels and hand-spins, display clear Capoeiran roots.  The Bush Women, however, while trained in Capoeira, have other very visible influences.  From the leaps taken from jazz dance to the shaking movements inspired by hip hop, the Bush Women don’t follow the African dancing rules as closely as Jant-Bi.  While this does complement the theme, seeing as how it is an exploration of both African and African American culture, the latter of which has many of these inspirations, it makes for disjunctive compositions.
As for the conveyance of these themes, the socially responsible subject matter is wholly in line with UBW’s and Jant-Bi’s previous works but the themes here are simply unclear.  While each dance does have its own unique atmosphere, largely due to the excellent soundtrack, atmospheric settings alone don’t state a message.  When one is commenting on social issues, some concrete facts need to be conveyed in order for the abstract themes to make sense and concrete facts can only be explicitly stated, not displayed through dance.
Never truly achieving any chemistry on stage, Les écailles de la mémoire shows how one can take talented components and make a disastrous whole.  Its difficult to say what this could have been but, as it stands, this is a memory best forgotten.

Dance is difficult to interpret and is subjective to each viewer. However, it can be interpreted in so many ways and by so many different people that it becomes a visual sensation to watch. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn’s all-female Urban Bush Woman and Senegal’s all-male Compagnie Jant-Bi performed a thrilling show titled Les écailles de la Mémoire, in other words, The Scales of Memory.

The cast emerges towards the audience to the sound of calm waves slapping against the rocks. Several kneel and bow and others follow. One starts listing the names of past generations and within minutes, other voices of names overlap, creating a confusing jumble of names and words. These names proved to be the least confusing since we later discover that a native form of language is spoken. As each scene of interpretive dance ended, a new one began, like memories that faded and appeared. Although I could not fully understand and grasp the meaning of some scenes, they were still enjoyable in that the movements were graceful and fleeting; their jumps and pivots seemed effortless, especially when a woman lifted a fellow male dancer while portraying a love scene. I do admit however that I could not keep my eyes open at few parts of the show. A group of several men gracefully jump on stage and take off their red shirts. Collectively, they dance in sync to West African music and rhythm making the stage look like a kaleidoscope of the colors black and red. Along with the beat of the tribal music, the men create sounds with the clap of their hands and the stomps of their bare feet. At times, the dances were humorous and flirtatious, playing around the concept of courting and romance, when both sexes coupled with partners and danced to the slow music in their own unique way.

Les écailles de la Mémoire was different from other performances that I have seen throughout my exposure to the arts. It was a show that communicated itself through dance and movements that connected the human body to the mind. Prior to watching the performance, I had assumed the performance to be somewhat like a musical and due to the casts’ style and technique, it proved not to be. Instead it was an unusual but unique style of physical and flexible demonstration of the body.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s new production Les Ecailles de la Memoire, or “The Scales of Memory,” elucidates the complicated issues of memory, love, culture among the people of the African Diaspora. It is an intercontinental production involving the Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal and Brooklyn’s Urban Bush Women. The mixture of dance style, language, and shared history give Les Ecailles de la Memoire its flavor; however, the desperation to develop a narrative and characters takes away from the magnificent performance.
As the Senegalese men leap into the air like firecrackers, arms and legs akimbo, one realizes that these are not amateurs. Both the Bush Women and the Compagnie Jant-Bi see every movement through to absolute fruition – their broad and powerful style demands the viewer’s attention. Unfortunately, the gusto with which the performance opened does not linger throughout the entire show.
After the first thirty minutes more importance is placed on character development and storyline than on the actual dancing. In an attempt to illustrate the journey from Africa to the West, the performers begin slowing down their movements and softening their technique, thus resulting in highly interpretive, conceptual dance. References to labor and slavery, such as the clanking of shackles or marching in sync, are littered throughout the production, and although they are occasionally affecting, they fall short of poignancy due to the lack of concrete character development. The audience is aware that there are seven men and seven women; however, the distinction of individual personae is never established, and the dancers are never elevated above anything other than performers.
Ultimately, Les Ecailles de la Memoire committed an amateur offense that soiled the entire production. If the dancers had been given full reign to demonstrate their magnificent capability, undoubtedly a standing ovation would be in store. Instead, the audience saunters out of the theater, freshly awaken, proclaiming, “I’m certain there was a narrative to that! I guess I’m far too prosaic to get it.”

When we first received news that my fellow classmates and I would be going to BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, I was looking forward to a thrilling performance.  Much to my dismay I was mistaken.  I was one of the first to arrive at BAM and I noticed some of the trailers for the performance we were about to witness.  My excitement and anticipation quickly changed to dread and loathing.  Several flat screen televisions were playing a few short clips that made my stomach churn.  As much as I didn’t want to, I decided to give the Urban Bush Women a chance to impress me before I made hasty conclusions.  I entered the theater with an open mind, hoping I would be wrong about the performance.

From the very beginning of the performance I was bored.  Slow movements began to put me to sleep and I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open.  The open-mind I came into the theater with was slowly fading.  I knew this would be the longest ninety minutes of my life.  Scene after scene of what seemed like pointless dancing filled the stage and lulled me to a drowsy state.  Besides the incredibly tedious plot, another thing that made this a difficult experience was the fact that I had no idea what it this performance was about.  If I didn’t ask my fellow classmates after the performance I still wouldn’t have known that it was about slavery and survival.  The Urban Bush Women use “contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of African Americans and the African Diaspora, exploring the transformation of struggle and suffering into the bittersweet joy of survival.”

One upside to the performance was the ending dance “battle” between the male and female cast members.  Jumping, kicking, and spinning filled the stage as these talented dancers did what they do best.  It was interesting to see how they used dancing and choreography to express their emotions to one another, including the audience.  I wondered if the dance moves were specifically choreographed or made up on the spot.  It could’ve gone either way.  This incredible scene of organized chaos truly saved the show from an almost certain demise.

The music and choreography worked together very well to express the struggle of Africans and African Americans.  I enjoyed the way the choreography used movements that felt more tribal to represent Africans, while they used more modern moves to represent African Americans.  One scene that struck me as particularly powerful was when all the performers gathered under a single spotlight, struggling for a glimpse of light and a breath of fresh air.

One thing I didn’t understand was why the audience began clapping at some points of the performance.  Some performers had dance solos, but perhaps I’m simply not familiar enough with dance to understand why or how the solos warranted spontaneous applause.  The final scene, however, seemed to be symbolic of a future that both dance troupes wish to see.  The way that all the performers gathered together to take a deep breath in unison, then utter “J’accepte.  I accept” was very clear that the two troupes desire for all Africans and African Americans to accept the past, and by doing so, look to the future.