Dance review: Social justice meets nonstop energy in show by Colombia's Sankofa Danzafro
The City of Others uses a rich mix of dance styles to express experience of racism and resilience, in DanceHouse production with Blackout Art Society, Latincouver, and VLACC
Sankofa Danzafro’s The City of Others. Photo by Robert Torres
DanceHouse presents The City of Others at the Vancouver Playhouse to February 22, with Blackout Art Society, Latincouver, and Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre
IN A BOUNDLESS BLAST of energy, Sankofa Danzafro served up an exhilarating mix of dance styles with a powerful social message in its debut here Friday night.
The City of Others’ honed 10-member troupe threw everything it had onstage, taking inspiration from salsa, breaking, flowing contemporary, Afro-Colombian styles, and folkloric dances like the Currulao and the Abozao. In one breathless section, performers held up a plywood sheet vertically for others to bound up and bounce off. Seconds later, the crew members hoisted it horizontally over their shoulders where a woman pummelled it with her feet. In other moments the dancers leapt high off the floor and spun in the air; kicked their way across the stage; or convulsed while crowdsurfing across the others’ fingertips.
The music flowed from live djembe-drumming to hand-slap and foot-stomp rhythms to electro-club beats. Braids whipped, feet and hands flew in a whirl of action, sustaining full intensity to the final encores, when the packed Playhouse audience rose for a loud standing O.
Presented here by DanceHouse with Blackout Art Society, Latincouver, and Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre, The City of Others drew extra fire from its social-justice messages. Colombia has a long, complex, and painful history of racism that dates back to slavery. More than anything this was a work voicing the contemporary Black experience—grappling with oppression, taking up urban space, and ultimately finding an invigorating place of community and healing through art.
Through dance, the performers, dressed in stylized city office-worker dress shirts, pants, and ties—but with bare feet—expressed the Black Colombian urban experience without ever getting too literal. They journeyed through oppression, invisibility, prejudice, pushback, and resilience; occasionally dancers would collapse and get dragged across the floor in what felt like the sheer exhaustion of fighting systemic racism. At times the blocking conjured a barber shop, at others a packed subway ride. Some sequences had the energy of a breakdance battle, each individual grabbing the spotlight to show their distinct spice.
Aside from proving contemporary dance's ability to confront social issues and act as a force of change, The City of Others also introduced Vancouver audiences to a new movement language steeped in a culture of rich diversity. Still, the issues being raised, sadly, needed no translation. 
Related Articles
