Have you ever wondered where Black people truly get their rhythm from?
Dance Afrikana is an organization in Houston that unites people in the African diaspora through traditional dances. Founded in 2016 by Dr. Lindsay Gary, it is considered one of the city’s cultural assets, teaching specific dances deeply rooted in African heritage.
Beyond its unique programming, including the annual Kuumba and Juneteenth Celebration, Dance Afrikana conducts weekly dance classes for adults and teens. Moreover, it houses the Houston Black Dance Collective (HBDC), actively supporting local dance entities and artists within the African Diaspora.
The organization recently hosted its first Afrikana Dance Festival at Match Houston and a full day of workshops led by talented instructors from all across the African continent.
The Defender spoke with Gary to share Dance Afrikana’s mission to connect Africans in the diaspora to their roots and the programs the organization provides to the community.
Defender: What inspired you to establish Dance Afrikana, and how has the organization evolved since its inception in 2016?
Dr. Lindsay Gary: I’ve been dancing pretty much my entire life. I started going to dance studios. I studied dance in college. That was my minor at UH. I danced for different companies throughout the city and traveled to study dance. I’ve been to various parts of the world. In college, I started dancing with the Nigerian Student Association at UH. They recruited me to be on the dance team.
When I graduated, I started dancing with another company. We started getting bookings to do background dancing for different Caribbean and Nigerian artists. But what I was finding is that I didn’t really feel like we had protections as professional dancers. We need to have contracts. We need to have protection legally. I remember when I did some performances, and people didn’t want to pay us.
I decided to create a company to ensure I was getting fair pay. That’s really what pushed me actually to establish my own company. I had danced with other companies before I became a background dancer for these artists. I started to bring in all my other experiences. We shifted away from doing background dancing and choreographing for the artists and started putting on productions and choreographing like longer pieces and doing larger-scale company. We’ve also expanded to doing different creative collaborations. We’re working on getting our own studio and doing educational things to teach. My goal is really to connect our people around the globe. Helping to educate each other empowers us because there are many disconnects.
Defender: Can you share more about the annual production, Kuumba: A Celebration of Afro Dance, and how it contributes to educating the public on diasporic culture through dance?
Gary: I’m excited to bring it back this December. So, Kuumba is the celebration of Afro dance. We started off by giving local artists the platform to perform different genres. In our first year in 2019, we sold out. We had a grant from the city’s Houston Arts Alliance. Kuumba is one of the principles of Kwanzaa that stands for creativity. That’s why we have it on that particular night. We had an Ethiopian and Brazilian dance group. We had some people doing Black dances from around the world.
I’m excited to announce this, and you guys are the first to hear this. We haven’t announced it at all. We do have an annual Black dance festival this year. It will be our first one in July. This Africana Dance Festival is a precursor to that.
It’s called the Houston Black Dance Festival. We will bring in teachers from the continent and diaspora to teach all these different styles of dance workshops, as well as have performances and seminars. It will be a whole immersive experience. Houston dancers don’t get enough flowers like they deserve.
Defender: What does art mean to you in the spirit of Black History Month?
Gary: In the Western world, art, unless you’re an artist, for most people, is kind of secondary; it’s something you do for fun, or it’s a hobby. But if you go deep into African culture, art is spiritual no matter where you are on the continent. Art is a part of the culture. It’s intertwined. You can’t separate music from spirituality. You can’t separate dance from a culture. When you understand art from an Afrocentric perspective, art is life.
When you think about how culture is tangible, culture is tangible through art. When you ask somebody what their culture is, they’re gonna list out art, they’re gonna list out the music, they’re gonna list out the textiles that they wear. They’re gonna list out how they dance. They’re gonna list out how they celebrate. We have to understand how that is fundamental to who we are.
Defender: Could you provide details about the recent Afrikana Dance Festival on Feb. 3?
Gary: We brought in four master teachers. These are experts from Congo, Senegal, South Africa, and Burkina Faso. They all taught traditional dances to the community. And that’s why we wanted to highlight it so [attendees could experience] these amazing teachers who’ve been doing this for years. Bringing their own culture to the space. It was open to all levels and ages. It was like a highly energized space and experience. And I really wanted people to use this to connect and learn where we get our stuff from. A lot of us don’t understand where the way we dance comes from. It’s not just we woke up dancing like that. That is ingrained into our DNA, even if we’re not the best dancers. We have those things in us, we have that. And so to be able to connect the dots is powerful. And if you are somebody from the continent and had the pleasure of growing up in Africa [you could have] learned about another place in Africa.
Defender: What final message would you like to share with our readers?
Gary: I am a residence scholar at Rice University’s CERCL. It’s a collaboration with the Gregory School or the African American History Research Center at the Gregory Center. That’s a part of Houston Public Library. As a scholar in residence, my project is documenting Black dance in Texas. As a part of what I’m doing with Dance Africana, I’m documenting oral histories of Black dance traditions in this region.
We started doing a project called Historic Black Women of Texas, where we teach young audiences about that through the art. We’re doing a whole lot more collaborations. We have a podcast with new episodes out. I’ve been blessed as a founder to create the platform to do these things.
