COBA: Set to Blow People’s Minds

COBA: Set to Blow People’s Minds

By Ryan B. Patrick
Pride Entertainment Writer
Feb. 8, 2006

When co-founder of the Collective of Black Artists (COBA), BaKari E. Lindsey, first arrived in Toronto, eighteen years ago, he soon discovered the general public held steadfast to highly-romanticized notions of what African and Caribbean folk culture is all about.
There was the misconception that African and Caribbean dance had only to involve the traditional costumes, and anything outside of that was modern, or fusion.
“So many people think that the Caribbean is just straw hats and a drink with an umbrella,” says the Trinidadian-born Lindsey. “But they didn’t even get the original, so how would they know it’s fusion…There was this huge confusion about what our culture really is.”
Thus, COBA was born. Originally founded in 1993, by Lindsey, Junia Mason, Charmaine Headley and Mosa Neshama, the Collective was determined to fill a cultural void on Toronto’s arts scene and create a platform for dance creations that reflected Afro-heritage and social realities.
From the beginning, the quartet championed arts education, and developed, with educators in Ontario and New York State, to launch a school touring program with an African History theme.
With current co-artistic directors Lindsay and Headley, the group’s immediate mandate, Lindsey says, is to preserve the cultural traditions of Africa and the African Diaspora, through education, research and public performance – to let people see what the possibilities are for African and Caribbean folkdance.
COBA has toured Canada, the United States and Trinidad and Tobago, garnering critical acclaim for its genuine presentation of traditional African and Caribbean dance. The group has also commissioned works from world-renowned Africanist choreographers, including Senegalese griot Alassane Sarr; Jeanguy Saintus from Haiti; and internationally-acclaimed soloist Vincent Sekwati Koko Mantsoe.
The group, now in its 13th mainstage season, has developed a highly spirited repertoire of traditional African, Caribbean and contemporary works for mainstage audiences. Every year, the group has presented a new work. This year, the group decided, was a time to reflect.
The latest show, “Deekali: Roots Relived” is a “greatest hits” of sorts, a representation of four signature past performances – Kumina, Domba-Go, Bodika and DjembeFola – that Lindsey says audiences were requesting to see again.
“Deekali” means “to revive” in the Senegalese Wollof dialect. The show’s imagery is based on the Akan symbol of the mythical bird– Sankofa – that flies forward with its head looking backward, reflecting the truism that knowing your past is the key to your future.
The show’s fusion of West African, Jamaican and contemporary dances reveals a certain commonality, a connecting historical thread within the African Diaspora.
“We decided to take some time to rejuvenate, to look at the body of work that we have done, over the years, and figure out where we are going to go from here,” Lindsey says.
The Collective has been an instrumental force in the evolution of the Toronto arts and culture scene, and has created for itself a place in the Toronto dance community, through its annual African History Month school-touring programs and student matinees.
“We’ve been charting our own waters,” Lindsey notes. “We have stuck firmly to our mandate of presenting traditional West African dance, Caribbean traditional folk and contemporary dance, as influenced by either of those two particular aesthetics.”
COBA has also made a significant contribution to Canadian dance ideology, in recent years, through the development and teaching of A-Feeree, the physical language.
Based on Lindsay’s ethnographic research, and taught exclusively at COBA’s performing arts school in Toronto, A-Feeree is a training method that assists dancers in navigating the physical aesthetics of African and African Diasporic dances. The method is gaining international recognition, Lindsey says.
While there is still much work to be done, Lindsey says the Toronto arts scene has changed for the better. It’s good that it’s evolved past the time where a group such as COBA would have been relegated to the fringes, he notes. But Lindsey welcomes more support, particularly from the African Canadian community.
“Now I would say that 90 percent of Toronto is culturally based,” Lindsay says. “People are challenging the stereotypes and notions of what the culture represents.” COBA itself is a prominent organization, with its own studio offering full-time dance instruction. While the company is committed to an African-centric voice, it welcomes all cultures to learn and dance.
“As long as you are willing to speak with that voice, you can dance with us,” Lindsey says, adding, the company exists for a bigger reason than just teaching people how to dance. “We just want to be positive role models for youth.”
It is also about learning the traditions to understand the cultural perspective. “It’s observing the social context in which movement exists and how that relates to dance.”
There’s this notion that culture and folk dance cannot aspire to be a higher art form because it is rooted in the past, Lindsey says.
The artistic director responds, “We can take our tradition and, once you know that tradition well enough, you can manipulate that tradition to create works that are so rooted in the present that it blows people’s minds.”
“Deekali: Roots Relived” takes place February 16 to 19, at the Betty Oliphant Theatre, at 404 Jarvis St. For more information, call (416) 658 3111, or visit www.cobainc.com.