Get ready to embark on a vibrant journey that will transport you to the heart of Africa. NBC 5 and Telemundo 39 invite you to the 18th annual DanceAfrica.
The year’s festival features local troupes. “The stories and music and dance that evolved here were just as important” as those from Africa, its director says.
DanceAfrica Turns Its (Virtual) Gaze to Haiti
The festival features a film that shows the light and empowerment of vodou, a tradition of danced communication and communion with ancestors and spirits.
The dance troupe Rara Tou Limen, based in Oakland, shot its segment of the film at Black Sands Beach in Marin County.Credit.Luke Atwood Abiol
May 27, 2021, 1:26 p.m. ET
Black magic, zombies, dolls pricked by pins: These might be what most outsiders associate with the Haitian spiritual practice of vodou, especially when it’s misspelled “voodoo.” But DanceAfrica, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s festival of African dance, wants to show a different side.