The familiar pounding of six Sabar drums drew nearly every
villager to a pulsing circle of dancers. Small children rushed to
the center of the circle, eagerly starting the first dance
performance of the evening.
Typically, Sabar, a Senegalese dance event, showcases one gender
through traditional dance. But that particular night featured the
modern dance of male and female foreigners and may have marked a
new annual tradition involving UCLA World Arts and Cultures
students.
This summer, UCLA Summer Sessions offered a WAC travel study
program in Senegal, Africa for the first time. Twenty-five students
participated in the five-week program, which provided instruction
on African dance techniques, drumming, the Wolof language and
Senegalese history and visual arts. Excursions outside of the
classroom, such as the Sabar dance performance, rounded out the
students’ Senegal experience. The new program, which lasted
from June 24 to July 29, is a result of the work of Germaine
Acogny, a Senegalese Regents scholar and choreographer who has
taught at UCLA, and Allen Roberts, the director of UCLA’s
African Studies Center.
Roberts, a WAC professor who taught a language and visual
culture class during the program, also credits the combined effort
of Acogny’s students in its establishment.
“Everyone at the WAC department was so impressed with
Germaine Acogny’s work that several students put (a proposal)
for this program together,” Roberts said. “It’s a
fine example of students having a good idea and their institution
realizing the proposed activities.”
Roberts worked with UCLA Summer Sessions to mold a 12-unit
program with enough room for excursions to a former site of the
transatlantic slave trade, Goré Island, and to Pikine Cultural
Center, where students collaborated with hip-hop artists.
Although the program had no prerequisite classes, a preparation
course offered in spring quarter 2006 was highly recommended by the
organizers.
Liz Getz, a third-year WAC and global studies student who
attended the preparation course before studying abroad, said that
prior knowledge of the culture expanded her experience
immensely.
“Prepping with the Wolof language was really valuable,
although a little French helps too,” Getz said.
“Students interested in going next summer should also
understand that (the Senegalese) are more pervasive with certain
social values, such as always greeting everyone in
sight.”
Split into two distinct parts, the program began with a focus on
studying Wolof, the country’s dominant language, in the
Senegalese capital of Dakar. Students attended five hours of Wolof
class a day, along with two Sabar classes a week.
During these first two weeks of the travel study program,
students lived with a host family. Most students were placed in
separate homes in order to better immerse them in the West African
culture and to facilitate communication in the native language,
Roberts said.
While students had the weekends to dine out and explore, the
host families were responsible for preparing all meals during the
work week.
Second-year WAC student Margaux Permutt, who attended the
program, remembers an array of meals that ranged from a lunch of
stewed vegetables in a chili sauce over rice to a breakfast of
bread and instant coffee.
“Senegalese food is fresher than anything we could get
here because they don’t use any pesticides or have true
markets to sell produce,” she said. “Still, some
students wouldn’t eat fresh veggies out of fear of
microbes.”
The second part of the program took place in a city two hours
south of Dakar called Toubab Dialaw, where students received dance
and music instruction under the direction of Acogny and her
staff.
No longer in the accommodations of a host family, students were
housed in the dance center founded by Acogny, called L’Ecole
des Sables. Here, the organizers devoted the program’s final
three weeks to a daily curriculum of five to six hours of dance and
choreography exercises with African counterparts.
“We danced all day in the extreme heat and humidity of
West Africa, covered in sand and sweat, yet the dance intensive was
one of the highlights of my trip,” Getz said.
The opportunity to learn and perform African dance in Senegal
could likely arise again next summer, as Roberts plans to make the
program an ongoing summer project. He intends future programs in
Senegal to follow a similar curriculum with a greater focus on AIDS
awareness.
“This fall, we’re hoping to present a dance
performance and discussion to the WAC department,” Roberts
said, “so that the students can build enthusiasm for next
summer.”