(intro music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] On this episode of "Postcards."

(upbeat music) - When I started doing modern contemporary dancing, it allowed me to kind of think about dance in a new way.

(gentle music) - Some people might see it as entertainment, but it's just something deeper than that, it's connection.

- You tell the story through your dances, through your moves, and that's how usually people know where you're from.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web @shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information @explorealex.com.

A better future starts now.

West Central Initiative empowers communities with resources, funding, and support for a thriving region.

More at wcif.org.

(soft music) (gentle music) - My name is Jonny Stuckmayer.

I am a director and cinematographer, and I directed "Dance in the Diaspora."

In the film, we follow 10 dancers coming from all over Africa and as well as the African diaspora, which is all over the Caribbean and South and Central America.

So I've been in the dance space for a long time, and I really enjoy it.

I love working with dancers, and I love watching the process that they go through to create their pieces and keep perfecting it and making it better.

There's so many wonderful people who are involved in this film.

I'm really honored to have the chance to tell their stories.

It means a lot to me to be in a spot where people can be so vulnerable and open up about the things that are so important to them, talking about their childhood memories and how all of that comes back to influence their art.

One of my favorite parts of the film is how you see these dancers who are so passionate about dance and the community that they came from and how they really wanna share it with the rest of the world.

This project was a labor of love, and we did a lot with a little, and I'm so appreciative for, all of the care and craft that the crew put into it.

Between the cinematographer and the editor and the colorist and graphics, it really came together.

I hope you enjoy the film.

(upbeat music) - My name is Korma.

I am Nigerian from the Igbo tribe and I am the CEO of Afrocontigbo.

Afrocontigbo is African contemporary Igbo.

It's a dance group here based in Minnesota.

I think it's very important to share African culture.

Dance is part of life in the Igbo culture.

We dance anytime that we hear music.

Anytime we have the opportunity, we dance.

Any gathering, as soon as you show up to grandma's house, everyone is excited and there's a dance, right?

And it's just like you just start gyrating and you start grooving.

I think dance is many things to many people and it can definitely, if you let it, it can definitely heal you.

The part of the Igbo land that I'm from is Owerri and in Owerri, a very popular style is called Ukwu, which is the waist dance.

So it's a lot of waist movement and I'm gonna blend it with some Enugu dance moves, which is also in the waist, but mainly also with the chest.

So you're going to see the chest and the waist moving in opposite directions.

Also with some hand movements and some gyrations.

It's gonna be fun.

(upbeat music) (musician singing in foreign language) - I'm Sifa and my heritage is Kenyan and Congolese.

I am performing a Kenyan dance from the Kisii tribe.

The song that I am dancing to is called Entaburuta and it is a folk song of the Kisii tribe.

It is a focus of celebration of a good harvest.

Dance is kind of its own language.

It's a pretty big part of my culture, which it first started for me with music, thinking about my Congolese side of my family, a lot of waist movements.

My Kenyan side of the family, a lot of shoulder and arm movements and I just find that expression just so unique.

I don't know why each group has their own style, but I think that's what makes us human and that's what makes us all unique and different and it's really just beautiful to me.

My grandmother, before she passed away, she was a big dancer and always welcome people home to the village with dancing.

We don't have the same language, she speaks Kisii and Swahili, I only speak English.

So I think movement, we could understand that language of dancing and we could do that with her and it was a way we could share a language together.

With African style dancing, I feel more liberated versus some of the dance I did in the past where you had to be uniform.

It was more important to be similar than rather have your own unique style, incorporated in.

(upbeat music) (musician singing in foreign language) - My name is Dede Quevi and I'm from Togo.

The dance style that I'll be performing is a combination of kind of all the different things that I've learned throughout the past couple of years.

It has modern, contemporary and a hint of Togolese dancing.

When I started doing modern contemporary dancing, it allowed me to kind of think about dance in a new way.

Dance is definitely a big part of Togolese culture.

We dance at weddings, obviously, birthday parties, baptism, we can learn from one another through different dance styles.

The style in dance in Togo is unique because we use a lot of our upper body using our shoulders, sometimes using our hips, swaying it back and forth, left and right up and center.

And I think that's something that is similar in a lot of West African cultures.

But I think in Togo we really hone it well.

(upbeat music) (musician singing in foreign language) - My name is Prince Wara and I'm from Togo.

I'm the only guy dancing Afrocontigbo, so I claim my name the papa.

I'm from the north of Togo.

My dad village is called Defale and my mom village is called Kante but I was born in Kara and I grew up in Lome.

So it's like a mix of different cultures.

Dance is everywhere.

Some people might see it as entertainment, but it's just something deeper than that.

It's connection.

It make you feel good, I feel good when I dance.

Dance is my therapy.

I'll be doing Kamou.

Most of the African dancings a lot is happening in your face.

So your face expression is 20% of your dance and Kamou is pretty much like footwork.

You will see like more chest moving, head, hand flying.

Every single dance there have their own pattern, but the rhythm and the energy are the same.

(upbeat music) (musician singing in foreign language) - My name is Wisna and I am from Haiti.

Dance is a huge part of the Haitian culture.

It's used to express joy and happiness, sensuality, it is a means of communication for us, especially during the times of slavery where we used it to train each other in fighting.

That's why our style has a lot of fighting movements.

My piece doesn't have Haitian dance technique within it, but me being a Haitian, I think my dance represents the spirit of my people.

Showing joy and happiness within your dance is something completely Haitian.

Having big energy is something that is a must have with Haitian dance.

♪ Streets ♪ I've been in the streets ♪ I got everything I can ask for ♪ ♪ I got all the cars the clothes the hoes ♪ ♪ I could put a humid on the dashboard ♪ ♪ I'm trying to find love ♪ But be doing the most ♪ Is you can we go ♪ It's whatever you want ♪ Can we move it on the floor ♪ It's whatever you want ♪ Can we bring it to the back ♪ It's whatever you want ♪ Can we do it on the track ♪ It's whatever you want ♪ Baby hold me down ♪ I got feelings for you now ♪ Way you love me where it hurts ♪ ♪ We can talk just stick around ♪ ♪ 'Cause I've got more to say ♪ You know it's just game girl ♪ You know how it goes ♪ But I don't wanna play ♪ The feeling too strong now ♪ I really gotta go ♪ I've been in the streets ♪ Streets ♪ In the streets ♪ Take me out the streets ♪ In the streets ♪ Take me off the streets ♪ In the streets ♪ Take me off the streets ♪ I've been in the streets ♪ Yeah - My name is Fanta.

I am from the smiling coast of Africa, known as The Gambia.

I am performing the mbalax dance style from Senegal region of West Africa.

It blends a couple of traditional dance moves with modern dance styles.

For example, the Congolese Rumba is mixed in there with the traditional drum dancing from the Wolof tribe.

Dance was part of everyday life in my culture.

It's a way for them to one, release stress, two to celebrate the little joys.

Three, to come together as a culture, as a group to celebrate each other.

The praise part of my culture is a huge deal and the best way for that to be conveyed is through song and dance.

My tribe and my culture are named after the language that we speak.

And so another aspect of that language is the dance that is associated with the language.

You can really do the dance without bringing in elements of the language.

They're one and they can't be separated.

In most cultures when the dancers are dancing, they follow the melodies of the drummer.

But in our society, the dancer can take the lead and dance to rhythm that the drummer has to follow.

(musician singing in foreign language) - My name's Abrecia and I'm from central Illinois.

I'm doing a dance that is a mix of Afro modern Ashkin and Baker.

The Afro Modern is a mix of different African techniques.

Being African American and a lot of people know the starkness of our history.

Dance was one of those things that was very freeing to us.

Dance was the thing that we could hold onto and still keep our culture.

We learned to survive, sing, dance, and keep our happiness even in those trying times.

I love this song because it's very chaotic, the sound, the horns are a little wild and it reminds me of my thought patterns 'cause my brain runs too fast.

Every style of dance has technique.

Every style of dance has history.

When you see a lot of dance genres, there's only respect put on contemporary modern ballet, those are technical.

But when you see styles that are like Afro Modern, Dance Hall, Afro Fusion, Afrobeat, a lot of the Black genres of dance is like, oh, it's just for fun, we're just doing this for fun.

There's history.

Those dance moves have names.

Those rhythms of the body have a way about them and it has to be learned, it's not something you can just do.

(modern afro music) - My name is Vivian Ngongang Ogunyemi from Cameroon.

So I learned the Bamileke dance from my grandma who came here to help raise me and my sisters.

She taught us the culture, the food, and different dance moves, and she just went back to Cameroon.

So the song is a tribute to her.

Bamileke dance is one of so many dances in Cameroon, right?

There's Emanu people, the Bakweri people, and some of those dances are with their shoulders, some are with their feet, some are with the waist.

Ours is focused more on the feet.

So I'll be wearing kind of like beads around my feet, kind of shaking them.

And there's different dances that happens for different occasions.

There's a dance for when someone dies, there's a dance for birth.

'Cause in places where we lack words, we have movement.

When some of those other vocabularies are lacking, Bamileke is going through a crisis right now in Bamenda.

A lot of the moves and songs they create right now is to express the pain that they're going through, but yet to shine light and joy in the livelihood they can still make, even though there's so much crisis going on around them.

And dance is one of the ways to communicate, to keep life going, and to keep the hope in people.

(upbeat music) (musician singing in foreign language) - My name is Kemi Shittu, I am from the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria.

This is the apepe dance from the Jabu people in Ogo state.

Growing up here in Minnesota, there was always an absence of culture and really understanding the identity of being Yoruba because the Jabu people speak a different dialect than Ivano people, than the Ekiti people.

There's also a different variation of those dances as well.

With bata dancing, there's a lot of foot movement, a lot of breaking, a lot of jumping and doing a lot of acrobats.

Whereas with the dance style I'm performing, apepe is more, flowy.

It's kind of representing that of a bird.

So it's a lot of flowing, a lot of arm movement.

The Jabu people and the Ivano people and Ekiti people tend to sometimes have symbols, such as birds or objects to represent that ethnic group.

The Yoruba culture has influenced many of the dance trends that we see today.

I came up with this piece as a way to pay homage and respect to my mom and my dad, who made me and gave me the love of dance, so.

(musician singing in foreign language) - My name is Elsie and I'm from Togo.

So I'm doing a combination of Agbadza and Agbaja with the little side of Elsie.

You tell a story through your dances, through your moves, and that's how usually people know where you're from.

Let's take Togo, Benin and Ghana, for example.

Once upon a time they were all the same.

Then you know, they got colonized by different groups of people.

Ghana is now more English and Togo is now more French.

So the songs have changed in a sense, the instruments have slightly diverted, but the movements have remained authentic.

Everything has been very modernized.

So it's good for us to go back to the roots of where we started.

My ancestors created these things and this is what the meaning was.

As a person in this age, I can interpret it and use it how I like and invoke the feelings that, you know, I wanted to project.

And dance really have saved my life.

I don't know where I would be without, you know, the expression of dance.

I just encourage everyone to get up and learn something.

Learn a dance, whether it's togolese or not.

Learn a dance and get moving.

(musician singing in foreign language) - We as members of Afrocontigbo understand the joy and the healing that it brings to us.

And so we want to share it with our friends, family members, neighbors, and our loved ones.

(musician singing in foreign language) (bright music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms.

A retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web @shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions For memorable vacations and events.

More information @explorealex.com.

A better future starts now.

West Central Initiative empowers communities with resources, funding, and support for a thriving region.

More @wwcif.org.

(upbeat music)