sounds
Brazilian rhythm ensemble Barbatuques syncopates with the Urban Bush Women in São Paulo, Brazil.
Built-in Beats
Body percussion is the poetry of nonverbal communication.
T
he dancers leapt into air, hit ground with a thud, and whacked their shiny green boots, creating such percussive ecstasy that the audience could not resist leaning forward, clapping, and stomping. Step Afrika took the crowd by storm at the Second International Body Rhythm Festival last December with their rendition of gumboots, a South African rhythmic “code” first developed by 19th century African mine workers. They would slap their Wellington boots to communicate when they were forbidden to speak to each other during the long days underground. Similarly, the technique known as “hambone,” also performed at the festival, developed from the suppression of a slave rebellion. When slaves were communicating via drums over long distances, slave owners took their drums away. “So the slaves started expressing their rhythmic knowledge on the body and developed this style known as the hambone,” according to Keith Terry, director of Crosspulse and the Body Rhythm Festival. “There’s a traditional vocabulary of rhythms and a lot of variations.” 32
conscious dancer | FALL 2010
“Gumboots,” “hambone,” and “rumba tap” may not yet be household words, but the success of hit Broadway shows such as STOMP and RIVERDANCE has sparked excitement and brought the phenomenon of body percussion to mainstream audiences. This popular success, though, is based on a movement deeply rooted in cultures throughout the world. It explores traditions as ancient as flamenco dancing and palmas (hand clapping), along with fresh new collaborations and creative adaptations such as “stepping,” a unique dance tradition created by African American college students in the early 1900s. Though modern body percussion might seem relatively new, it has been developing for decades in urban and rural “pockets” worldwide. In the late ’70s, the new music movement, influenced by the seminal work of composer John Cage, developed at Mills College in Oakland, spawning unique multimedia and theatrical collaborations. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, New York performance artists Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, and others were already utilizing movement, vocalization, and rhythm in
their innovative cutting-edge pieces. While Anderson integrated evocative multimedia, visuals, and electronic music into her largescale musical performances, Monk combined haunting vocal ensemble pieces with simple mesmerizing movement. This era of radical experimentation in music and movement paved the way for a theatrical openness that invited the unconventional concept of body as instrument that Terry and Crosspulse evolved in uniquely expressive ways. Terry acknowledges the importance of vocal sound to his unique work, noting, “I call it body music, by the way, because I like the connotation of using the voice as well, both melodically and harmonically.” As a performance and “slam” poet, I began teaching Writing for Performance Art in San Francisco and at the College of Marin in the early ’80s, utilizing body rhythms as a technique for improvising rhythmic spoken word pieces with my students. My students and I automatically transferred these body rhythms into the distinctive beats of our poetry performances.
Photo: U.S. Consulate of brazil - Najla Kubrusly
BY Claire Blotter