circles worth joining
philadelphia based dance
troupe kulu mele in guinea
.::clare croft

+ All images copyright Gabriel Bienczycki of Zebra Visual 2009

Sometimes you have to go to the source. In this spirit, Philadelphia-based dance company Kulu Mele traveled to Conakry, Guinea, to learn the African ballet, Mali Sadio. Kulu Mele has performed dance and music from the African Diaspora for over forty years, but Mali Sadio marks the company’s first foray into a full-length African ballet, complete with dance, drama, and drums. The extensive project required the company’s full focus as they learned a tremendous amount of new material while soaking up Guinean culture. The fullness of the experience can been seen onstage at Philadelphia’s Freedom Theatre on May 8, when the company premieres Mali Sadio, but here is an excerpt from the online diary Dance Magazine writer Clare Croft kept on the company’s blog during the residency.

December 3: The Best Middle of the Night Parking Lot Experience Ever

We arrived at the Conakry airport last night at 3:30 a.m. after a daylong layover in Morocco. We shuffled through the airport quickly, thanks to our host and unofficial Guinean ambassador, M’Bemba, the master drummer the company begins rehearsing with tomorrow.  As we walked down the ramp to the parking lot, drumming greeted us.  We circled around the drummers,happy to be done with two days of travel.  The planning was done; let the dancing

Clare Croft is a freelance dance writer based in Austin, Texas, where she is a regular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman and Dance Magazine.

ali: king of the world
muhammad ali and the face of america
.::phillip harvey

"I'm pretty."
Cassius Clay

According to lore, Muhammad Ali was seated at one end of an extraordinarily long banquet table.  At the other end of the table sat Idi Amin, staring impassively at Ali from behind the barrel of a gun.  Moments earlier, Amin had challenged “The Great Muhammad Ali,” to a fight for which the gun was either a kind of inducement or a harbinger of what such a ‘fist fight’ would entail.  After several tense moments, the incident would soon dissolve into belly laughs from the amused Amin, a man known to be full of jokes.  For even the most notorious of history’s dictators loved “The Greatest.”  Even Idi Amin had a need for Muhammad Ali. 

Such is the legacy of the man who wore the title of the world’s most recognizable human being long before more recent contenders such as Michael Jordan, Madonna or Barack Obama could say the same.  Of all the legacies that Ali can lay claim to it was his position at the forefront of the modern Americanization of the world that may be his most lasting. continue

Netherlands, Denmark, the United States, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland and Brazil. continue

Kourosh Ziabari, born in 1990, an Iranian freelance journalist and cultural researcher, a member of Stony Brook University Publications' editorial team, a guest writer for BBC world service website, a contributor to PBS Media Shift, columnist of the Netherlands-based Poli Gazette magazine and the author of book "7+1". A number of his articles have been translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Malayan and Arabic.

Interim South African President Kgalema Motlanthe’s announcement that general elections would take place on April 22nd released a rush of anxiety across the nation.  For the first time since Nelson Mandela took office following the fall of apartheid there will be a transfer of power from one political party to another in South Africa.  The African National Congress (ANC), the party that dominated the country’s liberation struggle, will officially cede a portion of its political power to the African National Congress, a divided party whose future is uncertain.  Though the shift in power is more symbolic than literal the primary point is clear—For South Africa a new, if not particularly bright, day is on the horizon. 

The infra war-fare that has weakened the seemingly indestructible ANC had been a slow burn until Jacob Zuma, the former Deputy Minister challenged President Thabo Mbeki for party leadership.  Then what had been the growing murmur of internal dissension ruptured into all out civil struggle.  continue