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African Healing Dance, with lead dancer Wyoma and the dancers and drummers of the Damballa dance troupe, is a step-by-step dance course on healing traditions and spiritual movements that are special to the African dance heritage. An African proverb teaches, "If you can talk, you can sing, and if you can walk, you can dance." Thus
African Healing Dance is suited for beginning to advanced dancers, students of dance, instructors, and choreographers studying and/or performing African dance. The instructional video and included manual provide an effective guide for a dance or exercise program at home or in a workshop setting. Director of the Damballa dance troupe as well as head dancer, Wyoma begins with a simple warm-up, including breathing techniques; body articulation movements for the hips, chest, shoulders, and feet; and stretching. She then artistically integrates the teaching of six traditional African dances with the passion and joy of connecting dance movements that have the spirit and energy of nature and the elements (water, wind, fire, and earth) and animals such as the snake, elephant, and bird. A final portion of the 70-minute video is called "The Healing Journey," in which Wyoma encourages personal exploration of inner rhythms and feelings through improvisational movement. As one watches this video, it is difficult not to feel the pulse of the drumbeat and the spiritual strength of Wyoma and her celebration of life through dance.
--Christine Aiken
From the back cover
The Healing Art of African Dance
In Africa, dance is much more than physical movement--it is a direct way to celebrate life and create healing. African Healing Dance is a step-by-step course on the healing tradition and expressive movements that are unique to Africa's dance heritage. From the movements of nature and everyday life, the tribal people of Africa developed specific dances to summon the energy of the world around them into their bodies for connection and healing. Through dancing, they became the bird and the wind, the fire and the serpent.
Join Wyoma, the respected lead dancer and director of the Damballa dance troupe, as she teaches you the African way of moving your entire body with passion and joy ... symbolic animal and elemental gestures ... secrets of hip, torso, and shoulder articulations, and much more. Here's the instructional program you need to have a high-energy African dance class at home. Can anyone learn these dances? "If you can talk, you can sing," they say in Zimbabwe, "and if you can walk, you can dance." So get ready to move--and be moved--with African Healing Dance.
Learn 6 African Dances:
- Sowu--"The Dance of Life," from the Ewe of Ghana
- Gbêgbeacute;--From the Ivory Coast, a call for vision and strength
- Focodoba--a post-initiation basket dance from the Bambara of Guinea
- Umoya--A South African dance to draw energy from heaven and earth
- Nago--An Afro-Haitian warrior dance to claim your power and domain
- Yonwalu--A voudoun invocation to Damballa, the serpent deity
- A Healing Journey--Dancing from within
Wyoma is the director of Damballa, a performance group that features the dance and music of Africa and the diaspora. She is a dance performance artist and consultant whose workshops integrate African dance with the healing arts for personal growth and development.
DVD ~ Debra Bono
DVD ~ Vanessa Isaac
DVD ~ Kukuwa Nuamah
DVD ~ Quenia Ribeiro
