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Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Knee slaps, flat-footed stomps, sandpapery drags, and resounding claps rattle the rafters whenever Step Afrika! takes the stage. The energetic Washington, DC-based company makes irrepressible body music, and audiences whoop and holler their approval like a Baptist revival. A sell-out from DC's Kennedy Center Family Theater to Palm Beach County's Dolly Hand Cultural Arts Center, from Brazil to Vietnam, the curtain calls mount and the accolades pour in. "Electrifying talents," crowed Sarah Kaufman in The Washington Post.
Part body percussion and part poetry slam, step dancing has been popular for decades on the African American fraternity and sorority circuit. Today stepping has marched off the college yard and into middle schools, high schools, churches, and community centers. Think Spike Lee's School Daze or Sylvain White's Stomp the Yard, two Hollywood takes on college kids who break it down, dance it out, rhyme, and play the dozens to win credibility (and, because it's a movie, get the girl).
Step Afrika!, the 15-year-old troupe that led stepping from the campus to the...
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