Sankofa Danzafro (Colombia)

Sankofa Danzafro hails from Colombia, the country with the second largest Afro-descent population found in Latin America. The company’s “The City of Others”, is a work showcasing powerful Afro-Colombian and Afro-contemporary dance performed by 12 dancers & musicians with live drumming and singing.

The city in “The City of Others” is populated by people with diverse backgrounds from different places with varying cultures, and different ways to understand the world. These dissimilar people coexist in a limited space, and despite the forward march of progress, the city at times can become a place of discrimination, resulting in hostility and solitude for Afro-Colombians.

“The City of Others” denounces the lack of opportunities for minority communities and other marginalized populations who, for generations, have suffered social inequity. “The City of Others” demands the city be a place of coexistence; a place for everybody, not only the few.

One hour in length, Accommodating Lie showcases 7 dancers with live music performed by 3 musicians (drums, native flute, marimba, and voice). A powerful work examining what it means to be of African descent, Accommodating Lie denounces the clichés and falsehoods around the Black body. It looks to dismantle stereotypes that continue to be perpetuated. In a series of emotional solos, duets, and group dances, the company embodies decades of slavery and overt racism while claiming ownership to their identity. I know this all sounds super intense, and I can promise you, Sankofa’s performances are ultimately a celebratory experience from the lens of the African diaspora.

Through their performances, Rafael Palacios’ dances for Sankofa Danzafro reaffirm the need for self-representation of Afro-descendant communities, rewriting history from the perspective of colonized Colombians. In Accommodating Lie, he utilizes a catwalk to exhibit a parade of black bodies on display. The staging includes an interactive auction with the musicians and the audience – a direct reference to slavery and human trafficking. The set design includes a wall hung of straw ropes hung upstage – the kind of ropes used in the straw skirts worn by Afro-Colombian dancers in (racist) dance displays. The Sankofa dancers emerge from within this wall, and they too wear straw skirts in parts of the dance.

Behind the South: Dances for Manuel (Detrás del Sur: Danzas para Manuel), is a tribute to the distinguished Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella’s most acclaimed work Changó, el Gran Putas (Changó, the big badass), documenting the African Diaspora to the American continents.

Behind the South: Dances for Manuel is composed of five acts, following the structure of Zapata’s novel. Through choreography and dramaturgy, the performance references omens, miraculous births, rebellion, and liberation, the pain of the mass abductions and the effort to maintain connection with the motherland of Africa. During the Middle Passage, the enslaved men and women are accompanied by their ancestors, the dead, and the orishas: Yemayá, Elegua, and Changó (Changó is the son of Yemayá, the mother goddess, protector of birth in the Yoruba tradition and religion). Behind the South: Dances for Manuel celebrates the vital force of the muntu (the chosen African people) and their use of the dancing body and music in ritual as a means of survival in the Americas.

Behind the South: Dances for Manuel (60 minutes) was premiered in May, 2021 as a co-production with the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo in Bogotá. It tours with a total of 18 people: 12 dancers; 3 musicians; and 3 staff/crew.

Geografías Líquidas (Liquid Geographies)

Geografías Líquidas dives into the deep and fluid connections between bodies of water and Black communities. Inspired by Velia Vidal’s poetry collection Cuerpos de Agua (Tidal Waters), the work views water as a living archive — a vital, symbolic, and spiritual force that carries the memories, struggles, and resilience of Afro-descendant peoples. Through the embodied knowledge of Sankofa’s afro-colombian dancers, the project traces rivers, seas, swamps, and streams as witnesses to histories of movement, care, and resistance.

Blending poetry, dance, and reflection, Geografías Líquidas unfolds as a poetic and political exploration of memory, belonging, and identity. It invites audiences to consider how water sustains and shapes life, while also confronting the global currents of racism, extractivism, and exclusion that continue to divide the North and South.

Sankofa Danzafro’s Rafael Palacios offers a new work that powerfully embodies a reflection of Afro Colombians in, “Pacífico Entundao, waltz of life and death.”

“Pacífico Entundao, waltz of life and death” revisits the legend of La Tunda, a mystical figure from the Pacific region of Colombia who bewitches the inhabitants and leads them astray on their way home. The full-length performance reflects on the spiritual dimension and Afro-Colombian worldviews in the Colombian Pacific, offering an interpretation of the persistence of exclusion and inequality in the region. Palacios proposes that the result of this perennial spell on Black communities is what robs them of their freedom.

To be “bewitched” by La Tunda in this performance is not a “graceful charm” of dance. Instead, the dance is approached with a ritual seriousness that involves shaking off the shackles of injustice and affirming love in a place where life flows, always threatened by the machinery of death, before the complicit, inert eyes that impassively observe how evil is brewing in the shadows.

Rendered through music and dance as means of reflection and expression, “Pacífico Entundao” stands as an artistic and community testimony exploring themes of resistance. The performance highlights the importance of cultural preservation as a way to build a dignified life for Afro-Colombians in the heart of the Pacific.

Performed by 13 dancers and with 3 live musicians on stage alongside Maestro Héctor González’s recorded score (“Pacífico Entundao”), the dance forms include contemporary Afro-Colombian dance techniques such as currulao and cucurucho.