We should count ourselves lucky — we live in a world where cultures, traditions and art forms overlap. Within this amalgamation, creation happens. An artistic dialogue begins.
A showcase of this burgeoning fusion of tradition, sound and form in the contemporary dance world, the University of South Florida’s Fall Dance Concert will take place Nov. 6-8 and Nov. 12-15 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 9 at 3 p.m. in USF’s Theatre 2. Presented by DanceUSF, the USF Fall Dance Concert will feature choreography by faculty and guest choreographers, including Maurice Causey, Sarah Gamblin, Patrick Damon Rago, Andrew Carroll, Michael Foley, John Parks and Donna Mejia.
A crusader bridging international traditions and contemporary culture, Donna Mejia recently completed a week-long stint as an artist in residence at the University of South Florida. Her visit and upcoming performance, part of Art2Action Inc.'s This Bridge series, provides a major contribution to the series' celebration of Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim artists. During her time here in October, Mejia delivered a lecture demonstration about transnational fusion dance at USF School of Music’s Barness Recital Hall. Mejia also acted as a guest professor for several classes, discussing dance theory, history choreographic tools and transnational fusion movement.
Mejia — a faculty member at Colorado College for 10 years and assistant professor of dance at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2012 — became enraptured by this transnational fusion movement around 1994, when she was a member of Harambee African Dance Ensemble at the University of Colorado Boulder. The company studied movements of the African Diaspora.
“We did everything from Tanzanian, South African and Guinean dances, to dances of the Caribbean and South American,” Mejia said. “Wherever African people had been present around the world, we made it our mission to study.”
One of the company’s last commissions was a Moroccan dance, and they were visited by choreographer Hamid Essaya. According to Mejia, she was bowled over by the Moroccan dance more so than she had been by anything in the company’s 12-year repertoire.
At Colorado College, a seamstress and costume designer who worked with Mejia introduced her to tribal fusion, sparking an intense interest in the genre that has evolved over the past decade. Currently, Mejia is the only choreographer/instructor/dancer to teach tribal fusion at the collegiate level.
Tribal fusion is a beautiful medley of movements of secular African and Arab Diaspora and the sounds of contemporary electronica and hip-hop. Although the written word makes the concept seem a bit confusing, tribal fusion’s visual manifestation is captivating, and the marriage of traditional African/Arab movements and hip-hop/EDM (weirdly enough) is very fitting.
Where many genres of dance emphasize broad movements and limb lengths, tribal fusion focuses in on tiny movements. It calls upon the smallest of muscles, some of which are not typically used, even in dance.
“It’s like Sudoku. It’s for some people, not everyone,” Mejia said. “If you’re fascinated with those micro movements, you practice them until they start to make sense to your body. I enjoy the problem solving of that effort, but there are some people who might find it absolutely nerve wracking.”
This intense focus on minute movements makes tribal fusion intoxicating in the sense that you are afraid to look away – afraid that if you blink, you’ll miss something. This makes the genre well suited for the changes taking place in the world of dance. Where someone sitting in a theater twenty-five feet away from the stage might miss something, the internet allows the viewer to see every moment of a tribal fusion performance, up close and personal.
“The form has to be rendered close up to be visible,” Mejia said.
Aside from its impact on the world on dance, Mejia has studied (in depth) the effect of the internet on cultural and personal identity.
“No matter at what level you engage with internet or technology, it creates shifts in your consciousness. You feel yourself energetically connecting with your imagined peers on different levels,” Mejia said. “It can reduce a sense of isolation, and it can help fortify your identity so you feel you are not alone in things that interest you. It makes the exploration of difference a much less intimidating endeavor.”
According to Mejia, although the internet forges deep cross-cultural connections, it also endows us with extreme social responsibility. She believes that it is important to learn about other cultures via contemporary tools while maintaining an understanding that the knowledge obtained digitally has certain social limitations.
“People can get too emboldened with their digital explorations and start to feel that they have a certain amount of exposure that warrants sophistication,” said Mejia. “They forget that until you have really allowed another people’s way of life to move through your body, through your bones, through your taste buds and through your eyes, that all you’re doing is gathering inspiration. You haven’t experienced it for yourself."
This has much to do with why tribal fusion as a dance form perplexes some people. The adoption or incorporation of a nation’s culture is taken very seriously, and rightly so, according to Mejia.
“Honestly, cultural pollution, which is the idea that transformations are watering down or eroding cultural traditions, is very important to consider, because there are generations of performers, even within Middle Eastern communities, that feel that tribal fusion is a grotesque insult to the tradition of belly dance,” Mejia said. “But, belly dance itself is an amalgamated, infused form. So, that kind of righteousness at some point can be destructive. But, it has its place in trying to not give ourselves editorial rights over other people’s culture.”
Ultimately, according to Mejia, it is a matter of execution.
“In all the art forms, there are people who do it poetically and there are people who do it garishly. So where you see really good transnational fusion, it inspires,” Mejia said. “I’ve had people from all walks of life say ‘I get it. I didn’t understand it on paper, but now that I see it, I get it.’”
At its core, tribal fusion is innately feminine – a movement created by women who have taken the ubiquitous sounds of EDM and created a dance form influenced by traditional African and Arab movements.
“With tribal fusion, I find it fascinating that women who evolved and popularized this form were the ones to create the first communal response to digital and computer generated movement. People were creating approximations, but we were the first ones to say ‘Oh no, no, no — we know exactly what to do with that sound,’” Mejia said. “Women have finally made a mass cultural contribution to the dance world in going beyond being pawns in the male game. That’s where I see this as a feminist form.”
The cultural climate is changing our lives and the ways in which we create. Tribal fusion is an artistic representation of those changes, spanning traditions, genres, cultures and genders.
“The world is at our fingertips,” Mejia said. “There is an immediacy to connection that we can't just sit on anymore.”