African Healing Dance

The title notwithstanding, this is not a guide to African "healing" dance (except for a brief, do-your-own-movement session at the end...and just how "African" is improvisational dance?), but a run-through of a wide variety of traditional African dances. Presented by Wyoma and the dancers and drummers of her dance troupe Damballa, African Healing Dance combines namby-pamby New Age mysticism (like "feel the water in your pelvis"--which is precisely what I felt about 180 minutes into Titanic after a Big Gulp sized bottled water; though I really don't think it was a mystical thing) with a wide range of dance influences. I can't speak to the authenticity of the dances presented here, but what I think I saw was aerobics meets belly dancing meets Merce Cunningham meets African dance. Speaking of which, viewers will learn dances hailing from Ghana, the Ivory Coast, South Africa, Haiti and Guinea which were used in various agricultural incantatory or initiation rites. And while I--as a sitting-on-my-butt W.A.S.A. (regardless of what my wife might say, that last "A" stands for "agnostic")--might well scoff at the New Age notions bandied about here, it would have done me no harm and probably some good to have decamped from my Barcalounger, shed my inhibitions and, as they say, felt the carpet move under my feet. Sure to be quite popular, this is recommended with the usual minor didn't-we-get-past-this-with-the-Age-of-Enlightenment reservations. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)