Photo credit: Christal Wagner
DeMar Walker is the artistic director of Milwaukee’s Ko-Thi Dance Company
DeMar Walker officially inherited the artistic directorship of Milwaukee’s Ko-Thi Dance Company when the venerable troupe opened its 50th anniversary season in August 2019. Ko-Thi has been affiliated with UWM’s dance department for decades, rehearsing and leading community workshops in the university’s studios. With the school’s shutdown in March, that workspace disappeared.
“We weren’t really interested in teaching dance and drum classes from our living rooms,” Walker explains. So with Associate Artistic Director Sonya Thompson and Musical Director Kumasi Allen, he’s devised a five-part educational video series titled Sankofa. Episode One, “In the Spirit of Juneteenth,” was posted on the Ko-Thi website and social media platforms on June 19. Additional episodes will arrive every other Friday.
Why Sankofa?
The word comes from Ghana, West Africa. It represents the principle: go back and get it. With the series, we want to reflect on our past as a preparation for what’s ahead. Once we were able to secure relief funding through local and national efforts, we asked ourselves what we can do to let people know that we’re still very much part of the community; and at the same time, assert ourselves as the new leadership team that’s really devoted to this art. So that’s the Sankofa series. It’s a culmination of us reflecting on the beautiful legacy of the company and pushing forward, always thinking about the future.
Episode one is rich with interesting African dance history.
It’s an overview of the importance of the art, especially at times like this, since the arts have always been a great facilitator for social change.
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And it ends with a sensational dance clip.
That’s from a recent performance by the adult ensemble and Ton Ko-Thi, our children’s ensemble, at Wisconsin Lutheran College. We were putting out some of the best work in our rep, telling people to just come out and rock with us and have a good time
What will the next episodes cover?
Sonya will be doing “Family Affair” with her two daughters who are in Ton Ko-Thi. Kumasi will be doing “DrumTalk” with a few of our Ton Ko-Thi drummers. He’ll reflect on his legacy of starting in Ton Ko-Thi and now being musical director, able to share that wealth with the newer generation. I’ll be moderating “Alumna 2 Alumna,” a conversation about the past and present with two of our alumna, Phaleshia Pinder-Fearen and Linda Lacy-Hodge. Miss Lacy actually created Ton Ko-Thi. And I’ll have a conversation with a young man in Ton Ko-Thi named Adrean Maxwell. He’s been with the company since he was 9 and he’ll be 18 in August. We’ll talk about what it means to be black and male-identified and doing this dance form. That’s called “Model the Magic.”
Please elaborate.
It’s beautiful to see someone mature not only in their personhood but in their artistry, and I’m always cognizant of what it means to be an example, especially in a space where there are so many people like me and Adrean. We come in with so many ideas placed on us about what it means to be black men who dance. He and I have similar upbringings. We grew up in church. So trying to understand oneself when you’re dealing with the religion and also doing something that is very much grounded in a spirituality that I think is sometimes very much overlooked. It’s going to be a really intimate talk, something that’s going to open a lot of people’s eyes and ears.
People can study these tapes for years.
That’s the goal. In this country, we’ve been led to believe that when black bodies perform, it’s solely for entertainment. But Ko-Thi has always had an educational component. It’s always run very much in the vein of activism. I think what’s really special now is that a lot of people are starting to participate in the idea of sankofa, going back and reflecting on earlier movements and saying “what is it that I need to learn from our past to give me a framework for knowing who I am now, and to reimagine where we could be and what it is that I can do.”
Dance is collective action, especially what we do. When you see it onstage, it pushes you into a mind frame of what it means to be socially engaged and to mobilize and have collective action within your community. The idea of actually employing the body and being able to experience that joy with other black people on stage, especially young people—that’s a really profound thing. It runs parallel to where we are right now. Black lives matter. Of course they matter. And black art matters.
Watch the videos free at www.ko-thi.org, Facebook or Instagram.
