African Healing Dance

In Africa, dance is much more than physical movement—it is a direct way to celebrate life and create healing. African Healing Dance is a step-by-step course on the healing tradition and expressive movements that are unique to Africa's dance heritage. From the movements of nature and everyday life, the tribal people of Africa developed specific dances to summon the energy of the world around them into their bodies for connection and healing. Through dancing, they became the bird and the wind, the fire and the serpent. Join Wyoma, the lead dancer and director of the Damballa dance troupe, as she teaches you the African way of moving your entire body with passion and joy, including symbolic animal and elemental gestures, demonstrations of hip, torso, and shoulder articulations, and much more. Here's the instructional program you need to have a high-energy African dance class at home. Can anyone learn these dances? "If you can talk, you can sing," they say in Zimbabwe, "and if you can walk, you can dance." So get ready to move—and be moved—with African Healing Dance. Learn Six African Dances: Sowu—The Dance of Life, from the Ewe of Ghana Gbegbe—From the Ivory Coast, a call for vision and strength Focodoba—A post-initiation basket dance from the Bambara of Guinea Umoya—A South African dance to draw energy from heaven and earth Nago—An Afro-Haitian warrior dance to claim your power and domain Yonvalu—A voudoun invocation to Damballa, the serpent deity