Episode 5

• Profile: University of California, Irvine: https://dance.arts.uci.edu/dr-s-ama-wray
   
• Major Initiatives
  • Embodiology: https://www.embodiology.com/dr-wray 
  • AI 4 Afrika: https://ai4afrika.com/
  • The Africana Institute for Creation Recognition, and Elevation (AICRE): https://sites.uci.edu/aicre/#:~:text=The%20Africana%20Institute%20for%20Creation,so%20that%20people%20of%20African   
    
    
• Article by Dr. Sela Adjei about Kopeyia School Visit: https://www.gringhana.com/grin-blog/mep6t94c060d36ddnhx6x6xwz1i5wt

Ama Wray: [00:00:00] So if there's anything that's on my epitaph, it's that she was an improviser and improvisation has, as far as I can think back, been part of my life. This, this way of engaging in play and invention and creativity and responsivity. 

[Theme music fades in behind the narration]

OreOluwa: Welcome to Groovin Griot, a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories. I'm OreOluwa Badaki

Azsaneé: and I'm Azsaneé Truss. Let's get groovin’.

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OreOluwa: On this episode, I spoke with Dr. S. Ama Wray, professor of dance at the University of California, Irvine, founding member of AI 4 [00:01:00] Afrika, and co PI for the Africana Institute for Creativity, Recognition and Elevation. 

Azsaneé: I was traveling at the time, so I had to sit this interview out, but Dr. Ray touched on many of the topics Ore and I discuss all the time. So I'm excited to dig in. We'll start with some of Dr. Wray's early experiences with music, dance and performance

Ama Wray: So my foundation in my earlier career was through London Contemporary Dance Theatre, which was a repertory company, which means that we did the work of many different choreographers and we toured nationally and internationally.

I was in a space that was really like a family. So it was a really had a strong sense of community, um, and support and joy. There was a lot of laughter, which, which really surprised me having coming from a dance training where we're very serious about, you know, being exact and precise and, and right, and the best and all of that.

And then I came into this space and the people [00:02:00] were having fun and joy and, encouragement. So that, if there was something that I take away from that experience that continues to be part of what I want to recreate, it would be that. Um, what I also did during that period in my life was that I started to teach and I started to teach jazz, which wasn't actually London Contemporary Dance Theatre's aesthetic world.

It was a modern dance company, but I had an interest in jazz, which stemmed from my earlier training, a trip to New York in 1992 led me to going to jazz clubs.

Really thinking about how jazz music fosters improvisation. And yet there had been no such training in my education. And so, I took away the idea of the reintegration of improvisation into jazz as a aesthetic charge. [00:03:00] So that's when Jazz Exchange began. It really was me gathering people together to talk about explore this idea with musicians.

And I didn't have a methodology that, that, that drove that, just really our zest for play and responding. And, and that, if you will, ties back to my family setting where dance was really an important part of the homestead. I have very strong memories of dancing with my mother during various holiday periods and it was very much performative that people watched, and we enjoyed and I learned from her and I tried to mimic and then I did my own thing and so that seed, you know, carried, carried me forwards.

And there was not any particular method that I was using. But what I [00:04:00] came to see was that the music had a method, the music, the musicians, the way they played, the ecology of their understandings, the forms of the music that the music took itself, the structures. And that was what then informed us of how we then improvised.

Azsaneé: Dr. Wray touches on themes that have come up a few times in our show, like the role that growing up dancing with family and friends and social dancing in community-based settings can play in sparking a kind of embodied awareness as well as a curiosity.

OreOluwa: Very true, and she also touched on the way that jazz music and dance helped her cultivate an improvisational sensibility. Dr. Wray's choreography and movement are influenced by a sort of rhythmic alignment, as well as chaos, that is unique to jazz. 

We'll come back to Dr. Wray's improvisational practice in a little bit, but first let's hear more about her diverse dance background and how that led her to create her own dance company called Jazz Exchange.

Ama Wray: So also during that period, I was offered this opportunity [00:05:00] to go to Cuba. And so, in 1986, I went to Cuba and In short, I will say that Cuba was my entryway to Africa.

I had not performed any African dances in the UK. I was solely in this contemporary space. I had seen Les Ballets Africains, which blew my mind at the Sadler's Wells Theatre. But at this point I hadn't taken any African dance training. I was engaged in, you know, street dance. I was engaged in club dancing where we would dance to jazz music in the, in the nightclub setting.

So, so there were these, you know, extensions into the Diaspora, but I didn't take any African dance classes. When I went to Cuba, I was exposed to Santeria, which we know as being the syncretic, uh, religious practice that is infused with, , this understanding [00:06:00] of deities and, uh, and, and characteristics that, um, we all have that, support our connection with the supreme being, right? So that it was a gateway that showed me how dance music, storytelling how these things all come together in a spiritual way. 

And also, I was confused by the music. Like, listening to Batá, playing beautiful, but it didn't register with any music or any kind of movement practice that I've been exposed to.I could, sense, but I couldn't, it wasn't a simple entryway. I had to be still, it would have to be quiet. I had to [00:07:00] participate through just listening and allowing myself to be submerged. And that I think that questioning through listening is something that has gone forward into my research. 

So, going back to London Contemporary Dance Theatre, you know, it was a space where I got to begin to choreograph, begin to bring some of these ideas of, um, working with musicians in the live music context. Um, and as I say, that foundation really, led me to really honor community

So within that time, that's when, that's when Jazz Exchange, my company, began and. It really was friends getting together and then it got more serious and more serious and more serious.

[00:08:00] So who knew that it was going to, you know, be the next 10, 15 years of my life.

Azsaneé: Like many of the guests on our show, Dr. Wray highlights how dance is more than just a physical or aesthetic practice. And I think that's something that drew me to dance as well, the opportunity to be a part of something bigger and more communal.

Ama Wray: Dance offers us a way to be really present with our entire selves. And that self is both the sensory self, it's the, um, the reflective self through the mind, and it's the relational self, self in view of space and other people. So in all kinds of performance, we bring our bodies to that and the awareness that we bring within that space is what offers the possibility of granularity and texture and enriched [00:09:00] connection and, and that sense of groundedness that one can always return to if work is, you know, terse or challenging, like one can bring oneself back to a grounded place.

And so I think that is one of the core, core properties that I, I carry no matter what kind of practice I'm engaging in. You know, how do we attend to other people? How do we listen? How, how, how do we develop our voice through that grounded connection to oneself and in relation to others? Because to collaborate is to really be vulnerable, and dance is constantly challenging us to be at the edge of our, uh, capacity.

And also, it's your life force on full [00:10:00] volume

OreOluwa: I just really love that concept of dance as relational practice, and as your life force on full volume. I know when I dance, and especially when I improvise, , I feel somehow completely in control of my body, and also completely out of control at the same time.

Sometimes I have no idea what is going to happen next. Sometimes I see so clearly how things will come together, but I have no idea how I see it. It's kind of trippy and fun and it's also a little bit terrifying. 

Azsaneé: For sure, and Dr. Ray highlights this phenomenon specifically within African diasporic dances, which she argues are inextricably linked with music. She also links these sort of processes to physiological and health benefits

Ama Wray: Alphonse Tierou, wrote a really short book called Doople or Doople. Um, I think coming from Ivory Coast, um, The Eternal Laws of African Dance. And in this book, he talks about improvisation in profound ways. Um, [00:11:00] meaning that, African people are not interested in anything that doesn't contain improvisation.

You know, it's a bit of an off the cuff remark, but when one digs down into that, one learns that actually because it's about how do we contribute to that knowledge, as opposed to it just being this dry thing that's just incessantly recreated. And then he also talks about you have to have an educated ear and eye to even understand improvisation, to be able to detect it.

In many of our languages that are not European, the word, particularly in African context, the word for music and dance are the same word.

They're not distinct activities, although there may be some context where music and the, the, the oral experiences has primacy, but for the most part, like, and even when we go into the Diaspora, we see salsa [00:12:00] talking about the music and the dance. We see hip hop. We're talking about the music and the dance.

We're talking swing. We're talking about the music and the dance. This is our predilection to understand holistically and I think that is that in itself has so many healing properties, music, vibration, how we evoke, um, uh, vibration through our engagement of breath. So breath is at the core of the principle of dynamic rhythm.

So dynamic rhythm is the the meta generator of improvisation. And we learn because we all breathe that we can alter our breath. We can regulate our breath. And we know the breath regulation has restorative properties in it, because of oxygenating the body in terms of our blood pressure so we can [00:13:00] immediately change our connections to our sense of anxiety.

So that's just on a base level. We can do that without improvising. But what do we do when we're improvising? We're under pressure, right? So we're creating, a hormetic form of stress. Hormesis is, a biological, it's a term that's used to describe usually chemical processes , where we put an outside entity into a body that then the body reacts against to then get stronger.

So when we're talking about having inoculations, it's hormetic stress. So improvisation puts a person under stress because you have to produce, you have to create in the moment. And not only that, in terms of African dance rhythm, you also have to be in time. You also have to reflect [00:14:00] rhythmicity. You also have to be polyrhythmically directed.

Azsaneé: Dr. Wray brings all of these understandings together in what she calls Embodiology, a movement training practice designed to help people be more, quote, dexterous contributors, leaders, and supporters.

Ama Wray: So in Embodiology, we scaffold that those levels of stress. And with that, we see how individuals become more able to produce creative responses that go beyond their interpretation of what they thought they could do.

Right, so it's this process of like anything we do. It's a practice. You practice improvising. Improvisation, if you will, is life, right? Life is an improvisation, but we take these discrete moments where we engage our rhythmicity, our [00:15:00] engagement with others, and we regulate that through our breath. So the cognitive is, is, is, is firing.

Because you are in, in relation to others in space, in time, and you, and you win, you succeed, you maintain, and you go beyond what you perceived you could do. And this process is possible, I have seen with virtually anyone who has a body and a will to move. So you could be seated. You could be, have any type of limitation, but the understanding that you have the capacity and the free will to be able to move that body, right?

So connecting from the inside, it's an insperience that we also relate externally. So we're zooming [00:16:00] in and zooming out and the breath is that medium that's enabling us to do that. 

OreOluwa: Much of this conceptualization around Embodiology came out of Dr. Wray's work in Ghana,

Ama Wray: I'm working with a community in Ghana, the Ewes from Kopeyia Village, they've allowed me to engage with their knowledge making and their ways of knowing and so the topic of Seselelame, it's an Ewe term, which means knowing the world through the body. 

The, the outcomes of Embodiology I owe the fact that I'm doing this work to the Ewes from Kopeyia Village. And so this, um, this summer, I went back to the village after two, three years of the pandemic and went to the computer lab that we helped them to build.

And I gave the students a lecture, like I did at the International Collegium on [00:17:00] Traditional Music, so it was a very formal presentation. But what was amazing was I walked inside this classroom. And I just plugged my HDMI cable in, projector was there, and then I told this story. But they were in the story.

Their grandparents were in the story. They showed me who was who in a photograph that I put up on the screen where I describe a concept called fractal code. And fractals and mathematic understanding is implicit to African It's explicit, you know, and the, and the work of the, the, um, the Oda, is it Oda? Within Ifa, divination, right?

So this coding, this understanding, this ability to use pattern and rhythm is intrinsic. It's explicit. So, I [00:18:00] do believe that it will require a different mindset. Not the two-dimensional binary code that we are using, but something 

that is five dimensional that we can't yet think of. But those children in the village have got closer access to it than you and I.

Because they live and understand their technologies in their music and their dance and their spiritual practices. And so for me, my job is to help them Um, maintain a structure where they can preserve that because we know that the incursions of Western ways of knowing on the continent are rabid and we are then cutting off the possibility of what AI for Africa is because they are the lifeblood of it.

And I'm just about what can I do to support? So that's really a very, a very explicit [00:19:00] motivator for me as I disseminate this work as I build my teacher training program, as I, is this the future is there because this work has been so incredibly generative in so many different trajectories. From working with medical doctors, to working with administrators, working with school teachers, working with musicians, and painters, like, it's, there seems to be nothing that it cannot, transform and transmute. Like, because it really shifts the person from being a small entity into being their full expression of their human self. And maybe more, because I haven't really tapped into the spiritual dimension. That's really not been at the core, but it shows up.

Azsaneé: This work sounds so cool and multidisciplinary. And if you want to know more about the school visit Dr. Wray describes, there's an article about it by Dr. Sela Adjei, who accompanied Dr. Wray on [00:20:00] the trip. We'll link to it in the show notes.

OreOluwa: We're going to get a little deeper into how Dr. Wray weaves in technology into her work on embodiment. But first, time for another movement break. 

Azsaneé: For this movement break, we were fortunate enough to find a really unique class focused specifically on rhythm and improvisation. Here's a little taste of what it was like. 

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OreOluwa: Okay, back at it again with Groove and Griot Movement Breaks. I am on my way to meet my fabulous cohost and coproducer, Azsaneé Truss. And we're going to take a rhythm and improvisation class, it falls in line with what Dr. Wray was talking about. Um, dynamic rhythm as a engine for improvisation. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to finding new ways to listen to the music finding new patterns of movement in response to hearing rhythm differently. Uh, yeah. All right. Just got [00:21:00] here. So here we go. 

[Audio from Rhythm and Improvisation dance class fades in]:

*Voices and music from dance class*

[Audio from Rhythm and Improvisation class fades out]:

OreOluwa: Alright. So, here we are. We took the, um, rhythm and improvisation class. How are you feeling, Azsaneé, after the class?

Azsaneé: I'm feeling good. I think once I let go of all the anxieties, because that's what improv is, just being like present in the moment doing whatever feels natural and not caring. And that is a thing that I struggle with, so it took like halfway through class I feel like to like really feel comfortable 

OreOluwa: And also, figuring out what came naturally, because I think in some of the improv, right, one of the things they [00:23:00] pointed out about your movement, or your rhythm, was how quick you caught on to syncopation, and like, moving against the beat, 

Azsaneé: I think…well, my dad's a band teacher. 

OreOluwa: Oh, so you're good with the rhythmic part.

Azsaneé: The rhythmic part is I'm cool with that., I can make up rhythms. Dancing to those made up rhythms is like what makes me very anxious because I was trained to follow 

OreOluwa: …a specific pattern, and to not move around that 

Azsaneé: …and each pattern has a name, and each pattern has a cadence and a

OreOluwa: legacy 

Azsaneé: …a legacy, a movement quality and I like , I'm very used to sticking… I'm making hand motions as if you can see them. 

OreOluwa: She's making hand motions everybody 

Azsaneé: Um, I'm like I’m used to sticking to those patterns and this is not that. That's the opposite, this is the opposite of that. 

OreOluwa: And what's interesting is I felt like what came naturally to me was the improv piece in, being able to go on the different accents, but then also keep the groove but, uh, then it's hard to get out of that. 

You know what I mean? It's hard to hear the syncopation. It's hard to hear the, the different, exactly. So I think that this class was really helpful in, like, [00:24:00] Like, what is the snare doing? What is the bass drum doing? What is everything doing, and then going from there?

Alright, well with that, folks. It's been real. Yeah, it's been real. That's a wrap for another movement break from Groovin' Griot. Ayyyy. Azsaneé's dancing right now, in case you're wondering. 

[Musical interlude]

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Azsaneé: And now, coming back to Dr. Wray's work, something I think that was really interesting in the conversation Ore had with her, is the way that ancestral rhythms and movement practices can deepen our understanding of time, of technology, and of human societies.

Ama Wray: Yes, well, actually, I believe that the drum and polyrhythm is a technology that has not yet been...[00:25:00]

We haven't yet gotten to that place where we are able to translate. But I believe, I strongly believe there is a coding, like a four dimensional, it could even be five dimensional system that is within African musics because of the way they interlock. Um, and because they're based on patterns and because they are connected to language and the, um, the orality.

And of course you're talking about not just notes, you're talking about pitch and tone. Now, thinking about that into a future where, there is a, a way for. multiple, drummers, people [00:26:00] articulating rhythm in, in these dimensions, that would then produce some, if we will call it a digital effect, but a technological effect.

OreOluwa: I think also, what, for me anyway, I think something that this work does is dynamize the, the, our ideas of temporality, right? As like, as. technology being something of the future and tradition being something of the past and just sort of localizing it on this linear progression. I think you're showing us how actually, nope, you know, there is, there's traditions of the future. There's technology of the past.

Ama Wray: And that's that fractal, that's that recursive fractal. And you know, um, and yes, claiming this, claiming this forthrightly is, is so important. Because, you know, we think of technology as what is given to us here and now. And there's so much more. 

OreOluwa: While we're on the subject of the future, we'll [00:27:00] close out this episode with the griots Dr. Wray is thinking with these days, as well as what she's groovin' to. She starts off by talking about some work in African futurism that she's excited about.

Ama Wray: There is a philosopher from Mali, really sort of fits into this African futurist space. Amadou Bâ, he was working as an ethnologist in, um, Francophone Africa. Not a lot of his work is translated, but he really does impactful work around the cosmological and the, um, the social mores, the ways, the Sufisms, and builds a world that is really quite hard to penetrate from the outside. It's, it's robust. 

And I've really been recently engaging more deeply with the work of Daniel Avorgbedor. He's a professor at the [00:28:00] University of Ghana, and his work really brings this animation and understanding of, you know, that connection of embodied cognition and this already established way of understanding that. And his work is powerfully aligned with that and brings it into music as well. And Katherine Lingert's work, also important.

Ama Wray: And I particularly work with a Nigerian British playwright named Mojisola Adebayo. I also work with musicians. Nduduzo Makhathini, a pianist and healer. And he recently completed his PhD. I came across it. I've listened to him on various podcasts and his, uh, understanding of music and healing the body. It's profound. Uh, someone I hope to collaborate with one day.

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[Music plays]

[Music is lowered behind the credits]

Azsaneé: [00:29:00] This episode of Groovin' Griot was a production of the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. It was produced and edited by me, Azsaneé Truss. And my cohost, Ore Baddaki. Our theme music is Unrest by ELPHNT and can be found on Directory. Audio. 

OreOluwa: You can email us at groovingriot@gmail. com. That's g-r-o-o-v-i-n-g-r-i-o-t at gmail. com. And you can continue to listen to episodes of Groovin' Griot wherever podcasts are found. Thanks for groovin' with [00:30:00] us.

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*Blooper Audio*