16 February 2011

American Dancers Bring Hip-Hop Rhythms and Moves to Tajikistan

A hip-hop “cipher” free-style dance circle is performed by Tajik dancers, led by U.S. hip-hop dancers, in a show at the Russian Drama Theater in Dushanbe on December 5, 2010.

By Carlos Aranaga
Staff Writer

Washington — The rhythms and moves of hip-hop, an art form born in the African-American community in New York’s South Bronx in the late 1970s, have quickly established themselves at the center of the music and fashion industries around the world. National Geographic magazine has called hip-hop “the world’s favorite youth culture.”

Near the end of 2010, hip-hop followers in Tajikistan enjoyed a weeklong series of dance workshops led by two U.S. hip-hop dancers, Michael Parks Masterson and Christopher Thomas. Arranged by the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe and the private cultural-exchange group American Voices, the workshops, held between November 29 and December 6, were attended by Tajik students, professional dancers and dance enthusiasts.

Responding to interest by alumni of U.S. exchange programs and local audiences, American Voices sent the two U.S. dancers on a mission to Tajikistan to highlight the upbeat, quintessentially American hip-hop sound that has had unexpectedly universal appeal worldwide, with a fast-growing fan base in Tajikistan.

Michael Parks Masterson is a U.S. performer, director and choreographer who has performed on Broadway and at the White House. With American Voices, he taught and performed at the American Performing Arts Academy in Taipei, Taiwan, and at the Unity Academy, a dance program in Erbil, Iraq. He has produced Broadway revues in Ankara, Turkey, and Minsk, Russia, and has conducted movement and theater workshops in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Chris Thomas performs under the stage name “YungChris INTERNATIONAL” and practices a variety of dance forms including African traditional, jazz and all styles of street dance, such as hip-hop, B-boying and house. He has taught and danced worldwide, including in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Syria and Mexico.

The pair’s program began in Dushanbe November 29 with a dance workshop for students at Gymnasium 74 secondary school, the venue for an American Embassy-supported “English Through Drama” class.

From Dushanbe, Masterson and Thomas flew north to Tajikistan’s second-largest city, Khujand, at the western end of the Fergana Valley. They met students at the local American Corner, the site of an “English Through Music” program led by Fulbright English teaching assistant Seth Morgan from Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Morgan described a full-house attendance as the American instructors led the group, including a few avid break dancers and many with no experience at all, through a hip-hop routine.

“Chris was shouting directions from the front as Michael walked along the lines of dancers, correcting the moves,” Morgan said. “I slipped in the back of the line and started mimicking the dancers around me.”

“After half an hour of choreography, the best were chosen to perform the whole thing,” Morgan said. “The rest — I was not among the best — sat out, catching our breath, with one of the break dancers spinning on his head in the middle of the circle. Michael Masterson then had us all sit and review our experience.”

Morgan was encouraged to see the students given an opportunity to express themselves. “They may have had different skill levels, but they all had an extraordinary desire to soak up American culture and show what they could learn,” he said.

Also in Khujand, Masterson and Thomas led a workshop with students at Commerce University, before travelling to the nearby towns of Istaravshan and Ghonchi, where they taught hip-hop routines to two groups of students enrolled in the English Access Microscholarship Program, a project that provides two years of cost-free, after-school English classes and intensive summer learning activities for bright but underprivileged secondary school students.

The American Voices instructors continued their swing through northern Tajikistan with a visit to another Access project in Konibodom. The pair held a dance workshop attended by at least 40 current and former Access students hosted by the local nonprofit group Civil Bridges, plus one alumnus of the Benjamin Franklin Summer Institute, a youth leadership program that seeks to foster relationships between youth in the U.S., Europe, and South and Central Asia.

On December 3 and 4, Masterson and Thomas met Tajik hip-hop dancers, modern dancers and choreographers from Dushanbe’s Padida Theater. After rehearsals, four hip-hop dancers were chosen to travel with the Americans to Sarband, 120 kilometers south of the capital, where together they led a workshop for secondary school students.

Sarband hosts an English language club taught by Zebo Murodova, an alumna of the Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program, who was thrilled to have the hip-hop dancers come to her students at Sarband’s Secondary School #1. “A teacher should teach more than phonics, grammar and vocabulary. Now music and dance have become part of my class,” she said.

“I never dreamt I’d have native speakers in my classroom,” Murodova said. “Dancers Michael and Chris taught my students hip-hop for beginners, learning one part of U.S. culture while practicing and learning vocabulary. Before they came, we prepared by searching online and watching video clips on YouTube. But when they actually met hip-hop dancers and danced hip-hop themselves, that was something else.”

A short video of the students dancing is available on YouTube.com.

Back in Dushanbe on December 5, with time only for a short rehearsal, Masterson and Thomas collaborated with professional and amateur Tajik dancers for a one-hour show at the Russian Drama Theater.

The event spotlighted the American and Tajik dancers, and gave about 25 audience members the chance to learn a short hip-hop routine through an impromptu on-stage dance workshop, culminating the evening.

American Voices is a Houston-based nonprofit group devoted to cultural engagement worldwide. For 17 years, it has taken American artists in genres including jazz, Broadway and hip-hop to audiences in more than 100 countries. American Voices’ YES Academy (Youth Excellence Onstage) was named a best practice by the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy and was highlighted at the U.S. Summit for Global Citizen Diplomacy held November 16–19, 2010, in Washington.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)