If there is something clear in Sankofa Danzafro is that they dance, above all, to be heard. Movements turned into political discourse. That has been the premise of Rafael Palacios, the founder and general director of this cultural corporation for the last 25 years.
Dance has allowed Palacios to be many things at the same time: choreographer, teacher, dancer. To be, in addition, a researcher of traditional, contemporary and urban afro dance. In his experience, he has obtained important awards such as the National Dance Award 2008 and a mention from the United Nations as a Good Practice of Afro-descendant social inclusion in Latin America in 2010.
After passing through Africa and Europe, continents where he was a dancer, Palacios, son of a Chocoano father and mother from Ituango (Antioquia), arrived in Colombia in 1997, and he founded Sankofa with which he creates intercultural ties and respect for diversity. Seeking justice for these communities through dance is her biggest challenge.
Nowadays 60 people are part of Sankofa, between the ages of 10 and 45, who live in the different communes and corregimientos of Medellín. They meet at the Maestro Pedro Nel Gómez House Museum in the Aranjuez neighborhood. This project has also reached other territories of the country: the Colombian Pacific, Urabá Antioquia and the island of San Andrés.
More than 4,000 people have participated in the artistic processes of the corporation In all this time and to celebrate this anniversary, Sankofa will present this Tuesday at the Teatro Metropolitano in Medellín the play “Ancestors of the Future, based on real dreams”a staging loaded with symbols that stress the past and the present through dance.
EL COLOMBIANO spoke with Rafael Palacios about the 25-year history of Sankofa and the proposal they bring to the Metropolitan this Tuesday.
What has happened in this quarter century of the history of Sankofa?
“It has been a fairly extensive transfer, many things have happened, such as being able to recognize my knowledge of Afro-descendant cultures in Colombia, they are young people who come to Medellín from different regions of the country for various reasons, seeking better health conditions, study , living place. They rely on their sung, danced, oral traditions, knowledge that they have inherited and preserved”.
After going that long way, what do you think?
“That all this has transformed me, it has helped me to open the panorama in a much broader way to understand the struggles, lives and resistance of these young people who are so powerful, who have so much to say to society and the world to seek justice with social equity”.
How is it that in Sankofa they dance more than to be seen, to be heard?
“Modernity, coloniality and capitalism have been in charge of emptying dances of Afro-descendant origin of meaning, there is an imaginary that proposes that when black racialized bodies dance they are only eroticism and exoticism, then they strip us of geographical, political contexts , social and spiritual in which that dance that we Afro-descendants do sprouts. What seems important to us is that the public can appreciate the way we dance, but, above all, that they can listen to our dance stories”.
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If the body is a writing, what do those bodies that dance narrate?
“The history that happens to us and those movements are the ones that are narrating, telling, evidencing those struggles that we have given, those victories, those achievements that we have been able to achieve. Each of our dances are traditional, contemporary and Afro-urban and what they do is tell the public that we are human beings who are seeking justice and the guarantee of human rights”.
In these discourses with the body, what problems do they address?
“The theme depends on the work that is mounted. For example, ‘La ciudad de los otros’ is a choreography that we put together in 2010 to commemorate 159 years since the abolition of slavery, it talks about Afro-descendant people in Medellín and Colombia, those doors that are closed to us, the opportunities that We do not reach those talents and intelligence that structural racism stops us from.
And what messages do you want to send with your proposals?
“There are choreographies that help us show society, for example, that racism is not something that affects only racialized black people, but society in general because it makes us all sick, it oppresses some of us and others are hurt. They are getting sick because they are executing a colonial racism that many times they don’t even have it in mind”.
What is “Ancestors of the Future, based on real dreams” about?
“As an adult, I am interested in being able to also recognize that Afro-descendant communities and young people, above all, are empowered, creating new, modern and contemporary knowledge that we have to listen to because they are ways of transforming the world and creating protective environments for them and for them”.
What do they narrate in this staging?
“Those powerful aesthetics that young people create and that are committed to social transformation. There are 17 young people from Chocó, Urabá, Tumaco, Cali and other places in the country who come together to create knowledge, they are Afro-descendant and traditional urban dances from Colombia and Africa that come together with contemporary ones to create a discourse”.
In the work there is a beast, it is one of the key characters…
“Yes, it brings an omen and it is how we are going to continue building the world, that world that is tied to the human being and that human being adapts to nature, that we cannot divide ourselves from it, that we must find a social balance, dignity and equity”.
What’s next for Sankofa in the future?
“A great legacy that will be brought by the young people who have been delivering their knowledge, studying their own roots to speak to the whole world. Next year also continues the construction of a headquarters in the municipality of Arboletes so that people of African descent or not can study through dance what it means to be Afro-descendant, the wealth we have, knowledge, spirituality, techniques to preserve identity what we have. We already bought the land, we need the support of companies and institutions to raise the walls and the roof”.