On Sunday, February 28 2016, Edna Daigre participated in our Speakeasy entitled The Color of Dance-History of Black Dance in Seattle.
Check out this article from our friend Marcie Sillman and KUOW profiling Edna.
You’re Never Too Old to Dance in Seattle’s Central Area
1 comment
Jae Carlsson says:
Mar 28, 2016
Marcie, it was a delight reading your article on Edna Daigre and Ewajo Dance.
Ewajo had slipped from my memory until I read your piece.
Back in the 1970s, I’d be lucky if one weekend in any given month had a dance concert in Seattle I could go to see. Louise Durkee and ACDC had each developed original dance techniques. But every other company/teaching-school in town utilized preexisting techniques, at that time. Ewajo’s was Dunham and Afro-Caribbean I seem to recall.
The showcases of Ewajo I saw (where? I don’t remember) and the pieces they did annually at Bumpershoot were conventionally choreographed and exhibited the full range of dance-talent, as you might expect.
But I thoroughly enjoyed them. I remember these concerts fondly – as full of energy and color, and they were always just a little bit exotic.
When Seattle’s dance scene seriously took off in 1980, I began to lose track of Ewajo.
Community dance – community-based art of any medium – tends to feel fresh and unselfconscious only so long as a serious (and highly-selfconscious) artscene is yet to emerge. When it does, community art is swept to the margins. Which is a little bit sad.
Only much later does one tend to feel nostalgia for more innocent times.
Thanks, Marcie, for letting me indulge in memories I had almost lost.
– Jae Carlsson