BEEN A LONG TIME COMIN’

STUDY GUIDE

ABOUT THE COMPANIES KasheDance Hailed as embodying artistic diversity in technique, form and choreography, KasheDance echoes in a new genealogy of Afro-contemporary dance grounded in three main processes - Creation, Research, Presentation supported by Outreach initiatives in community and education; investigating the connection of technique, facilitation, creative exploration in the embodiment of human expressions, poly-rhythms, and technical virtuosity. The company has performed at the Canada Dance Festival, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Fleck Dance Theatre, Jamaica Dance Umbrella among other venues to critical acclaim. KasheDance is rooted in the connection of technique, instruction, creative exploration / process and performance while investigating where“ Traditional and modern dance from Africa and the Caribbean merge seamlessly with elements of classical ballet in pieces that are fresh and vibrant.” Anya Wassenburg. KasheDance believes that everything artistically starts with an inquiry. wind in the leaves collective wind in the leaves collective is a group of artists from diverse disciplines working to explore cultures and journeying with unique view into a dialogue amongst artists on contemporary issues via collaboration, creation and performance. The collective seeks to connect many individuals and communities and works with multi - disciplinary forms of Arts expression to retell and recreate personal "poetic stories" to illustrate where personal space intersects with public space, where "poetic stories" of African descent in Canada today intersect with stories across the African diaspora about identity, struggle, hope, opportunities/missed opportunities, pains, joys and insights. Our works is shaped by an African and Caribbean aesthetic along with Latin American realities also of the African aesthetics. These "poetic stories" are interpreted and performed by the poet as dramaturge and the dancers accompanied by music, live/recorded aided by projected images and collages. The Guelph Jazz Festival’s Colloquium, Lab Cab’s Festival, University of Toronto Tri- Campus, International Festival of the Poetry of Resistance, IMPACT International Festival of Theatre Arts in Kitchener-Waterloo and in the TD Bank: Then and Now Program 2012 among other venues and festivals.

CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTORS

charles c. smith – Artistic Director, wind in the leaves collective

charles c. smith is a published poet, playwright and essayist. He won second prize for his play Last Days for the Desperate from Black Theatre Canada. He has edited three collections of poetry, has two published books of poetry- Partial Lives- Williams Wallace Press, and travelogue of the bereaved, TSAR Publications - and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Poetry Canada Review, the Quille and Quire, Descant, Dandelion, the Amethyst Review, Bywords, Canadian Ethnic Studies and others. He recently received a grant from the Ontario Arts

Council’s Writers Reserve Grants Program and the Toronto Arts Council Writers Program. he is currently working on a multidisciplinary performance piece based on his poetry. charles is also the Cultural Liaison in the Dean’s Office at the University of Toronto Scarborough where he also lectures in Historical and Cultural Studies Department and the English Department. He is the Project Lead for Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario and a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives where he has published four books (two edited) ranging in subjects from racial profiling to anti-racism in education and pluralism in the arts. His most recent book with the Centre is titled “The Dirty War”. Kevin A. Ormsby - Artistic Director, KasheDance

A dance teacher, choreographer, movement coach and Arts Marketing Consultant, Kevin is the Canada Council for the Arts’ Victor Martyn Lynch – Staunton Award recipient in Dance (2014) for outstanding achievement by a mid career artist, and with many interests in the creative practice / administration in dance, he has honed his passion for dance, advocacy, writing and education while performing with companies and projects in Canada, the Caribbean and the United States. Kevin was a company member of Garth Fagan Dance (NY), the Assistant to the Artistic Director and Marketing / Outreach for Ballet Creole, and performed in works by

Marie Josee Chartier, Allison Cummings, Ron K. Brown, Menaka Thakkur, Mark Morris and Bill T. Jones. As the Project Coordinator for Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) he delivers professional and organizational development programs in the Arts. Mr. Ormsby is a published author in “Pluralism in the Arts in Canada: A Change is Gonna Come” by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and is a Board Member of Prologue to the Performing Arts and Nia Centre for the Arts and was on Toronto Arts Council's Community Arts Programs Committee (2010 – 2013) and now sits on Toronto Arts Council’s Dance Committee.

SHOW DESCRIPTION “Intricately unearthing the African Diaspora’s personal / historical journeys with visceral

complexities”

wind in the leaves collective and KasheDance performs “BEEN A LONG TIME COMIN” a unique and rare opportunity to experience multi-disciplinary African Diasporic performance with poetry, live music and dance. The performance is a bridge for understanding commonalities around the questions of who we are, why we are here and the imprint that every culture but in particular African culture has made on the various elements of the Arts across the world. This is very much a local as it is a global view resonating in the soul; the being of who we are beyond ethnicity...it is our sincerest hope that you enjoy the performance and join us in the conversations.

‘wind in the leaves collective’ creatively weaves poetry, video/photomontage, music (live and recorded) and dance in this interdisciplinary performance inspired by the music of Duke Ellington with Max Roach (drums), Charles Mingus (bass) and the Duke (piano). The collective’s performance also is inspired by the creative voices of musicians William Parker and Peter Kowold, Avro Part, Keith Jarrett and the original compositions of its own musicians Harvey Weisfeld (guitar) and Judith Manger (cello).

The collective’s work evokes memories of the beauty and grandeur of Africa and its presence in the lives of persons of African descent across centuries as well as the influence of the African diaspora in the contemporary world. Chronicling through poetry the struggles and triumphs of being Black along with the celebrations of Blackness, this performance captures the multi-textured and illustrative stories of African Canadians through collaboratively diverse artistic mediums. This composition is the foundation for the performance of the 'wind in the leaves collective' which presents the poetry of charles c. smith through music (recorded and live), dance, and visual art.

KasheDance craftily weaves Baraka a dance piece through the multidisciplinary works of the wind in the leaves collective offering Baraka as not only connective breaks but starting points for other conversations about what we as human beings have in common with the Black experience. The work Baraka is a cultural homage to the African aesthetics in the Jamaican, Caribbean, North American and Canadian landscapes. Acting as intermediary, Baraka speaks to African Diasporic traditions that survived through time; which now is a living testament to the richness of many other global cultures.

Baraka is an artistic statement assessing the cultural homage to the African aesthetics in the Jamaican, Caribbean, North American and Canadian landscapes. The inspiration for the creation of Baraka was fuelled by the movie “Boys of Baraka”, a story that followed a school in Kenya in which troubled teenage boys from Baltimore were schooled for a year and how this experience in a different place, location, continent, influenced and changed their lives. Baraka speaks to African Diasporic traditions that survived through time; which now is a living testament of experience of living in the Western Hemisphere. The choreographer, Kevin A. Ormsby situates his place in a contemporary reality in his assertion “I am an artist foremost who happens to be of African heritage…black is not what I am, it was a definition subscribed to me. If there is a tenant of truth in this statement, what is it?” Baraka seeks to unlock this premise with a wide variety of music genres and an emerging technique called “kashedantek” that is,” technically versatile in its execution and delivery, movements of traditional and modern dance is fused with ballet to reflect a contemporary synthesis.

Historical Background The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those enslaved that were transported to the New World, many on the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, were West Africans from the central and western parts of the continent some sold by West Africans to Western European slave traders, and most captured by Europeans and taken to the Americas.

The numbers were so great that Africans who came by way of the slave trade became the most numerous Old-World immigrants in both North and South America before the late 18th century. Far more slaves were taken to South America than to the north. The South Atlantic economic system centered on producing commodity crops, and making goods and clothing to sell in Europe, and increasing the numbers of African slaves brought to the New World. This was crucial to those

Western European countries, which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires.

The Portuguese were the first to engage in the New World slave trade in the 16th century, and others soon followed. Ship owners considered the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible, there to be sold to labour in coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, cutting timber for ships, in skilled labour, and as domestic servants. The first Africans imported to the English colonies

were classified as "indentured servants", like workers coming from England, and also, "apprentices

for life". By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste; they and their offspring were legally the property of their owners, and children born to slave mothers were slaves. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services. The Atlantic slave traders, ordered by trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch Empire, and the United States. Several had established outposts on the African coast where they purchased slaves from local African leaders. Current estimates are that about 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, although the number purchased by the traders is considerably higher. The slave trade is sometimes called the Maafa by African and African-American scholars, meaning "great disaster" in Swahili. Some scholars, such as Marimba Ani and Maulana Karenga, use the terms "African Holocaust" or "Holocaust of Enslavement". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade)

The New WorldDistribution of slaves (1519–1867)

Destination Percentage

Portuguese America 38.5%

British America (minus

North America) 18.4%

Spanish Empire 17.5%

French Americas 13.6%

British North America 6.45%

English Americas 3.25%

Dutch West Indies 2.0%

Danish West Indies 0.3%

The first slaves to arrive as part of a labour force in the New World reached the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1502. Cuba received its first four slaves in 1513. Jamaica received its first shipment of 4000 slaves in 1518.

Slave exports to Honduras and Guatemala started in 1526.The first enslaved Africans to reach what would become the United States arrived in January 1526 as part of a Spanish attempt to colonize South Carolina near Jamestown By November the 300 Spanish colonists were reduced to 100, and their slaves from 100 to 70. The enslaved people revolted and joined a nearby Native American tribe, while the Spanish abandoned the colony altogether. Colombia received its first enslaved people in 1533. El Salvador, Costa Rica and Florida began their stints in the slave trade in 1541, 1563 and 1581, respectively.

The 17th century saw an increase in shipments, with Africans arriving in the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. These first kidnapped Africans were classed as indentured servants and freed after seven years. Chattel slavery was codified in Virginia law in 1656, and in 1662, the colony adopted the principle of partus sequitur ventrem by which children of slave mothers were slaves, regardless of paternity. Irish immigrants took slaves to Montserrat in 1651, and in 1655, slaves were shipped to Belize.

By 1802 Russian colonists noted that "Boston" (U.S.-based) skippers were trading African slaves for otter pelts with theTlingit people in Southeast Alaska. The number of the Africans arrived in each area can be calculated taking into consideration that the total number of slaves was close to 10,000,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

 

Other Influences FUEL  YOUR  CURIOSITY:      It’s  Important  to  note  that  many  other  ethnicities  influenced  the  sounds  and  culture  of  the  Caribbean  and  Latin  America.  While  African  culture  was  and  is  the  most  prevalent  influence  what  are  some  of  the  other  ethnicities  that  existed  in  the  Western  Hemisphere  due  to  the  economic  system  of  slavery?    European Labourers - Indentured servitude was a common part of the social landscape in England and Ireland. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms many Scottish and Irish prisoners of war were sold as indentured labours to the colonies. South Asian Labourers - From 1838 to 1917, over half a million South Asians from India were taken to thirteen mainland and island nations in the Caribbean as Indentured workers following the abolition of slavery. Following the emancipation in 1833 in the United Kingdom, many liberated Africans left their former masters. The British crafted a new legal system of forced labour, which in many ways resembled enslavement. Instead of calling them slaves, they were called indentured labourers. As a result, today Indo-Caribbeans form a majority in Guyana, a plurality in Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname, and a substantial minority in Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados, St Lucia and other Caribbean islands. Indentured Indians were treated as inhumanely as the enslaved Africans had been. They were confined to their estates and paid a pitiful salary. Any breach of contract brought automatic criminal penalties and imprisonment.

Many of these were brought away from their homelands deceptively. Many from inland regions over a thousand kilometers from seaports were promised jobs, were not told the work they were being hired for, or that they would leave their homeland and communities. By some estimates, over 2.5 million people in the Caribbean are of Indian origin. Many have ethnically blended with African Caribbeans and migrants from other parts of the world, creating a unique syncretic culture.

Regions with significant populations

Trinidad and Tobago 600,000

Guyana 327,000

Suriname 148,000

Jamaica 100,000

Guadeloupe 60,000

Martinique 43,600

Cuba 34,000

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

21,500

French Guiana 19,276

Grenada 12,000

Belize 7,000

Saint Lucia 4,700

Puerto Rico 4,500

Barbados 2,200

Saint Kitts and Nevis 1,100

Curaçao 600

Antigua and Barbuda 300

Haiti 200

 

Chinese Labourers - Between 1853 and 1879, 14,000 Chinese labourers were imported to the British Caribbean and Latin America as part of a larger system of contract labour bound for the sugar plantations. Imported as a contract labour force from China, Chinese settled in Jamaica, Trinidad, and British Guiana (now Guyana) , initially working on the sugar plantations. Most of the Chinese labourers initially went to British Guiana; however when importation ended in 1879, and the population declined steadily, mostly due to emigration to Trinidad and Suriname. Chinese immigration to Cuba started in 1847 when Cantonese contract workers were brought to work in the sugar fields, bringing the religion of Buddhism with them. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers were brought in from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, during the following decades to replace and / or work alongside African slaves. After completing 8-year contracts or otherwise obtaining their freedom, some Chinese immigrants settled permanently in Cuba, although most longed for repatriation to their homeland. When the United States enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act on May 6, 1882, many Chinese in the United States fled to Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Latin American nations. They established small niches and worked in restaurants and laundries.    

Curriculum Considerations Been a Long time Comin’ has connections to the Arts, History (Black, Canadian, African, Caribbean, Latin American, Chinese, South Asian) Social Sciences, Geography and English (Poetry and Creative Writing) ACTIVITIES: Arts / Creative Dance based: The Offering Exercise - Do you have anything to offer? Using actions or words ask students remember a moment of the performance. Using their actions and words invite them to create a dance by combining all the actions and a poem based on the words that were also offered. The offering can be both a word and movement. Both the movement and poem can be shaped by introducing basic elements of the voice and levels in dance (teachers can ask what would it look like if?.. it was done on the floor or in a group etc?

Regions with significant populations

Cuba 114,240

Suriname 60,000

Jamaica 30,000

Dominican Republic 10,000

Trinidad / Tobago 4,003

Guyana 2,722

Belize 719

Cayman Islands 698

Geography and History Based: The Locating Game On pieces of paper, write cities / places where slaves were sent in the Western Hemisphere. Have students do research on the history of these places and also explore relationship (similarities and differences) of these cities / places. Do you know or can share and stories through research of these places? Canadian History: Does Canada have any connection to the slave trade and the Underground railroad? Dance / Physical Ed: Mirrored and Complementary Actions Divide students into pairs. Ask the partners to face one another, with one serving as the leader and the other as the follower. Give them one action word at a time. Ask the leader to perform the action. As the leader does so, ask the follower to attempt to “mirror” the leader’s image. Alternate who leads as you call out different words. Discuss the activity with your students after each partner has had a chance to lead and respond. Black History / Creative Writing Based: The Dear Harriet Tubman Project… Can you Research and make a poem about Oakville’s Involvement in the Underground Railroad? What would happen if you and your class explore writing a letter to Harriet Tubman? Or to Mathieu DaCosta and Oliveir LaJeune (both mentioned in the poems of charles c. smith and the show)

Special Thanks

 Collective  members,  Rainer  Soegtrop,  Christopher  Cushman,  Olga Barrios