Dance to the music

OREM — To American audiences, African dances may seem about as foreign as dancing can get. But Kim Strunk says traditional dance moves from Africa show up everywhere you look in American pop culture.

Strunk says you'll find it in Chicago nightclubs, in the music videos shown at Times Square in Manhattan, in the movements of Los Angeles street dancers and the second lines of New Orleans.

Despite its different faces, the feel and the movements are the same.

"African dance is at the heart of a lot of the dancing we do here in the U.S.," said Strunk, who is the chairwoman of the Utah Valley State College dance department. "It's the root of jazz, tap, break-dancing and hip-hop. This kind of movement is more deeply rooted in our culture than some people realize."

Strunk knows what she's talking about, having just returned from a four-week dance workshop in Guinea, West Africa, with Guinea dance expert Yousouf Koumbassa. The goal of the workshop was to learn cultural dances within cultural context, so Strunk and three others lived on a compound and danced outside under the trees, accompanied by drums.

The overall experience, Strunk said, was more like a cultural safari than a dance workshop. "I went over to be submersed in the culture, because the dance comes from the culture. I came back transformed. It's like African boot camp or 'Survivor' with a lot of dancing thrown in."

This was Strunk's second visit to Guinea with Koumbassa's group. Her fascination with African dance started in 1992.

Strunk was a dancer for more than 12 years with the Salt Lake modern-dance company Repertory Dance Theater before she started doing Congolese (Central African) dancing. She first saw Guinea dancing at a dance camp in California's Sierra Foothills, and she's loved it ever since. "It felt like dancing is supposed to feel. Dancing is supposed to make you feel better, and this made me feel that way for the first time in a long time."

When she got back to Utah, Strunk realized no one was teaching African dancing in Salt Lake City, so she started seeking out teachers in San Francisco, Oakland and other larger metropolitan areas. She teamed up with Jenni Indresano, a Guinea dance expert, to start a West/Central African dance class here in 1996.

The class was an instant hit.