Abdoulaye Sylla, a master dancer and drummer from Guinea, West Africa, is teaching Guinea-style West African dance Sunday afternoon at 5:00 from now until Nov. 22.
The drummers turned out in force yesterday to welcome Abdoulaye to Seattle. Karim Koumbassa, Manimou Camara, Frenchy Lamont, and several other drummers filled the 4th-floor Center House Studio H with djembe and dunun, and Abdoulaye showed the dancers moves to Sofa and Soko.
As I played the sangban, I dug my iPhone out of my pocket and shot this video of the class. I somehow managed to mute the sound, and the camera is jumping all over the place, but I hope you can get a bit of a sense of Abdoulaye’s presence.
Abdoulaye Sylla is a former principal dancer and percussionist for Les Ballets Africains, Guinea’s world-renowned national ballet company. He has also performed in other companies and has trained many professional dancers and drummers. He has lived in the U.S. since 1994 and has taught and performed at dozens of schools, churches, theaters, community centers, colleges, and cultural festivals, as well as at Trinity College in Connecticut, where he was an adjunct professor.
Abdoulaye teaches every Sunday from now until Nov. 22, from 5:00 to 6:30. The class happens in the fourth-floor Studio H in the Center House at the Seattle Center (there’s an elevator to the fourth floor near the bathrooms in the north hallway of the Center House, or you can take the stairs at the west end of the hallway). $15 for adults; $10 for children 7-12.