Exciting, Empowering, Eventful: Step Afrika!
Patricia Alderton ENGL 336.002

Step Afrika! came to Frostburg State University on September 16, 2010 to perform at the Performing Arts Center in front of two sold out audiences. According to their website they are “the first professional company in the world dedicated to stepping” and there dedication to this art has clearly paid off. The show, a mix of entertainment and education, had the audience members on their feet practicing almost extinct traditional African “steps” while explaining how stepping has become an important part of campuses across the world.
Step Afrika!, performed by 10 artists of mostly African-American heritage, travel the world to educate people about their love of stepping and the African roots it has grown from. The various performers explain how stepping has grown into a college scene, typically performed by predominantly black sororities and fraternities, and has inspired such movies as Stomp the Yard. But stepping has not always been that way, and they make sure that the audience is aware of this fact. Alongside up-beat, high energy steps, they also perform traditional African dances such as the “gumboot dance.”
But the energetic crew is not concerned with only preaching of African beats, but to ensure that every member of the audience knows the importance of three things; teamwork, commitment, and discipline. The performers of Step Afrika believe that to be successful in life you must always remember those three ideals. And it obviously paid off for them because out of the ten performers, seven have degrees from prestigious colleges such as Texas A&M, Elon, And Towson University, while the others have attended art academies for dance.
The performers inspired many of the young children in the audience, but also had a profound effect on the older students as well. Annemarie Turner, a junior attending Frostburg State University, was “blown away by the energy and charismatic presence of the performers.” She was in attendance at the four-thirty viewing and not the nine o’clock one because when she went to purchase her ticket for the later one, she was told that it had already sold out and they had to open the earlier one, meant for a nearby after school program, for Frostburg students. Annemarie said she did not mind seeing the earlier show because she “still got to be a part of it and see how the show inspired children to go to college.” She thought “it was really awesome to see them stepping, because I have seen it on my own campus for certain fraternities and sororities, and I love to see the culture traced back from far.”
While there are many special aspects of Step Afrika’s purpose and performance, something that can be considered the most special is that they take something that is predominatly African American and turn it into something people of all ages and ethnicities can enjoy. Annemarie was standing next to a little girl and the girl’s mother, while seated behind her were a group of all black males. But it is not so inspiring that they were all in the same room together, but what is inspiring is that they were all standing in the same position, with the same smile on their face, learning the same steps from Step Afrika’s crew of traditional African dances. Sixty or seventy years ago, this was unfathomable. In some parts of our country, it is still that way. But the performers of this show made it so natural for a young white girl to dance to African music, and they make these small miracles happen almost every day.