Oh No, the Past Won't Keep Them Down

2 Troupes Eloquently Express Victims' Pain

"Les Ecailles de la M¿moire" ("The Scales of Memory") takes the past as its subject, but there is nothing dreamy, dusty or academic about it. A collaboration between the all-female Urban Bush Women and the all-male Compagnie Jant-Bi, it has the force of uncorked acid.

Performed over the weekend at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, this new work proposed an answer to the question that can trouble so many victimized groups wrestling with bloody histories: How does one live with the trauma?

Slavery and racism were the focus of these dancers, all of whom are either native Africans or of African heritage. Jant-Bi, under the direction of Germaine Acogny, a highly respected longtime promoter of African dance, is based in Senegal. The multinational members of Urban Bush Women, led by the gifted Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, are headquartered in Brooklyn. But "Les Ecailles" is more than a screed against specific crimes; there were deeply human and universal truths to be mined in this view of a people united in collective memory, sifting through the pain, and finally emerging with an identity that is stronger for the experience.

"Les Ecailles" featured seven members from each troupe, who traveled together to various sites in the South that are important in the history of slavery and the civil rights movement. They then collaborated on the 90-minute work at L'Ecole des Sables, Acogny's academy of African dance in Senegal.

Churned-up anger and defiance were palpable in the piece; sheer explosive energy in scenes of being bound, of being auctioned off and thrashed into exhaustion, played a major role. This was no surprise coming from Urban Bush Women, a group known for its exceptional poetry as well as a distinctive athleticism. Together with the magnetic presence of the Jant-Bi men -- astounding for their light-footed grace as well as a driving muscular power -- the impact fairly roared off the stage.

There were, however, moments when a perplexing opaqueness set in -- when the dancers declaim at length in unfamiliar tongues, for instance, or shout incomprehensible accusations at the audience. Eloquence was best achieved when their bodies told the stories, for example, as the men and women separately bubbled and boiled with expressions of suffering and resistance, then stumbled, panting and seemingly exhausted, into a group dance that grew more and more exuberant. It was a vision of communal strength that felt somehow inevitable, a renewal of the spirit that comes from rechanneling the energy.

There was no lack of belief here, no doubt that the horrors and injustices represented onstage are genuinely felt. The look was homespun -- the dancers wore casual slacks and wrap skirts that suggest no specific place or time -- but never prosaic. The music was a principal asset in establishing the roiling emotional atmosphere, with an original score by Fabrice Bouillon-Laforest, as well as various vocals, all manner of energizing drum riffs and poetry by the Sufi mystic Rumi. Proof that the past is never truly past, "Les Ecailles" is an extraordinary view of history's footprint on the present, and an invitation to those ghosts that haunt us all. Here, they may find, if not peace, then affirmation.