Accra, Sept. 27, GNA - Ghanaian composers have been urged to join hands with dancers to create a storehouse of music suitable for African contemporary dance.
Apart from making audiences identify with the various dances they witness, it would also enable dancers to better interpret the dance forms they exhibit and provide them with local alternatives to the high level of foreign music.
Professor Emeritus J.H. Kwabena Nketia, Director of the International Centre for African Music and Dance, gave the advice at the first graduation ceremony for 10 dancers of the 'Noyam' Contemporary African Dance Research Project in Accra on Sunday night.
Noyam, which seeks to develop African dance to reflect the current dance tradition of Africa, is a joint project between Ghana and Denmark which sponsors it through the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).
The three-year course seeks to achieve its objectives through research, training, workshops, performances, documentation and exchange programmes.
Prof. Nketia, who is also Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of Noyam, said while in the process of collaboration composers and dancers should develop their audiences along with their experiments for contemporary African dance to gain a bigger following.
"This is one way of transforming tradition so that we still maintain our African identity even as we experiment with foreign elements to bring to the world the artistic contribution it lacks".
Francis Nii Yartey, Director of the Project, said the students had to use a lot of foreign rhythms for training and hoped Ghanaian composers would take up the challenge to provide music for African dance.
The graduates would teach in art schools around the country for some months after which they would return for the second year to do the Intermediate level.
The third year, which is for the professional level, would prepare them to become instructors or choreographers of African contemporary dance. Nii Yartey, who is also artistic director of the National Dance Company of Ghana, said that with the training given to them they would be able to make African dance have a stronger impact on the people.
The graduates, made up of seven boys and three girls, interspersed the night with vibrant dance forms they had learnt including one similar to the popular tap-dance of the 1950s and 1960s.
