COBA artistic co-founder BaKari E. Lindsay on Sankofa
BaKari E. Lindsay:
Hi I am BaKari E. Lindsay, artistic co-founder of COBA, Collective of Black Artists; a 17-year-old professional performance company in Toronto.
Sankofa - What about Sankofa? Sankofa is a word in the Akan tradition, which is an ethnic group in [the] Ghanian region. In COBA, we use Sankofa as a guiding principle in the Akan tradition, which is a tradition based on several symbols. If you've ever been to Ghana and you go to houses, walls, shops, you would see several symbols, and if you are Akan, you would clearly be able to identify what those symbols mean and what they're saying.
One of those symbols is a bird which appears to be flying forward while looking backwards and the Akan wisdom that accompanies that symbol is that you must connect to the past in order to identify with where you are going in the future, and that principle clearly epitomizes what COBA stands for. We're a company that produces work that is steeped in tradition in that we present works in traditional format for a theatrical stage, but we also do work that innovate and push that tradition forward. Therefore when we look at Sankofa it's ideal, because we're constantly looking back and taking and bringing forward new ideas in new and interesting ways.
In COBA we have a huge concept of inter-generational artistic practice, in that our children, aged 3 to 15 or 16, that interact with the adults, teenagers, teachers, who would go age range all the way up to 65, and for us it's important for the children to have that connection. It's rare to have your teachers who are still on stage performing, it's a very rare thing for a lot of dance schools to have company dancers that they see on stage and buy a ticket to and identify with as performers on stage and see them stand in front of them as their teachers, and I think in a very linear way that is Sankofa in its best sense, that we have young people - children - connecting to an immediate tradition, and for us, as teachers and, you know, I think of myself as being very young, but considered an elder because we've been doing it for so long and we're holding on to the reins right now and be able to look at other elders from the African continent or the Caribbean and get from them and bring forward and innovate and make it real and alive in the present. So, Sankofa is a guiding principle for COBA's mission and purpose as we move forward into the new millennium.
BaKari E. Lindsay:
Hi I am BaKari E. Lindsay, artistic co-founder of COBA, Collective of Black Artists; a 17-year-old professional performance company in Toronto.
Sankofa - What about Sankofa? Sankofa is a word in the Akan tradition, which is an ethnic group in [the] Ghanian region. In COBA, we use Sankofa as a guiding principle in the Akan tradition, which is a tradition based on several symbols. If you've ever been to Ghana and you go to houses, walls, shops, you would see several symbols, and if you are Akan, you would clearly be able to identify what those symbols mean and what they're saying.
One of those symbols is a bird which appears to be flying forward while looking backwards and the Akan wisdom that accompanies that symbol is that you must connect to the past in order to identify with where you are going in the future, and that principle clearly epitomizes what COBA stands for. We're a company that produces work that is steeped in tradition in that we present works in traditional format for a theatrical stage, but we also do work that innovate and push that tradition forward. Therefore when we look at Sankofa it's ideal, because we're constantly looking back and taking and bringing forward new ideas in new and interesting ways.
In COBA we have a huge concept of inter-generational artistic practice, in that our children, aged 3 to 15 or 16, that interact with the adults, teenagers, teachers, who would go age range all the way up to 65, and for us it's important for the children to have that connection. It's rare to have your teachers who are still on stage performing, it's a very rare thing for a lot of dance schools to have company dancers that they see on stage and buy a ticket to and identify with as performers on stage and see them stand in front of them as their teachers, and I think in a very linear way that is Sankofa in its best sense, that we have young people - children - connecting to an immediate tradition, and for us, as teachers and, you know, I think of myself as being very young, but considered an elder because we've been doing it for so long and we're holding on to the reins right now and be able to look at other elders from the African continent or the Caribbean and get from them and bring forward and innovate and make it real and alive in the present. So, Sankofa is a guiding principle for COBA's mission and purpose as we move forward into the new millennium.
