by Jennifer Kohler

A crowd of over 300 people filled the Potter Hall theatre at Missouri Western State University March 5 to watch Step Afrika, the first professional company in the world dedicated to the tradition of stepping, perform the art.

Stepping, a unique dance tradition created by African American college students, uses the body as an instrument to create intense rhythms and sounds through a combination of claps, footsteps and spoken words.

In the early 1900s, the precursor for stepping began as an increasing number of African Americans started attending colleges and forming their own fraternities and sororities. These fraternal organi­zations were created to help the students both academically and socially, while uplifting the community. As part of the process of joining an organization, the students would learn how to step, which was done to show love, pride and respect for the various organizations.

However, before a student could step, he or she had to go through a process called pledging, which was an intense time period where the individuals, known as pledgees, would learn the secrets, history and ritual of a particular fraternity or sorority. The pledgees were intensely directed by their big brother or big sister 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This process was later made illegal in the early 1990s.

Step Afrika made the audience roll with laughter when they performed a humorous skit about the pledging process. Between the high-energy skits, a video portraying the stepping process through the years played, which gave the audience a little reflection time on the art form’s history.

Student Clifton Crump thought the whole night was really nice. “I liked how they showed the origin,” Crump said. “The video was really nice, and they have good skills.”

About halfway through the night, the performers brought audience members onto the stage. Ages ranging from about four to 24, the new members to the stage learned a small version of stepping. Some caught on quick, while others were a little lag on the learning process.

“They let me volunteer,” Crump said, “and they didn’t let me show the fullness of everything I have, but I’m good.”
The crowd was hysterical by this point, and it was obvious that they really enjoyed the interaction between performers and the audience members, but there were moments throughout the night when the audience seemed bad-mannered.
Pamela Covarrubias, CME intern, was pleased with the attendance but wasn’t as impressed with some of the feedback during the performance. “At times the audience’s reaction was a bit disrespect­ful,” she said. “Maybe they didn’t know how to react or maybe they were just being ignorant. But for the main part they were ok.”

Jakari Sherman, one of the Step Afrika performers, was used to that kind of thing. “I thought the audience was fun,” he said. “It was interesting because we had some moments where it was a little bit difficult, and I think the audience wasn’t quite sure how to respond to our show. We get that a lot.”

“Some people are used to the step-show environment and get really into the performance, whereas others are more used to ballet environments and are very relaxed throughout the performance,” Sherman said.

In the audience was a group of high school steppers who opened the show for Step Afrika. From Ruskin High School in south Kansas City, Mo., the group of juniors and seniors called Rho Eta Sigma seemed to really enjoy the performance.
“A lot of them were in the audience, so it was interesting to hear how they reacted and appreciated seeing a professional company do what they do on a regular basis,” Sherman said.

This was the second time that Step Afrika came to Western, and the questions was if Western could expect them again for a third time. Covarrubias really hoped to, but unfortunately there were other factors.

“Groups and artists of the quality of Step Afrika are expensive and unfortunately we don’t have a lot of funding for them,” she said.

The CME, Western Activities Council and National Pan-Hellenic Association, who all sponsored the event, couldn’t have asked for a better turnout.