Asadata Dafora

Asadata Dafora, born Austin Dafora Horton on 4 August 1890 in Freetown, British Sierra Leone, was a performer, choreographer, composer, drummer, and book writer whose Broadway credit includes the 1934 production Kykunkor. A member of the Creole ethnic group, Dafora was the son of John "Johnnie" William Horton, who served as Freetown's city treasurer, and a mother who was a concert pianist. His half-sister was Constance Cummings-John, a prominent Creole Pan-Africanist. Some uncertainty exists regarding the family surname Horton, which may derive from a paternal ancestor, Moses Pindar Horton, a liberated African slave originally from Benin, though dates suggest it was Dafora's grandfather rather than his great-grandfather who had experienced slavery and been repatriated to Sierra Leone.

Dafora received a European education at the Wesleyan School in Freetown while cultivating a parallel interest in indigenous African culture, traditions, and languages, ultimately acquiring knowledge of 17 distinct African languages. As a young man he traveled to Europe and trained at several opera houses in Italy, adding English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian to his linguistic repertoire. His transition from choral music into dance came about by chance. In 1910, while attending a performance of West African songs at a German nightclub, he was overcome by homesickness and spontaneously broke into traditional African dance. The response was strong enough that the club owner hired him to train a group of dancers for the opening of the Kiel Canal. Touring with that dance troupe, Dafora became acutely aware of widespread ignorance about Africa and resolved to dedicate his career to bringing African culture before international audiences.

In 1929, at the age of 39, Dafora arrived in New York City intending to pursue a career as a musician. The onset of the Great Depression made sustaining a performing career difficult, particularly for foreign African artists, but his involvement with a group of African men at the National African Union redirected his focus toward African dance. He formed a company variously known as Shogolo Oloba, the Federal Theater African Dance Troupe, and Asadata Dafora Horton and his African Dancers. The company aimed to present African culture as complex and sophisticated rather than as exotic spectacle. Committed to authenticity, Dafora preferred to cast native African dancers and trained his performers in African languages as well as stage technique. He is credited with developing the dance-drama form, a mode of production that fully integrates narrative and song into dance performance, and with being the first to successfully stage African ritual within a Western-style theatrical production.

His first major work, Kykunkor, also subtitled The Witch Woman, was completed in 1931 and tells the story of a bridegroom cursed by a witch doctor of the same name and his efforts to lift that curse. The production premiered in early May 1934 at a studio on East 23rd Street called the Unity Theatre, before an initial audience of sixty people. Following a favorable review by critic John Martin in the New York Times on 9 May 1934, attendance surged dramatically, and the production moved to the Little Theatre on West 44th Street to accommodate the demand, eventually running for four months to packed houses. The cast comprised eighteen men and women, a mix of African and African-American performers, and the show featured live music and continuous drumming performed in an African tongue. Kykunkor is recognized as the first opera presented in the United States using authentic African dances and music, performed in an African language by a predominantly African-born cast.

In 1936, Dafora served as choreographer and drummer for Orson Welles's all-black production of Macbeth, staged in Harlem, on Broadway, and on national tour. Working with his collaborator Abdul Assen, he helped shape the distinctive sound and atmosphere of the production's Haitian voodoo sequences. He also co-authored a radio play with Welles titled Trangama-Fanga. Among the other works he toured were Awassa Astrige/Ostrich in 1932, Zunguru in 1940, and Batanga in 1941. In 1939, Dafora appeared at the Ridgeway Theatre in White Plains, New York, playing the role of Congo Witch Doctor in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, a production starring Paul Robeson that also featured members of Dafora's African dance troupe, including Sakor Jar, Lamina Kor, and Antiga. Around 1950, he founded the Academy of Jazz. He was also the subject of a film by Kinsley Mbadiwe titled The Greater Tomorrow.

In 1960, Dafora returned to Sierra Leone, where he became the cultural director of the newly independent nation. His work influenced subsequent generations of artists, among them Pearl Primus, Esther Rolle, and Katherine Dunham. Dafora died on 4 March 1965 at a hospital in Harlem, New York.