Diamano Coura is a not-for-profit community African arts organization with a cultural focus. Located at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in the City of Oakland, the Company is dedicated to preserving, educating, and appreciating traditional West African music, dance, theater, and culture through public benefit ventures. The mission of Diamano Coura is to provide global audiences access to the richness of indigenous African cultural tapestry through professional classes, performances, and the accurate depiction and perpetuation of African folklore indigenous Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Liberia, and Ivory Coast, whereby it can be understood and appreciated by all.
Diamano Coura is committed to partnering with other artists and community members to use the inherent power of the arts to break barriers that stagnate to open corridors that encourage social and economic development, while fostering health and spiritual health and well-being. Diamano Coura in the Senegalese Wolof language means “those who bring the message.”
While the directors, Naomi and Zak, are respectively from Liberia and Senegal, Diamano Coura embodies generations of carefully trained male and female company dancers, actors, singers, musicians, stilt walkers, and visual artists. Diamano Coura has also performed extensively in major theater houses and universities in the United States, Canada, and Europe while also being invited to tour internationally:
In 1977, touring the West African countries of Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali;
In 1990-91, touring the Netherlands and Belgium.
In 1993 Director Zak Diouf and Artistic Director Naomi Washington were invited to work with the San Francisco Ballet’s Val Carniporili in creating “Lambarena”, a collaboration of West African dance and European style ballet to the music of Johan Bach and traditional music of Gabon. This work premiered in San Francisco in 1993; New York, NY, in 1994; Salt Lake City, UT, in 1995; Seattle, WA, in 1996; West Palm Beach, FL, and Singapore in 1998. With the success of this creative, collaborative project, Naomi and Zak, on behalf of Diamano Coura, were invited to consult and choreograph for the Singapore Ballet in 1998 and in South Africa in 1999. Also a part of Diamano Coura’s community outreach and Creative Partnership Program, the company was invited to make the independent film, Follow Me Home, which was well received by other artists, film critics, and audiences. In its performance repertoire, Diamano Coura has regularly presented works at the Epcot Disney World in Florida, the Black Dance Experience, the Ethnic Dance Festival in San Francisco, the Bay Area Dance Series, the Houston Arts Festival, the Atlanta Black Dance Festival, the Olympic Cultural Festival and Collage de la Cultures Africaines in Oakland. Collage de la Cultures Africaines is a collaborative effort conceived and hosted by Diamano Coura, which brings together renowned artists, performing companies, and businesses from throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and around the world to celebrate music, dance, history, artwork, and cultures from countries of the African Diaspora.
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A lover of all forms of dance, Yolande Sterling has been an avid student of Haitian folkloric dance since 2008. She has studied and danced with veteran dancers and educators such as Blanche Brown, Michelle Martin and Portsha Jefferson. Ms. Sterling has traveled to Haiti on several occasions to experience the culture first hand by traveling to various parts of the country as well as learning from dance and song instructors at the Ecole Nationale des Arts (ENARTS).
Ms. Sterling joined Rara Tou Limen (RTL) in January 2014 and has been fortunate enough to travel and perform with the company both in the Bay Area and internationally in Haiti and Montreal Canada. She also participated in the 2017 cultural exchange tour to Havana Cuba where RTL collaborated with a renowned Cuban Folkloric company to explore the connection between Haitian and Cuban-Haitian dance. In 2019, Ms. Sterling had the opportunity to visit Benin West Africa with RTL and witness first hand the connection between the Beninese and Haitian cultures through dance, song and Vodou.
In keeping with her love of folkloric dance, Ms. Sterling has performed with the Afro-Cuban folkloric company Grupo Nago Experimental under the guidance of Artistic Director Temistocles Fuentes Betancourt. She has also studied with and danced in San Francisco Carnaval with Afro-Brazilian dancer/choreography Tania Santiago, Artistic Director of Aguas da Bahia Dance Company. Yolande is passionate about Haitian dance as well as the rhythms and rituals that embody the culture.
Michelle Peacock is originally from Los Angeles, CA and enthusiastically began training 22 years ago in various dance forms. High School is where Michelle was accepted into a prestigious performing arts school, The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts where she studied with various well studied teachers and continued to perfect her skills. After graduating high school she went on to further her training in dance while getting her B.A in Broadcast communications at San Francisco State University.
After graduating college and entering into the work force, dance, her one true love and passion was calling out to her, so she sought out classes until she stumbled upon Portsha’s Haitian dance class on a bright Sunday and thus began her love affair with Haitian dance.
Michelle has been a member of Rara Tou Limen since 2011, where she has engrossed herself into Haitian folklore, with a willingness to continue to train and study as much as she can about Haitian culture through myriads of classes, workshops, performances and traveling to different countries with the company, showcasing the vibrant spirit of the Haitian culture.
“Dance is a conversation between Body and Soul”.
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Los Angeles, California, Ms. Nadreau has studied various dance styles from Africa and the diaspora, including Afro Brazilian, Afro house, Waacking, and Haitian folklore. In addition to dance, she has also studied sound design, fashion, and Earth and Environmental Sciences.
Her work has been seen on national TV, in the theater, and featured in music videos.
Halima Marshall is a recent recipient of the 2020 Alliance of California Traditional Arts (ACTA) Apprenticeship with mentor Portsha Jefferson. She was first introduced to Haitian dance at St. Mary’s College in 1995 by Blanche Brown, Haitian dance instructor and director of then Group Petit La Croix. Years later, her desire to learn more technique, rhythms, and the intricacies of their connection led her to Dance Mission in San Francisco where she took classes with instructor Michelle Martin.
In 2007, Halima first performed with Portsha Jefferson at the inception of Rara Tou Limen (RTL) prior to joining the dance company. Since that time she has performed the colorful and emotion-filled storytelling of RTL throughout the Bay Area at San Francisco Carnaval, San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, Black Choreographers Festival, multiple performances at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, the University of Oklahoma for the Neustadt Festival honoring a Haitian literary great, Edwidge Danticat, and internationally with Mapou Ginen Haitian Folkloric Dance Troupe in Montreal, Canada. Halima also celebrates the opportunity to teach dance classes in the Bay Area because of these diverse experiences over the years, her skills as an educator, and, most importantly, because of her love of Haitian dance and culture.
A 2014 cultural exchange trip to Ayiti was the pinnacle of her experiences, as past knowledge was given life through witnessing Vodou on the soil of Ayiti. She brings reverence for the spirit of Vodou and acknowledgement of the fullness of Ayiti’s culture to her own dance and teaching experience.
Abeje Maolud is one of three of Rara Tou Limen’s newest company members, joining the Haitian Folkloric Dance Company in 2018. She hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, where she began her lifelong dance training with notable dance teachers such as Mama Naomi Diouf (of Diamano Coura West African Dance Company) and the late Ms. Alicia Pierce (of Wajumbe Dance Collective).
Since such early exposure to dance, Abeje has embarked on a lifelong journey of studying various forms, locally and abroad, ranging from Tango to Tahitian dance. Her experience includes modern dance techniques, with an emphasis on Dunham Technique, as well as studying and working with The San Francisco Ballet School, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s summer youth program, Ailey Camp, Columbus, Ohio’s Ballet Met, Headlong Dance Theater out of Philadelphia, and such local dance companies as The Zari Le’on Dance Theater and Eloi Movement.
Abeje holds a BA in Dance from Denison University. Her experience extends beyond the velvet curtain to costume design, set design, and stage management.
She believes in the power of the arts to inspire change. In 2013, Valencia co-founded the AI_am project, which explores the application of artificial intelligence in dance. The project has been presented at several international forums, such as TEDxGoteborg in 2015, and premiered its first evening-length work in Budapest and Gothenburg in 2017. Valencia also creates solo works that explore stereotypes and colonial narratives. She has performed extensively in Hungary, Romania, Poland, France, Israel, Sweden, Argentina, and Canada. After a decade in Hungary, Valencia is now based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Asatu Hall is a seasoned performer, choreographer and founding member of Emesè: Messengers of the African Diaspora, a collective of artists founded in 1998 to promote and present the rich cultural traditions of the African Diaspora. Her background in dance incorporates over 25 years of various genres, including Ballet, West African, Congolese, Haitian, and Brazilian.
She has had the honor of studying and performing with a number of master artists in the Bay Area and abroad, in particular, her mentors Mestre Carlos Aceituno founder of Fogo Na Roupa Grupo Carnavalesco Cultural and Regina Califa, Jorge Alabe, Blanche Brown, Titos Sompa, Malonga Casquelourd, Jose Francisco Barroso, Juan De Dios Ramos, Linda Faye Johnson, Isaura Oliveira, and others. She feels blessed and very honored to have the opportunity to deepen her study of Haitian dance, music, and culture with the Rara Tou Limen family. Asatu currently teaches Afro Cuban and Afro Brazilian dance in Oakland and Alameda.
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