A lone dancer, with swirling ultramarine cloth draped around her body, descended the stairs into the lobby of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance in the opening scene of Astral Sea. The immersive performance ­­— directed by Tsedaye Makonnen, a visiting artist at the College and former Futures Fellow at the Clark Art Institute — featured dancers and musicians from Kusika, a student drumming and dance group focusing on styles from Africa and the African diaspora. The performance took place on Monday, Feb. 24.

Astral Sea, a series of dance performances designed to compliment Makonnen’s sculptural work, draws from her focus on the forced migration of Black communities from their homelands. The piece was inspired, in part, by Makonnen’s light sculptures: an installation of stacked boxes, each named for “a self-identifying Black woman or girl who has died from state-sanctioned violence in the U.S. or while migrating to Europe from East Africa across the Mediterranean,” her website explains.

“A lot of my work is drawing connections across what’s currently happening in the Black Mediterranean to what has happened across the … Atlantic,” Makonnen said. She directed the performers to evoke the feeling of drowning — both physically and emotionally — throughout the show, referencing these past and current events.

Hundreds of laser-cut mirror pieces, left-over scraps from Makonnen’s other projects, adorned the textiles that cloaked Kusika dancers in the performance. The darker fabrics represent the water in which many Black people, depicted by the small mirrors, have lost their lives while crossing the Atlantic and Mediterranean, Makonnen explained in a Q&A session after the show. 

Following her descent into the main lobby of the ’62 Center, Mercy Lagat ’27, the lone dancer at the beginning of the performance, beckoned audience members down the sloping, narrow hallway into the open posterior space of the building. 

With a somber face, Lagat punctuated her slow gait with sudden, rapid spins that caused the fabric to swirl outward. According to Lagat, having to keep a serious face was a new experience for members of Kusika, because in most performances, dancers intentionally smile at each other. “The audience ended up being as calm as we were,” she said. “No one was smiling. Everyone was just reflecting what [we] were doing.”

Realizing Makonnen’s vision required conscious effort from the performers. Expressing the seriousness in the performance necessitated a change in gesture, several members explained. “We had to be very thoughtful and careful with our movements,” said Patricia Owusu ’28, a member of Kusika. 

Though Makonnen’s piece has been performed previously, each iteration is partially curated by its cast. Kusika dancers took active roles in adapting the choreography to fit the spatial context, according to Kusika member Jerry Hensure Lewouo Nizegha ’28. “For the most part, [Makonnen] just added little details, like maybe, ‘Shake the fabric more’ … [or] ‘Just move a bit,’” he said. “[She directed us to] play with the fabric and examined the visual experience she had. From that, she [would] give some feedback.”

According to Director and Senior Lecturer in Dance Sandra Burton, who choreographs many of Kusika’s performances, the group’s partnership with Makonnen originated after she attended Makonnen’s artist lecture at the Clark in 2022. “I felt there was something about the spirit of [her sculptures and performances] that would work well with the people in Kusika, so I invited her to come to the ’62 Center,” Burton said.

An original score created by other members of Kusika accompanied the performance. Diego Mongue ’25, Temani Knight ’27, and Liam Giszter ’25.5, composed and performed the music for the piece with some direction from Makonnen. Positioned on the left side of the room, the trio delivered ambient swells of sound, coming from Mongue’s six-string bass, Giszter’s keyboard, and Knight’s guitar and djembe, a type of goblet drum. 

The musicians designed the score to work in tandem with the dancers. “A big thing that I wanted to focus on was staying out of the way and letting movement speak for itself,” Mongue said. 

The dancers also created sounds during the performance, intentionally and percussively manipulating the mirror pieces in their costumes as they moved and hit the floor. This was part of how Kusika adapted the choreography to convey the heavy emotions associated with the subject matter, Burton said. 

According to Makonnen, the performance aimed to bring the tragedy of forced migration — a topic that she said is often glossed over in American education — to the forefront of the audience’s mind. By pulling viewers into the show using movement and music, she increased the intimacy of the experience. “My work is interior to all these things,” Makonnen said. “I’m really hoping that people can connect the dots … [that] these are not isolated experiences that only are happening over there. We all share the same Earth.”