TEMECULA — A footstep can carry a beat. A handclap can answer it. Together, a group of dancers can turn movement into music — and a shared tradition into a story.
That relationship between sound, movement and identity is at the heart of Step Afrika!, the internationally touring company that performed Nov. 6 at the Old Town Temecula Community Theater. The engagement was presented by Temecula Presents.
Founded by C. Brian Williams in 1994, the Washington, D.C.-based company blends stepping with traditional African dances and contemporary movement. Its performances incorporate singing, storytelling, humor and audience participation, connecting the physical demands of dance with the communal experience of making rhythm.
In stepping, dancers become percussionists. Footfalls, claps, stomps and spoken words combine into overlapping rhythmic patterns. Call-and-response passages and synchronized movement make the art form something audiences can hear as well as see.
The tradition developed within historically Black fraternities and sororities as an expression of pride, unity and shared identity. Organizations cultivated distinctive movements and sounds, passing those practices from one generation to the next.
For Williams, that tradition became a starting point for an international artistic exchange.
A Houston native and Howard University graduate, he learned to step in 1989 as a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity’s Beta Chapter. After college, while living and working in southern Africa, he encountered South African gumboot dancing, a percussive tradition developed by miners.
The similarities caught his attention, prompting him to explore connections between the two traditions.
In December 1994, Williams founded Step Afrika! Its first project was an international cultural festival in Johannesburg, developed with the Soweto Dance Theater. The two-week festival offered free workshops and performances to more than 400 young people, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.
The exchange became the foundation for a company that would carry stepping beyond college campuses and onto professional stages.
Today, Step Afrika! reports having performed in more than 60 countries. Its work preserves stepping’s connections to Black Greek-letter organizations while exploring how the form can interact with other dance and musical traditions.
Education remains central to that mission. Through school programs, workshops and other learning experiences, the company uses stepping to encourage teamwork, academic achievement and cross-cultural understanding.
The artistic discipline behind the movement supports that purpose: Dancers must listen, coordinate and contribute to a collective rhythm.
Williams received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2022, the nation’s highest honor in folk and traditional arts. The award recognized his work preserving and promoting stepping through performance and education.
His work is also represented in an interactive stepping exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, giving museum visitors another way to encounter the tradition.
The Temecula engagement connected a local stage with that larger story: a tradition shaped by Black college communities, expanded through exchange with South African artists and carried to audiences around the world.
