Dance and Music Reviews : ‘Africa Oye!’ at El Camino College

“Africa Oye!” arrived at El Camino College on Thursday far less tarnished by the politics of presentation that it had been at the Pantages Theatre in 1989.

As conceived and staged by Michel Boudon and Mel Howard, “Africa Oye!” presents traditional forms of music and dance from Zaire, Niger, Guinea and Mali. The emphasis on small performing groups gives the audience a more intimate perspective on tribal art than African touring companies commonly provide, and the level of mastery remains awesome.

If anything, the current edition is stronger than the Pantages version. For starters, Papa Wemba and his “Rumba Rock” band are gone, replaced by a Babunda group from Central Western Zaire that offers a potent fertility ritual in which a lone female claps her hands, shakes her shoulders and rolls her hips--while alternately fending off and accepting advances from members of the five-man band accompanying her.

At the annual Dance Critics Assn. conference in San Francisco a year ago, Los Angeles Festival director Peter Sellars denounced “Africa Oye!” as “vilely produced . . . demeaning . . . a series of 15-minute excerpts of major artists.”

However, the approach that Sellars had mocked as a “smorgasbord treatment” turned out to be his own in a series of L.A. Festival sampler programs at Sunset Canyon Recreation Center--not to mention the repertory of the Classical Dance Troupe of Cambodia.

Yes, the attacks on “Africa Oye!” had some justification, but if the attackers fell victim to the same compromises, those compromises may be, to some extent, inevitable.

The three Senegalese women dancers who appear with the Percussionists of Guinea are stronger technically than their counterparts of 1989--and the seven percussionists themselves now really cut loose, just before the full-company finale, in a brilliant, extended display of coordinated musicianship.

The names of the Pende ensemble members are different now--but the spectacular masks are the same and so are the propulsive character dances with their wealth of gestural detail.

Since “Africa Oye!” offers nonstop highlights, the familiar faces continue to hold their own. Start with the magnificent breath control of the Kanouri pipers, father and son. Then check out the whirling handstands and other unpredictable gymnastics of the Peul Acrobats. For glamour and intensity, there’s both the stylized transvestite ritual of Mbulie-Hemba and the contemporary sophistication of griot/vocalist Kandia Kouyate. Boudon and Howard field enough major artists here to program a week-long festival.

In dance terms, however, nobody outclasses the joyous Batwa-Ekonda pygmies, wizards of contortion and transformation. They can sink into a deep squat and then glide smoothly away without seeming to take a single step. They can change from monkeys to snakes with just a hand-scratch or tongue-wag and also breeze through galvanic back-hinges that would leave most of us needing paramedics.

No, “Africa Oye!” doesn’t give them nearly enough time, but to see them at all is a privilege as well as a pleasure. And, of course, if Peter Sellars wants to hire them for a full evening of their own at his next festival, who’ll object?