Dance Reviews : Djimbe Raps at the Spiral Court

Even if Djimbe, a Van Nuys-based group of drummers and dancers specializing in West African imports, had not inherited an ideal summer night to perform alfresco at California Plaza’s Spiral Court, these high-energy messengers would probably have lifted their Friday audience’s heat-drooped spirits.

But, as things turned out, a balmy breeze found its way to the little amphitheater nestled amid gleaming downtown skyscrapers, and the circular stage proved entirely hospitable to both the medium and the message of Leon Mobley, Djimbe’s main man.

The medium, for the record, is seemingly authentic music and dance of West Africa--all of it performed with great zest and attention to detail. The message, however, bears on good-humored fellowship and a constructive path to mend today’s racial divisions.

So after intermission, when Mobley dons his Foster Grant shades, black beret and dreadlocks wig and leads his ensemble onstage to a reggae beat, he demonstrates cultural merging at its most sincere and most winning.

An honest borrower, he explains how people must discover “who they were to know who they are and what to become.” That, his band of African-Americans do in excelsis. With enormous pride, verve and style--in costumes that gradually change from classical to contemporary and back again--the performers trace the connections from village fests to street rapping, 1992, all of it merrily wholesome and life-affirming.

And while one may regret a certain arbitrary division that assigns women as dancers and men as drummers, this celebration of the human spirit succeeds in building a force field of individual accomplishment through its all-out solo exhibitions.