Review: STEP AFRIKA! MAGICAL MUSICAL HOLIDAY STEP SHOW at Arena Stage

Audiences know they’re in for something different in holiday entertainment when they walk into the “Step Afrika! Magical Musical Holiday Step Show” at Arena Stage, are handed tiny maracas-shaped shakers, and enter the in-the-round Fichandler Theater at Arena Stage to find it lit like a tree, with a DJ in a drum major’s costume cranking holiday tunes to his own beat. That he’s named DJ Nutcracker only seems to emphasize differences to the many prim salutes to the many annual Tchaikovsky revivals elsewhere. 

When a dozen or more dancers and drummers enter to fill the space in the middle with patterns as complex as interlocking as the rhythms, you know you’re in for the kind of driving entertainment that would melt the North Pole.

Based in Washington and celebrating its 30th anniversary, Dance Afrika! doesn’t have its direct roots from Africa, it turns out, but from an array of Black fraternities and sororities at HBCUs that put together competing squads of dancers who use foot stomping, clapping and body percussion, slapping limbs and torsos, to create their rhythmic displays. Like flag teams without the banners or cheer squads without sports teams, they march to their own exuberant self-made beats 

In their third holiday appearance at Arena, where it is becoming an appreciated tradition, the smiling, fierce young squad for the show is constantly engaging with the audience by facing them from four sides. They’re augmented by the insistent tom toms in the opening “12 Drummers Drumming” that’s more like a better executed drum circle than having anything to do with the old English carol that gave the segment its name.  

Posters for the event show a dancer flipping high in the air, as if this were Cirque du Soleil. And while there are some gymnastics involved (and using trailing ribbon, some rhythmic gymnastics as well), there isn’t much room for such athleticism.

But there is a lot of audience participation. More than once, the audience is invited onto the stage with the dancers, to groove to, say, Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It” or whatever else DJ Nutcracker (Jeeda Barrington) comes up with. Alternately, dozens of volunteers later in the program learn a line dance as if they’re practicing for an aunt’s wedding reception. 

And while an array of old and young were happy to descend from their seats to take part, it was the kids who really seemed to enjoy themselves out there. It’s one thing to wear a nice holiday dress to an event; quite another to spin it around under the lights center stage.

And those holiday shakers? A fun idea, no doubt, but it also generated a level of constant audience noise that never quite subsided. The cast might feel surrounded by holiday rattlesnakes after a while.

It wouldn’t be D.C. if they didn’t emphasize the distinctive beats of go-go, so that gets a welcome spotlight in the show directed by artistic director Mfoniso Akpan, and benefitting from the lighting design of Marianne Meadows and costuming of Courtney Johnson and Sabrina Simmons. 

There are parts of the show that start to feel like filler — with overly long explanations of what’s coming next (though it probably shouldn’t be surprise in a show drawing children, that the audience would so patiently addressed). A dance competition between preening gingerbread men and exuberant peppermint candies could have more dance than build up. And the milling mascots of penguins and polar bears who don’t dance much, only add a touch of cheesiness. 

There’s no Santa at this Christmas show, and no Jesus either. For a group founded partly with an education mission, it would have been good to hear about the history of step dancing if not some arcane aspects of the holiday. Or have some sort of central story that would have grounded the evening or given it more depth. 

But as a holiday party it can't be dismissed.  

Running time: About 90 minutes, with no intermission.

Photo credit: The company of Step Afrika!'s Magical Musical Holiday Step Show at Arena Stage. Photo by Margot Schulman.

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