BMA Hosts Rare Sankofa Dance Theater Performances and Workshops in Conjunction with November Book Launch

From 1989 through 2015, Baltimore-based Sankofa Dance Theater dazzled national and international audiences with spirited world-class performances of traditional music and dances from the Senegambia region of West Africa. The word sankofa is derived from the Akan tribe of Ghana and means “go back and get it,” encouraging people to learn from the past when moving forward. In Baltimore, Sankofa was the first organization to present and teach African music and dance on a regular basis. The professional company performed at dozens of venues over the years, including the BMA, Walters Art Museum, Eubie Blake Cultural Center, and Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The Sankofa Center for Cultural Enrichment was established on Druid Avenue in Baltimore and was the location for many performances in the late 1990s and 2000s. International performances were presented at The Rotterdam International Arts Festival (Netherlands), Roots Festival (The Gambia), and Blaise Senghor Cultural Center (Senegal), among others. For thousands of Baltimore students, Sankofa’s popular community workshops were their first exposure to African culture. Sankofa created residencies, educational performances, and community dance and drum classes to meet the needs and enthusiasm of young people.

Kibibi Ajanku is the founder of the Baltimore-based Sankofa Dance Theater, as well as a visual and performance artist and curator whose projects often integrate costuming, historical artifacts, and contemporary artworks. Her work has been presented at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Walters Art Museum, Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History and Culture, and Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park Museum in Baltimore, as well as Charleston City Gallery in South Carolina and City Lore Gallery in New York, among others. Ajanku has traveled to Africa and the African diaspora extensively to study, teach, and perform with many masters. Her studies have included Adire fabric design in Osogbo, Nigeria; tapestries in Theis, Senegal; Adinkra fabric printing and Kente weaving in Kumasi, Ghana; mud cloth acquisitions from the Mali railway; embroidery work in Medina, Senegal; and Orisha attire in Havana, Cuba. Ajanku attended Morgan State University and received an MFA in curatorial practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She is currently a professor in the Fine Arts Department at Coppin State University and curator for the Bearman Gallery at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park Museum.

Angela N. Carroll is a writer, art historian, and curator based in Baltimore.  She regularly contributes critical writing to publications operating at the intersections of art and culture, including Sugarcane, Black Art in America, BmoreArt, and Hyperallergic. Carroll is often commissioned to contribute writing for art exhibition catalogs and academic publications such as Joyce Scott: Walk A Mile in My Dreams (BMA), Exploring Presence: African American Artists in the Upper South (JELMA), b. Robert Moore: In Loving Memory (Des Moines Art Center), and Mahari Chabwera: Etheric Bodies (NoMüNoMü). She is currently the guest curator at Brandywine Museum of Art for Jerrell Gibbs: No Solace in the Shade, a survey exhibition opening fall 2025, that will be accompanied by a catalog published by Rizzoli. She received her MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from the University of California at Santa Cruz and intermittently teaches at American University and MICA.