Dancers Yewande Kelly-Johnson and Audrey Davis-Dunning leads the Marshall Hand & Drum Ensemble in the depiction of the tradition Jamaican folk dance Cumina. 

 

     The Cumina is danced at wakes and burials, and occasionally at less sombre events. The performance itself is anything but sombre. An African drumbeat and exuberant, life-affirming choreography are intended to restore the bereaved to engagement with life by calling on the ancestral spirits to heal and comfort them.

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     The moves are loose - upper body and legs in constant motion and pelvic isolation, some fairly explicit, linked to the drumbeat. The tradition of Nine Nights recalls the nine days that neighbors supported the grieving family as the burial was prepared, culminating in the drumming, singing, and dancing of the Cumina.