Angela Watson teaches African dancing at the Moving Arts Studio in Mt. Airy. by PAMELA ROGOW

A physical education teacher at Angela Watson’s public high school in Tucson was known to go the extra distance, finding ways to enrich student experiences with outside dance performances of various stripes.

Early in her freshman year, the teacher presented a performance of African dancers. Angela was immediately enchanted. She had always danced, even at family gatherings when she was young, copying her older sister’s modern dance technique at home.

Her family was very poor and her parents in poor health, so others often stepped in to raise the children. Among her blessings were jazz and modern dance classes during junior high years, with trained teachers.

But the exposure to African dance changed Angela’s world. She took a one-day dance workshop and “I just felt at home,” she recounts.

Soon Angela began studying and rehearsing these forms and joined the African dance company at 15 years old. For the next three years, she toured Arizona, Colorado, California, Utah, Florida and Mexico with the troupe. Her world was getting much bigger.

She went on to Howard University, planning to study dance there but found that program wanting. So she switched to African studies with a French minor and continued dancing with various African troupes in the area.

“At a wedding in D.C., I met Mama Kadiatou, a dancer from Guinea by way of New York. She adopted me. MaMa Kadiatou had studied with Papa Ladji Camara, the first African dancer to come to the US and start teaching the djembe drums that we know. Americans had not known how to play them before Katherine Dunham asked him to stay on.

“PaPa Ladji Camara was the lead drummer of the National Ballet of Guinea – the first national dance company of Africa. So I have learned as he teaches, which is of the folk tradition itself. Dance is more standardized now, more performance oriented. But what he taught was dance from his village.”

African dance in the mode of the national ballet companies has become oriented toward the popular and performance. “But what he taught was dance from his village. That was my introduction – more of the ritual type. It is the folklore.” But Angela also studied with Les Ballets Africaine in Washington, D.C.

After becoming fluent in French, Angela was able to return to Guinea, having won a prestigious Fulbright scholarship for a year’s study abroad.

She focused on the history of different dances, traveling throughout the region, documenting what she saw and heard on videotape, audiotape and paper.

A few years later, Angela came to Philadelphia to study for a master’s degree at MCP Hahnemann in dance therapy. Her experiences in Africa sharpened her childhood appreciation for community and for associations between healing and creativity.

“I knew that I loved dancing and didn’t want to stop. Even after coming to Philadelphia and getting another degree, I realized that I don’t want to stop dancing to be a fulltime dance therapist…”

She continues performing regularly throughout the region, with Kulu Mele, the oldest African dance group in Philadelphia. Angela also does choreography for the group and is one of its main dancers. And she dances with the Balafon Women’s Ensemble and Green Meadow companies.

Angela is also in an apprenticeship program with the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts in arts management. “Even when I dance, my work is about community and not just performance,” she says.

Beginning next Tuesday, Watson will teach African Dance with live drummers at the Moving Arts Studio in Mt. Airy (MaMa). Adults and children are invited, families welcome No registration fee is charged. MaMa is located at Carpenter Lane and Greene Street, just off Lincoln Drive. Call for information and reservations at 215-842-104