The Story of "Fist and Heel"

REGGIE WILSON/FIST & HEEL PERFORMANCE GROUP
in The Tale Npinpee Nckutchie & the Tail of the Golden Dek
Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 8pm at Summer Stages Dance at Concord Academy.
www.summerstagesdance.org

"Fist and heel is clapping and stomping, shouting and hollerin'" explains Reggie Wilson. "It is a continued manifestation of the rhythm languages that provoked, appeased, and controlled spirits." Denied their drums, enslaved Africans in the Americas reinvented their spiritual dance traditions as a soulful art form that white authorities dismissed as merely "fist and heel worshipping." This tradition kept the culture alive.