PATRICK LUCKY LARTEY: Hello, everyone. It's Lucky Lartey here. Today I'm going to be sharing with you some basic West African traditional dance.

I am from West Africa, from a country called Ghana. Before we start, we're going to - I'm going to share with you some basic knowledge about West African traditional dance. In West Africa, the dance and the drum are together. They're not separate. So understanding of the drum is the understanding of the dance.

Also, when we are have, when we dance, we usually have drums with us. Today, we're going to be using recorded music. And so we're going to put everything into counts. All the sequence will be in counts.

But usually, all the transitions will be played by a master drummer. And whenever we hear rim puh-tmp puh-tmp puh-tmp, it means change to the next piece. Same as 1, 2, 3, 4.

But today, we're going to be doing it with music. So as we go learning in the class, we're going to be learning a lot about these things. It's also important to understand that you need to warm up, stretch, ready to go, have enough water in you before we start.

Let's do it.

[music playing]

1, 2, 3, here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4. Clap. We step up. 1, 2, 3, 4. Clap. 1, 2, 3, 4. Clap.

And up. 1, 2, 3, 4. Clap. Clap. 2. Last one. Beautiful. One more time.

1, 2, 3, 4. Clap, hey. Last one. And movement number two, we go to the side, to the side, and to the side, and to the side. We do it two times. One more time.

Ah, peh, peh, pah.

Let's try a few times. Last one. All right. And then the next piece, we go ah, hey, hey, ah. All right.

So we'll try two of these. 1, 2, 3, 4. And again. Pause, then we go ah, hey, hey, ah.

Then again, let's try it with music. Beautiful.

So we're going to do one and two together. Go, 1, 2, 3, 4. Last one. Here we go, 1, 2, 3, 4. And we go ah, hey, ah.

One more time. Here we go. Beautiful. And now we go number three. Really easy.

You finish here, you go forward. Ah, 2. So you open, then we bring this one in at the back slowly, and then go back. We try eight of that.

Do with the music. After 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Ah, 2, 3, 4. 5, 6, 7, 8. Super.

Again. 1, 2, 3, 4. Ah, hey, ah, hey, ah, hey, and the last one, ah, hey. All right.

[music stops]

So now let's break it down without music, slowly from top. Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2.

[vocalising rhythmically]

Last one.

[vocalising rhythmically]

1, 2, 3, 4. Ah, cha, chi, cha. One more time. Cha, cha-cha, chi. Here we go, ah, cha, 2, 3, 4.

And one more time. Pah, chi-chi, chi-chi. Cha-cha, cha, chi-chi, chi-chi. Cha-cha, cha, chi-chi, cha, chi-chi, cha, chi-chi.

1, 2, 3, 4. Ah, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4. Yeah, finish here. And we have the last beat. We go to the side.

Cha-cha, tin-tin, tin-tin. Chi-cha, cha-cha, tin-tin, tin-tin. chi-cha. Eight of that as well. So from 4, let's do the last two, which is 7, then we go 1, 2, 3, 4, ah.

Forward. 1, 2, 3, 4. And 1, and 2, and 3, and 4, and 5, and 6, and 7, and 8. Then we go ah, and finish. And 8 and clap. And 8 and clap. cool.

So we're going to try one more time with the music, from top to here.

[music playing]

1, 2, 3, 4. To the next beat. Here we go. One more time.

And. 1, 2, go forward. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, done.

All right. We try one more time. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Here we go. Last one. And again. Forward. Last one. Finish. Super.

Let's do it one more time. Last one. 1. 1, 2, 3, 4.

And again. Hey. Whoo! 2, 3, 4, 5. Last one. To the side. And then last one.

Thank you very much. I hope you had fun.