Asase Yaa

Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation is dedicated to the promotion of cultural performing arts by providing families of the community opportunities to learn history and culture as they are related to the arts. Asase Yaa is committed to ensuring that youth understand the true importance of culture in the arts. It is the foundations goal to enlighten the community through the richness of culture, which will inevitably empower and strengthen it. Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation believes educating the community about the value and importance of the cultural arts will create the foundation for the leaders of the community.

ORGANIZATION HISTORY
In the summer of 2001, in Brooklyn, New York, Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater emerged under the direction of Artistic Director Yao Ababio. It was the founder’s belief that having a wide range of artistic skills would allow Asase Yaa to create authentic, unique productions that showcase an array of experiences to its audiences thus depicting the true richness of the African Diaspora. Kofi Osei Williams, Executive Director, Rubie Inez Williams, Director of Operations, and Kwesi Nkroma, Treasurer currently manage Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation. The organization is also supported by an advisory board, which includes community leaders, artists, professors, and supporters of the arts.
With a cohort of young, talented, skilled and inspired professional artist, Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater was created and set a goal of bridging the gap between African and African – American culture through the arts. Eleven years later, Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater continues to thrive on its reputation as a company of seasoned musicians, dancers and vocalists with training in various disciplines. It was the founder’s belief that having an array of artistic skills would allow Asase Yaa to create an authentic unique production that encompasses experiences that depict to audiences the true richness of the African Diaspora.

For eleven years Asase Yaa African American Dance Theatre has hosted its annual concert and showcase during the first week of July. The first series of concerts was named “Africa, A Journey in Dance”. This concert went on for seven consecutive years, which were held in Queens NY at York College Performing Arts Theater. Asase Yaa then changed venues, moving its show to Brooklyn, NY--the locale of its programming outreach and the home base of their young constituents--presenting “An Ananse Tale”. In 2010, the following year, a new concert series was developed Djembe in the New Millennium. This is one of the only concerts in America that showcases African dance and music. The first year was a representation of how far African concert dance and music has developed in the last 40 years in New York City, one of the original hubs for the expansion of African culture outside of continental Africa. New York’s top African dance companies were commissioned to join Asase Yaa in its annual concert to present new works showing the growth of African concert dance in New York City. This was a sold out show and a new era to a great legacy of concerts showing the strength and influence of African dance and music in the very strong arts community of New York City. In 2011 Djembe In The New Millennium was quoted as one of the best African shows of the decade.
Throughout this eleven-year span, Asase Yaa has produced seventeen concerts with over twenty-two of the top African dance companies in America. Asase Yaa has also been a part of a wide range of numerous acclaimed productions including VH1’s Hip Hop Honors Awards, the premiere of HBO’s “Sing Your Song” documentary on Harry Belafonte at the Apollo Theater, Dance Africa Chicago and New York. Asase Yaa has also worked in partnership with Arizona State University where students participated in workshops and performances. With such community support and positive reception resulting from each production despite limited arts funding and current national economic hardship, Asase Yaa has expanded and now consists of four components: a professional dance theatre company, a school of the arts, a children’s summer arts camp, and an arts in education program also known as AY Each of these programs has an outstanding impact on the participating children of each community where Asase Yaa bases itself. The most recent fruit of Asase Yaa’s labor will result in the grand opening of its own cultural arts facility in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant in January 2013, the Asase Yaa Center for the Arts.