Dromatala's Members

Member Bios

Charles Vincent Burwell has sought to make his mark by embracing the heritage of traditional African cultures and sub-cultures, and incorporating them into contemporary music and dance. Beginning his musical training with piano at the age of seven, he had learned to play most brass instruments by the onset of his teenage years and was already working on compositions. Burwell gained valuable performance experience touring the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean as a member of the Florida A&M University choir. As a member of Orchesis Contemporary Dance Theater, he was introduced to the idea of utilizing live music solely for dance, and began to study the relationship between music and dance. He has worked as a musician with the Urban Bush Women Summer Dance Institute, the Florida State University Department of Dance, the Katherine Dunham Institute, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater School. He is currently the musical director of Prophecy Dance Company.

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Nzinga Metzger has been a student of traditional West African dance since 1991, when she began to study dances from the Old Mali Empire with Nia Love at the Florida State University. Nzinga has acted as dancer/choreographer and community dance instructor with the Orchesis Contemporary Dance Theatre at FAMU in Tallahassee, FL and with Barefoot Ballet in Atlanta, Georgia where she studied the dances of Senegal under Linda Faye Bayo. She has also studied the bass drums of the djembe orchestra, the sangba, djundjun, and kenkeni. In 1999, she continued her journey with dance in Philadelphia, becoming a proud member of Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble where she widened her knowledge of dances from Old Mali/Senegambia and added Afro-Cuban dances from the orisa tradition to her repertoire.

Metzger is also a student of another aspect of the Afro-Cuban dance tradition, namely the singing of oriki or songs dedicated to the deities of the Yoruba faith. She has learned songs associated with both the Egungun (ancestors) and the orisa (divinities). In 1999 she intensified her individual study of the oriki until she made the acquaintances of master bata player Greg 'Peachy' Jarman, with whom she currently apprentices, and akpon Olufemi DeWindt, a very well-known singer from New York.

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Onyekwere Ozuzu, MFA (Dance) from Florida State University, is a performing artist, choreographer, teacher, and researcher. She has danced with Orchesis Contemporary Dance Theater (Tallahassee, FL) where she served as Artistic Director, African Caribbean Dance Theater, Nia Love and Company, and has worked as a guest artist with Urban Bush Women, and Moving Stories Dance Collective (New Orleans). In 1997 Onye co-founded Skeleton Dance Project, with Trebien Pollard. Her body of work fuses modern dance, West African dance, Japanese and Chinese martial arts, and Butoh. Her work has been performed at Urban Artworks 5 (Pace University, NY), at The Joyce Soho (Manhattan, NY), at the Cultural Arts Center (New Orleans, LA), the National Dance School (Nassau, Bahamas), at La Festival del Caribe (Santiago, Cuba) among others. She developed a long standing role as choreographer with Orchesis Contemporary Dance Theater at Florida A&M University where she premiered new works in eight of their past ten seasons. She has worked extensively with children and developed community workshops with non-traditional participants. She served for two years as Dance Director at Edison Park Creative and performing Arts School in Fort Myers, Florida. She is currently serving as Associate Professor in Dance at the University of Colorado at Boulder, from where she continues to travel to perform, teach, and choreograph.

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Dorothy Wilkie began her formal career in African and African diasporic dance in 1955. She has studied it as an art form and experienced it as an aspect of her spiritual practice as an Orisa initiate. Her repertoire includes dances from Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cuba. She has studied with many master dancers including Robert Crowder, Baba Ishangi, John Hines, Ione Nash, Eartha Kitt, Xiomara Rodrigez, and many others. She is an established figure in the Philadelphia dance community. Many of Philadelphia's regional dance companies are comprised of or led by her former students. Over the course of her thirty-year career, she has declined invitations to dance with companies such as Nuevo Generaciao, Ilu Aiye, and Chuck Davis. Ms. Wilkie remains with Kulu Mele as choreographer and artistic director, sharing her expertise and knowledge with the Philadelphia community.

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Dionne Champion is a chemical engineer, an educator, and a dancer. She believes in the importance of teaching through the arts and had sought to integrate the arts and sciences throughout her life and career. Dionne began studying dance at the age of two and continued to study ballet, tap, modern (Horton, Graham, Dunham) and jazz as a student at Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts. She was introduced to traditional African and Afro-Caribbean dance styles as a student at Florida A&M University and a member of Orchesis Contemporary Dance Theatre with whom she performed for four years. Dionne has studied with such notable dance companies as Garth Fagan Dance, and Philadanco, and is presently earning her Master's Degree in Dance Education at Temple University. Through her experiences, she has recognized the importance of the mind, body and spirit connection, as well as the values that can be taught through community dance. She is most interested in studying dance as a means of teaching cultural values. Dionne is a child advocate committed to dance education, interested in the success of African American children, and dedicated to helping to build a community of strong leaders for the future.

Guileine Kraft bio to come

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Giavanni Washington bio to come

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Ashaki Williams bio to come

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Melody Burgess bio to come

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Rene Abayomi Goodall bio to come