African dance has many, many layers and levels.

African dance tells stories.

African dance is filled with rhythm and music and movement.

You should be... you should feel it all in your torso, that drop.

Well, a lot of the dances talk about everyday life.

We might have a dance that's about fishing and throwing the nets out and pulling the fish in.

And then we might have a dance where we're sowing the seeds to the ground.

We have dances that talk about being a warrior, fighting for your community and how the women help you prepare for that.

This is how African dance is so wonderful, because it's not just movement for movement sake.

It's not just movement to have fun.

Of course, you do have dances for recreation and fun and celebration, but it's also dances of healing that you can do.

They're dances in honor of the elders.

They're dancers in honor of children becoming adults.

It goes on and on, and the dances change with the centuries.

We do traditional dances, but they may have a different purpose than... African dance is just all encompassing and Ezibu Muntu tries to show the traditional aspects of that dance.

I discovered African dance at age 12 with Ruth Beckford.

She was the principle dancer for Katherine Dunham.

Now, you have to understand I'm from Berkeley, California.

I went to school with Huey Newton.

I went to school with the Black Panthers, Bobby Seale, and the Black Power Movement was very alive in California.

We were very adamant about seeking our identity as to who we were.

So African dance really resonated with me, and I started teaching African dance at age 13 at Berkeley Recreation Centers, and I would tour during Black History months.

So when I graduated from UCLA... I got a dance degree at UCLA.

I did my graduate work at Peabody Vanderbilt in Nashville.

I was the first dance teacher at Virginia Commonwealth University.

It was the first time I was out of California.

I was very isolated.

I said, "I think I need to start a company," and that's how I started it.

It was a student-based company with 25 members at VCU.

I did the typical thing.

I sent flyers out, and said, you know, "We're going to have rehearsals on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:00 to 8:30."

No one showed up.

I did this for two or three weeks.

No one showed up.

And I play drums.

So one night I was in the studio waiting for someone to show up, and I just started playing the drums, and I saw this little head peek through the door.

And there I peeped around the corner, and there was this lady sitting down on a chair playing the conga.

And I said, "Hi."

She said, "Hey.

My name is Tanya Dennis and I'm getting ready to start an African dance company."

I said, "I'll be your first student," because I used to do African dancing in New York.

And I told her, I said, "I've been here like for a month and no" -- she said, "I'll bring you some people."

The next week I had about ten people, and I should say, you know, even though I'm the founder, I should really say Renee was the founder, because she brought the people to me.

Thus, that's how I became part of the dance company.

And I love Ezibu Muntu African Dance Company.

It is in my blood now.

It is my family, like my mother and my father.

We're teaching fellowship.

We're teaching community.

And with our children, we're teaching respect.

We teacher eldership worship.

It's learning from your elders, being able to sit back and listen twice, speak once.

And these are some things that we have got to bring back into our youth and actually, even people my age.

It's a beautiful culture.

It makes people feel safe.

It makes kids feel safe and secure.

And in America, we kind of say, "Everything goes.

Everybody's equal."

But in African culture, there's a hierarchy, and that hierarchy makes a secure society, and that's what our kids need to learn.

We have to go really beyond dance, and we have to teach culture.

Unfortunately, African Americans, they're emulating a European culture that really hasn't embraced them, and there's a lot of conflict there, that they're trying to embrace something that they really are not a part of.

They're in it, but they're not of it.

And I think that creates a lot of dysfunction.

As a matter of fact, I know it creates a lot of dysfunction.

And it's because our kids don't have a point of reference.

Sister Tanya came out of California, and she kind of helped us discover our Africaness.

We already had our blackness down pact, but now we had a way to relate, to see and feel exactly where all of that came and why we did certain things that we do, certain movements, certain gestures that we do.

It all came from our African heritage and, you know, it's not just dance for dance.

It's dance for culture.

It's dance for education.

Ezibu Muntu means good family.

So that suits us well, because we are a good family and we try to be a good family out in the community.

Our doors are open wide and our arms are open wide to anyone that wants to come in and learn dance, no matter what your age is, no matter what your nationality is, no matter what your sexual preference is.

Our doors and our arms are open to everyone.