Ayodele drummers/Photo: Marc Monaghan

T. Ayo Alston is the founder and artistic director of Ayodele Drum & Dance, an all-female company specializing in music and dances from West Africa. Ayo, which means “joy” in Yoruba, is Alston’s adopted artist name. “Ayodele” translates to “joy in the home.” This philosophy undergirds the company’s ethos—it’s the first thing Alston mentions in our conversation, and it can be found in the first sentence of the “Who We Are” section of Ayodele’s website. The role of women to this concept of joy in the home is grounded in Alston’s travels to the Republic of Guinea to study drumming and dance, where she was struck by the important role women have in Baga culture—as mothers, as symbols of community.

“I feel it is essential for women to be in tune with African dance as a cultural practice, as a healing entity, as a coping mechanism,” Alston says. Ayodele Drum & Dance makes its standalone concert debut at the Dance Center of Columbia College, where Alston has served on faculty for a decade, on October 31 and November 1.

Alston can attest to the healing power of music and dance from personal experience. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she grew up taking a range of performance lessons from a young age—tap and ballet as well as voice and acting—but fell in love with African dance when she first saw it in seventh grade, thrilled by the combined energy of live drumming, singing and dancing. Alston’s mother died when she was a sophomore in high school, causing her to take, what she describes as, “a bad turn.” After-school programs in West African dance buoyed her through her loss and grief. “African dance got me through high school, got me graduating on time and kept me out of trouble.”

After graduation, Alston traveled to Guinea to continue her drum and dance studies at Les Merveilles de Guinée, then moved to Chicago to join Muntu Dance Theatre as a full-time company member. In 2008, she founded Ayodele Drum & Dance, where she serves as executive and artistic director, choreographer and composer.

All-female companies are unusual in West African traditions—one customarily sees men behind the drums in classrooms and concerts. Alston says empowering women to play the rhythms they dance to is an important part of the creative practice at Ayodele. “There are these old rules like ‘women are not supposed to play djembes,’” she says. “We understand the music for ourselves; we can play for ourselves.”

That empowerment extends outside the studio walls. “Starting a company of all women is not just about dance,” Alston adds. “It’s about sisterhood. It’s about community. We look out for each other. When single moms can’t pick up their kids from school they can go into the group chat and see if someone can pick up their child. If someone is having car trouble we have people who can give them a ride.”

Ayodele also offers youth programming beyond drumming and dance. Alston says she wants to provide the same type of support that kept her on a positive path as a young person, navigating painful times. Through Ayodele, she created a “rites of passage” program for girls, which includes workshops in nutrition, reproductive health and hygiene, money management and savings. Along with music and movement classes, young dancers have the opportunity to perform for pay and gain professional experience. Alston notes, “Even if they don’t become professional dancers, they take these soft skills with them.”

Audiences at the Dance Center will experience an evening-length program from Ayodele for the first time over Halloween weekend. In a nod to the holiday, Alston is assembling masked dances from across the western coast of Africa—traditions hailing from Guinea, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Mali.

The program concludes with a piece illustrating the similarities between Chicago footwork—the homegrown street dance spawned in the 1990s that flourishes today—and Zaouli, a traditional dance from the Ivory Coast. The styles share lightning-quick steps that flash below a relatively still torso. Dancers hover and glide over a dazzling blur of flying feet. In the new piece from Ayodele, a young girl in Chicago finds connection to her ancestral roots through threads of dance spanning time and continents. Joy at home resonates with joy through the African diaspora.

Ayodele Drum & Dance at Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 South Michigan. Friday, October 31 at 7:30pm and Saturday, November 1 at noon. $30 general admission, $10 non-Columbia College students, free for Columbia College students. Tickets and info at dance.colum.edu.