African dance company lights students' fire
Rachel Howard, Special to The Chronicle

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The husband and wife have eight children, all of whom dance with Diamano Coura, the West African dance company based in Oakland that Diouf founded in 1975. Add to that offspring "Mama Washington's" hundreds of students at Berkeley High School over the past decade-plus, many of whom have grown up to join Diamano. And last weekend at Oakland's Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, the family went global, as master dancers and drummers from Mali, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe gathered for four days of workshops at the 13th annual Collage des Cultures Africaines.