Close-up on Usifu Jalloh
By 'Funmi Adewole
Maambena Cultural Dance Company is an unfunded African dance outfit run by Usifu Jalloh. He and a dedicated core of dancers and drummers meet to rehearse regularly at the Brixton Rock in London. It has funded his earnings as a freelance performer and teacher and contributions by the core. Rehearsals can some times be slow as dancers and musicians have jobs and also because new performers of varying levels of ability and commitment are allowed to attend. Jalloh is the first to admit that this way of working is difficult but he believes that this is the best way to be an African dance practitioner. He says,’ I need the community and the community needs me.’
The philosophy of Jalloh’s approach to theatre, that it should retain strong ties with the community, is a result of how he came to it. He grew up in Sierra Leone watching the rehearsals of the country’s national dance troupe when it was at its peak in the 1970s. The company’s remit was to represent the whole of Sierra Leone and act as its cultural ambassador abroad. As such the dance and music of several African cultures, the Timinis, the Fullahs, the Mendes, the Sousous, the Mandingos to name a few, were featured and amalgamated with in the company’s productions. The results he says were sheer magic. He got into breakdancing as a youngster and after much success on the high school circuit he was invited to join Tabule Theatre, a semi-professional theatre company run by Dennis Nelson Streeter. He says it was one of the most successful at the time. Here he also met the late Dele Charlie who was a writer and director. From these two mentors he learnt to drum, perform, direct. He was also able to use within this set up the traditional dances he had learnt in his village, Kamakwie.
Jalloh continues to favour apprenticeship in a company where the trainee can draw on the expertise of a number of skilled practitioners above college based theatre training. He also remains a stickler for traditional African theatre. Over the course of our conversation I found to Jalloh ‘traditional’ did not necessary mean ‘old’, it referred to a particular way of creating theatre that meant drawing on the society’s cultural reality. ‘We are not dinosaurs’, he says pointing out that the young people working in traditional theatre in Sierra Leone presently are introducing street culture into the framework of old styles and are creating remarkable pieces. He sometimes uses Hindi songs in his solo performances because the Indian Cinema made a big impact on Sierra Leonean culture. Jalloh agreed that the traditional theatre could in this way be very contemporary.
His dream is to be able to explore multi-culturalism of the British society by working with the approaches to creating multi-cultural theatre back in Sierra Leone. He would for example like to explore introducing Japanese forms into an African performance structure. Would he ever pursue funding to order to make this dream a reality I asked? Yes he hoped to be funded one day but only when the company was established. Funders would otherwise overlook his aims, give him all sorts of rules and regulations and kill the dream. So for now Usifu Jalloh and his collaborators in the heart of the community, dance on the fringe.
Usifu Jalloh can be contacted on: 07947769274
