Movement Angol Dance Company �" FLAT FEET Articulating the Articulation.

Wednesday 24 & Thursday 25 October 2007. Purcell Room, South Bank Centre.

Flat Feet was launched in 2006, as one solution to the lack of regularly scheduled and well supported platforms for Contemporary African dance artists. This years programme included WAC Performing Arts and Media College, Serge-Aimé Coulibaly, Jane Sekonya and Movement Angol Dance Company itself. Lighting was by Prema Mehta.

MAN2B �" Curtain raiser
Choreography: Francis Angol
Dancers: WAC Performing Arts and Media College �" James Bailey, Katie Cooper, Odila Egyiawan, Sarah Harkins, Yeukai Makoni, Matthew Newtion, Chris Preddie.
Music: Mali Trio

MAN2B began with all seven dancers dressed in black and white facing an orange lit backdrop, repeating a mantra to a finger click - “I am the man I aim to be”, with intermittent outbursts of “Testosterone!...Growth!...Emotion!...Exploding!....Stand up and be counted!” Voices were clear and well projected as a young black man came forward and began to question his future. Very topical one could say, in a city where the future of young men (and young black men in particular) seems far too unpredictable. There followed aggressive solos that spoke of pain and confusion, contrasted with gentle duets that spoke of tentative discovery and exploration. The dance language was modern with its lines, swoops, scoops, and still moments, contrasted with grounded movement from the African dance palette - all executed with good intentions. The second section was danced to a soundtrack by Mali Trio, and although it was tuneful, it somewhat dampened the sharp atmosphere of the first section. The piece culminated in the dancers once again voicing their mantra, and it was impressive that they managed to maintain good strong tuneful voices after such an energetic piece. WAC consistently produces great performers, so it was heartening to see the good work continuing through these young peoples’ performance.

MINIMINI
Choreographer and Dancer: Serge-Aimé Coulibaly
Music: Philip Kamunga

Minimini is Coulibaly’s first solo piece, having toured for several years as an actor, dancer and musician in the Burkina Faso Feeren Company, Les Ballet C. de la B, amongst others. MINIMINI explores the totality of African culture in its fusion of word, song and dance, and how today’s society inhibits free expression. Coulibaly entered wearing a loose unbuttoned shirt, and trousers, his back to the audience, skipping and hopping across from stage right as if on hot sand, to the melodic sounds of wildlife cheeping, whistling and cooing. A doorway of light appeared suggesting an entrance, an opening, a beginning. At certain points, Coulibaly began to fight with either himself or an imagined being to the sounds of wildlife, flute, or kora. The music would start and stop erratically. The fight became a roll upstage into precarious balances and flips. His circular arm movements and the ripples which began at his hips, rolled through his spine and shoulders, radiating through his fingertips echoed the circular and wavelike sounds of the kora music. It was interesting to see distinctly recognisable gestures and steps from traditional West African dances, but articulated in non-traditional facings, positions and attitudes. The movement became disorderly as if being commanded by an uncontrollable force, where Coulibaly would begin a phrase in a lyrical fashion and conclude with frustrated rhythmical foot stamps that seemed to emanate from his soul. And then more of the sparring with the invisible figure, talking to it, or urging himself on, then shouting words in painful silence within a circle of light. Then as though realising that the shouting was futile, he resorted to sign language, and subsequently he appeared reduced to the level of a beast, before collapsing into laughter, perhaps at the absurdity of his condition. At one point, his shirt became a yoke, covering his head, and trapping his arms in an upward position, as he struggled to manoeuvre. The question of free expression is a complex one �" we who live in the West possess a level of free expression envied by others. But then, one could also say that we express only as much as we are permitted to express. And in terms of artistic expression in the UK, it is significant that African dance - which in its traditional form encompasses word, song and dance, as well as inherently being a communal activity - has suffered from misinformed expectations and limitations, thus reducing and deskilling many of its artists to speechless disparate individuals. Maybe Coulibaly has a point….
Coulibaly is a strong and engaging dancer, with a wonderful theatricality to his performance. He now runs his own dance company �" Faso Dance-Théatre. We look forward to seeing more of his work on the London stage.

THE BOYFRIEND
Choreographer: Jane Sekonya
Dancers: Jessica Lebornge, Jake Nwogu
Music: John Coltrane

Today I'm not feelin’ pretty, See I'm feeling quite ugly
Havin' one of those days, When I can't make up my mind
So don't even look at me, See I don't wanna hear your problems
Cause I'm having some of my own, I know it's not your fault
That I'm feelin' down, I just wanna be left alone

‘PMS’ - Mary J. Blige. 2002

The Boyfriend is essentially Mary’s song in a contemporary dance form.
This was a very straightforward piece about a premenstrual woman, with a boyfriend trying to empathise and comfort her, with little luck. Her frustration was conveyed through disjointed positions, irritated gestures, and a very sour facial expression. The humour was well expressed between the dancers, and there was many a guffaw in the audience from male and female alike. Lebornge and Nwogu moved very confidently through the choreography - lines were long and fluid, and they executed some strong, intimate and interesting partner work. One duet looked like a freestyle hip hop confrontation with a twist, in that they weren’t youngsters in a dance duel - they were a loving couple in temporary crisis. Although The Boyfriend was highly enjoyable, and a lighter alternative to the programme’s other works, it did seem slightly out of place in terms of the dance styles displayed. Flat Feet is about developing and promoting contemporary African dance, as we are aware that there are few opportunities to see new presentations, and interpretations of African dance forms. Thus in order to be truly effective and avoid duplication from other platforms, we must ask ourselves if Flat Feet should be about what the dancer is doing, rather than where they are from….

PHYSICALLY MASCULINE
Choreographer: Francis Angol
Dancers: Movement Angol Dance Company �" Francis Angol, Russell Balogun, Christopher Woodgate
Music: Dafaq Algiers, Armand Frydman, Denis Hekimian, Miles Gloriosus, David Watson

Angol revisited fatherhood, manhood and self in this intense trio. This time, the focus was on the rite of passage for young men that provides a secure pathway into adulthood. As Angol explained to me once, a rite of passage is not necessarily a period spent in ‘the wilderness’ listening to stories from elders. It can be any episode shared between parent and child, mentor and mentee, senior sibling and junior sibling, when the older guides the younger into the next stage of their life. There were echoes of the MAN2B curtain raiser, in that we heard the chant of ‘emotion…expanding, etc’, but this time it was a soundtrack backed up by djembe and shekere. Against a blue background we saw 3 figures on the ground in various positions. They stretched, undulated, rolled, contorted, as though moving through water. Then they began to operate as one, but with no eye contact between them, maintaining the sense of isolation. This first section of the piece was strong in terms of the clarity of the vocabulary, and the technical abilities of the performers. The costume took the form of underwear, which was changed at various intervals, representing those who father children and discard them, as frequently as changing their underwear.
There were some nice group work, with grappling and wrestling - very much like young men discovering and exercising their power over each other as well as over themselves. There was a touching duet between Balogun and Woodgate where through some paternal nudging and adjusting, one showed the other how to stand tall, be confident, and thus free, which the son emotes by erupting into joyous jumps.
To me, the stage seemed too small (even without the wings) for such an intense piece �" there were times when the dancers looked limited and trapped. Although there was some fine dance vocabulary (including some nice capoeira-like pivoting), occasionally a couple of the performers could have grounded themselves more and dropped their weight in order to really find their placement within the dance language.
The dancers appeared to swap roles throughout the piece. So rather than having a clear linear narrative, PHYSICALLY MASCULINE seemed to be about snapshots into the male psyche and the experiences that can make or break �" e.g. one dancer would play the father, one would play the son; then they’d all be young boys wrestling with each other; then one would be a young man posturing and preening. And at the end, one figure was the elder ‘cloaked’ in ‘wisdom’ and the others were his sons crouching and cowering painfully in their desperate need for their father’s attention, guidance and validation, while he literally shook them off and looked the other way. But what was poignant was that this father figure looked just as anxious and fearful as his sons.

Did you attend the Flat Feet Festival? What were thoughts on it? Let us know at [email protected]