KENYA: Kenyan youth make a living and name for themselves from contemporary dance

Record ID: 360914

  • Title: KENYA: Kenyan youth make a living and name for themselves from contemporary dance
  • Date: 17th August 2007
  • Summary: (AD1) NAIROBI, KENYA (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CHOREOGRAPHER, JAMES MWEU AND DANCER, VINCENT OCHIENG PERFORMING MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE WATCHING THE DANCE OCHIENG DOES SEVERAL FLIPS BEFORE WALKING TOWARDS MWEU (SOUNDBITE) (Kiswahili) DANCER, VINCENT OCHIENG, SAYING: "Kizazi is a duo dance piece performed by James and I. It's both acrobatics and contemporary dance. But
  • Embargoed: 1st September 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
  • Reuters ID: LVAALMQKRYU7MM5CM8ATUG3LB3QY
  • Story Text: Modern dance is still a fairly new phenomenon on the African continent with many viewing it as Western or un-African. But since the 1990s a group of Kenyans have been giving it a uniquely African identity.
    Vincent Ochieng - or Ochy as he's known to his friends - is 15 years old and still at school. He comes from the Lunga Lunga slum in Kenya's capital, Nairobi and has been dancing for about one and a half years.
    It looks like casual improvisation, but Vincent and his dance partner and mentor James Mweu have practised every movement in this choreography dozens of times for it to look this natural.
    "Kizazi is a duo dance piece performed by James and me, and it's both acrobatics and contemporary dance. But mostly our piece focuses on contemporary dance. When I perform and I do a nice move and then the crowd applauds - that's what gives me the passion and morale to keep dancing,"
    said Ochieng.
    James Mweu and the seven dancers in his Kunja dance group fuse traditional African moves with modern dance, tai chi, yoga and acrobatics.
    Tickets to see the show cost 300 shillings or about five US dollars - too expensive for most in Kenya, where average daily income is just over a dollar a day. But this performance at the French Cultural Centre was sold out.
    Modern dance certainly still isn't mainstream in Kenya, even though it has been gathering momentum for a while.
    One of its pioneers was choreographer and dancer Opiyo Okach, who has performed all over the world and remains a seminal figure in African modern dance. James started dancing with Okach in the 1990s and was part of his movement to give modern dance its own African identity.
    Proceeds from performances are shared between all the dancers who took part. For Ochy, this means that he can afford to pay school fees - and hopes to graduate to secondary school "When I finish school, I'd like to be an accountant, because I love maths. Like when we're given the bus fare home after a gig, I'm the one who is chosen to split the money equally between the other guys,"
    added Ochieng.
    Dance is also a way of escaping into another world. Life in the slum is tough. Ochy, his mother and his five brothers and sisters share one room with no electricity and no running water. Their mother has been taking care of them on her own since their father died.
    "It made me very happy that he's keeping himself busy by dancing, especially when I heard that they were going to tour parts of the countryside including Awendo, the place where I come from. Children his age who have nothing to do have become thieves and muggers and end up being arrested or even being killed," says Anastasia Aluoch, Vincent's mother.
    Ochy is still a long way off becoming a professional like James, who earns around 450 US dollars a month from dancing. But he's already a success story and even if heup becoming an accountant, it will be modern dance that helped get him there.
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