KENYA: A group of dancers in the capital Nairobi hope to challenge people's conception of disability with a show performed by dancers with and without physical disabilities

Record ID: 360988

  • Title: KENYA: A group of dancers in the capital Nairobi hope to challenge people's conception of disability with a show performed by dancers with and without physical disabilities
  • Date: 10th October 2011
  • Summary: OUTSIDE THE AUDITORIUM VARIOUS OF DEAF AUDIENCE MEMBERS TALKING AFTER PERFORMANCE (SOUNDBITE) (English) JANET KEMBOI, AUDIENCE MEMBER SAYING: "In our society we tend to not address issues such as disability so I thought this was a really nice way of bringing out disability and talking about it because after this I'm sure everybody went away thinking." VARIOUS OF PEOPLE
  • Embargoed: 25th October 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Arts
  • Reuters ID: LVA6J35CHFNZ7Y5JWN0CF0P262TC
  • Story Text: On the dimly lit stage at the French cultural centre in Nairobi, the Pamoja dance group is preparing for the evening's performance.
    Instructing a pair of dancers, both using crutches, director Joseph Kanyenje runs through last minute lighting queues.
    It's the latest production for Pamoja, which means 'together' in Swahili. The group has around 14 members, many of them with physical disabilities.
    They've been dancing together since 2006 with the aim of challenging common conceptions about physical appearance and ability and pushing their own bodies to their limits.
    Some of the dancers have been performing for years, while others, including Sylvester Barasa who appears on the poster for the latest show, only started dancing when other dancers in Pamoja suggested he give it a go.
    Left partly paralysed after contracting polio aged 10, Barasa spent time on the street selling bubble gum and cigarettes before a friend, Miriam Rother, founder of the group, suggested he came along to a rehearsal.
    "So when I came I saw this is something I can do. I don't see the difficulty here. Then Miriam welcomed me to the group, I started dancing the same same day and they told me yes you can do it, so continue!"
    For Barasa, finding an outlet for his natural physical strength and agility revealed hidden talents and he says it's hard to think of himself as a person who is inhibited when he can do more than what some people can do.
    "I don't even think about being disabled. I'm not a disabled person, I can say that, I'm not disabled because I can do things that even able people cannot do," said Barasa.
    The evening's performance is called Mkwezi which is the name in Swahili given to people who scale coconut trees at the coast in Kenya.
    Director Kanyenje says the activity conjured images of skill and agility and inspired a whole series of choreography based on the pushing the human body to its limits.
    He says he hopes the performance helps raise questions for the audience and send them away thinking differently about the meaning of being able or disabled.
    "We are dancers with and without physical disabilities. We use our dance as a form of expression as a form of us telling people that we exist in society and to tell people that yes I can be disabled but this is what I can do. And I always say who is not disabled anyway?" said Kanyenje.
    On stage the performance alternates between extremely slow and rapid contemporary dance that's quite conceptual and heavily symbolic. At one point Barasa is carried on stage by Kanyenje who then throws him on the floor before crawling across the stage on hands and knees to the sounds of haunting pan pipes.
    At a later point the tempo picks up as the group seems to become infected by some imaginary itch, writhing and shaking their way across the stage to a flamenco dance mix.
    The performance ended to rapturous applause from the audience who seem to have picked up on the kind of messages Kanyenje hoped to communicate.
    "In our society we tend to not address issues such as disability so I thought this was a really nice way of bringing out disability and talking about it because after this I'm sure everybody went away thinking," said Janet Kemboi a Nairobi resident.
    Pamoja group are also involved in community work to help support people with disabilities in Kenya and lobby the government to honour their commitment to implementing the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disability, ratified in 2008.
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