Revolutionary Movement
Guinea native Moustapha Bangoura is an internationally known proselyte for authentic African dance. But can this whirling dervish of a dance maker get his Chicago company to take root?
By Kelly Virella
It’s 96 degrees on a Sunday afternoon and the acclaimed African dancer Moustapha Bangoura is choreographing a performance inside an un-air-conditioned dance studio at Hamlin Park, a city-owned recreation area at 3035 N. Hoyne Ave. His dancers – members of his newest company, Le Bagatae Drum and Dance Ensemble – know they have to rehearse, but are dragging their feet. The drummers have gone home for the day and the dancers are alone with Bangoura’s orders, the heavy silence of the oppressive heat and the rattle of four tired box fans. Bangoura, a 22-year veteran of one of Africa’s most celebrated dance companies, has come to rehearsal shirtless. Rivulets of sweat fall down his smooth hairless chest. He is wearing a pair of wonteny -- billowing pants with an extra-long seat like a genie’s – that are tie-dyed peach and white. He is 52-years-old, but with his buff pecs and abs, the 5-foot-8-inch choreographer looks 19. His face is square with a strong jaw-line; short kinky coils sprout from his head like rays from the sun. Regular people walk, even shuffle in this heat. Bangoura’s so spry he bounces.
Bangoura separates the six voluptuous sweaty dancers at the rehearsal into two sets of three. Then each set shuffles to an opposite corner of the floor. When they are ready Bangoura beatboxes the rhythm to a traditional Guinea dance and the two sets of dancers begin to march toward each other, stomping their feet, waving their arms and arching their backs.
When they finish, Bangoura jumps out of his director’s seat and praises them with a smile so wide that his molars show. “That’s good! Now let’s do it again,” he says in his thick Guinean accent. No one responds. They keep their eyes trained on the floor and, with slumped shoulders, straggle back to their places to repeat the dance.
“Sheelah, what’s wrong?” Bangoura asks his assistant director, Sheelah Muhammad, a tall, slim, long-armed dancer, whose head hangs low.
“It’s hot,” she says, dressed in her cobalt blue tank-top and sarong. Other dancers echo her. Prior to this rehearsal, the company members conducted an hour-and-a-half, public dance class. And Hamlin Park Theatre, the giant, barn-like studio where they practice feels like a greenhouse. So much sun is flooding the studio that sunlit patches of the floor have been scorching their bare feet.
Bangoura dismisses their complaint without replying. “Just one more time, please,” he says, taking his seat again.
“Just-one-more-time” turns into at least 20 more times and more than 60 additional minutes of rehearsal. But when you want to become the world’s next great African dance company, that’s what you have to do. They rehearse, even when their studio is toastier than an oven, even when there are no drums, even when there isn’t a dime to pay one dancer’s salary. “Moustapha is very disciplined,” says Muhammad. “At rehearsal we don’t play.”
