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?
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Authenticity matters to company member Mashaune Wilkes, 38. “When you start studying African dance, you want to make sure you study with someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about,” Wilkes says. So many teachers don’t, the 38-year-old says.
“I sang a song that I learned for Moustapha one time,” says Wilkes. He stopped her and told her she wasn’t making any sense. “Sometimes I have had people tell me stories about going to an African country and learning a song and coming back. People who know the language will ask them, ‘Do you really want to know what you just said? You said drop it like it’s hot.’”
Le Bagatae Chicago started four years ago, after Bangoura moved to Chicago from Gainesville, Florida to become the artistic director of Muntu Dance Theatre, Chicago’s oldest and most established African dance company.
He worked there from 1999 until 2002, retooling some of the company’s repertoire. They welcomed him due to his extensive experience. Bangoura became a member of Guinea’s national dance company (and Africa’s oldest dance company), Les Ballets Africains, in 1975, when he was about 20-years old. He traveled with the company to more than 165 cities during his 22-year tenure, rising to a level of prominence and skill that allowed him to teach his fellow dancers and offer classes to the public.
Youssouf Koumbassa, who came to the US before Bangoura and is widely recognized as the most famous Guinea dance teacher in the country, remembers seeing Bangoura dance for the first time. It was in Guinea about 35 years ago.
Koumbassa was 12 or 13 and Bangoura was seven years older, dancing with a company in his hometown, Conakry, just before joining Les Ballets Africains. Other dancers were popping and breaking their bodies. Bangoura was flowing. “The first time I see him, I told him he was beautiful dancer,” says Koumbassa, who lives in New York. “A lot young people used to love his style.”
“Moustapha is well versed in history and folklore,” says Amaniyea Payne, Muntu’s artistic director. “When someone can express that not just artistically but also historically, we welcome that. When he came to Chicago, we had the opportunity to engage in his greatness.”
Bangoura left Muntu in 2002 to focus on his own projects. By that time he had already met some of the dancers, including Muhammad, who would become members of his company.
Muhammad first began taking classes with Bangoura in 1999, after dancing for two African companies in Chicago and one in North Carolina. During her more than 27 years as a dancer, Muhammad had learned pieces from Senegal, Mali and Liberia, but Guinea dance was different. “It was earthy,” she says. “It was funky.”
The prospect of studying and mastering one dance -- Guinea dance -- enthralled her. In other dance companies, she’d always felt she was spread too thin, learning dances from all over the west coast of Africa.
Guinea dance differs vastly from the dances of even neighboring countries like Ghana, says Green. Ghana’s style is oppositional, meaning when the arm is up the foot is down or when the left shoulder moves forward the right shoulder moves backward.
