AESOP'S FABLES STAGED WITH MINI-BALLERINAS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (written 10 October 2022)

From day one, the Dance Centre Kenya has dedicated itself to developing dancers who can make it on the international stage of entertainment, be it in ballet, musical theatre, contemporary dance, jazz, tap, or even hip hop.

This has already been proved with several of its former students finding spots in professional dance companies and prestigious dance schools in the US, Europe, and even in the Middle East.

But it has often meant starting with students who have never danced before, or ever even heard of something called ballet. When the former professional ballerina Cooper Rust first came to Kenya, that is what she had come to do. Her concept of inclusion meant that even before starting DCK in 2015, she was teaching in under-served settlements of Nairobi. That practice has continued even as the Centre has grown by leaps and bounds, to the point of currently having aspiring dancers coming from Karen and Kibera, Muthaiga and Mathare, Kitisuru and Ngong town.

Last weekend’s production of ‘Aesop’s Fables’ at Braeburn Theatre (Gitanga) also illustrated just how young Cooper’s cast members can be and how no one could tell from their performances which side of the city they were from.

“We have students as young as 2 coming to the Centre,” Cooper tells BDLife, noting it’s never too young to start taking dance. “I think I was three when I was first danced in ‘The Nutcracker’, she recalls, noting that same ballet will be coming next month.

The dancers performing in Aesop’s Fables were drawn from the Centre’s ‘Junior Company’ and ranged in age from 7 years to 11. Their mentor-choreographers (the ones giving them dance steps to perform) were members of the Senior Company and ranged in age from 14 through 18.

“It’s been a learning experience for everyone,” Cooper said, right after her students’ morning performance on Huduma Day. Certainly, that was true for the students, both the seniors (who got a crash course in choreography from DCK’s Artistic Director) and the juniors (many of whom had never been part of a public performance before).

It was also true for anyone interested in seeing how professionally DCK works when its aim is to create a total experience even for a children’s ballet.

In the case of Aesop’s Fables, the idea was using the storyteller’s Greek background as the motif for selecting the music, make-up and costuming as well as the beautifully painted backdrop.

Even John Sibi Okumu, playing the wise Greek storyteller Aesop (who was also said to be a slave) wore a toga as the men of Greece did back then. Born many centuries before Jesus Christ, around 620 BDE in Delphi, Aesop is said to have composed over 600 fables, many of which have seeped into our everyday discourse and recognized, not for their connection with Aesop, but simply as ‘common sense’. Take a story like ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ whose moral is simply that the ‘slow and steady’ (rather than the swift but impulsive) ultimately win the race or the prize. Or another, like ‘The Boy who cried Wolf’ which implies that liars are rarely believed even when they tell the truth.

Sibi Okumu only read eleven out of the 600 plus fables, but they were enough to give the senior class the challenge of translating a simple but deep concept into creative activity, even a ballet dance.

It’s true that a production staged with eight-year-old ballerinas might not have the same entertainment appeal as, say Heartstrings which was premiering their latest comedy, ‘Hot Air’ last weekend or Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s ‘I’ll marry when I want’ at Kenya National Theatre. But you can be sure that practically every performance was staged before a full-house crowd. Of course, most of them were family members related to the dancers on stage.

Aesop’s Fables can be measured as a success, especially in having Sibi Okumu star as the wise old Grecian who shared his wisdom with young ballerinas and boys. But also, in terms of stagecraft, one must commend Cooper for retaining a Grecian appeal by including portions of the popular soundtrack from the film ‘Zorba the Greek’. The costuming was also carefully conceived with support from DCK’s costume mistress, Antonia Mukandie who must also be responsible for the elegant masks (no relation to the COVID type) and the makeup as well. The aura of the Greek islands was also there in the mountainous landscape painting that covered the entire back of the Braeburn Theatre stage.