DRAMATISING SHUJAA STORIES VIA BALLET

It would be a mistake to assume a show starring seven-to-twelve-year-olds wouldn’t be an entertaining and even enlightening way to spend a Sunday afternoon. ‘Shujaa Stories: A Celebration of Kenya through Ballet’ proved that point last weekend at Braeburn Theatre where Dance Centre Kenya brought together a slew of creatives to produce the first original Kenyan ballet. The stories were impressive enough for the former Westlands MP Tim Wanyonyi to come serve as the narrator of all 12 Shujaa Stories. He would share each one before a small team of DCK dancers would come out, bedecked in colorful costuming, and dramatize through dance, what each shujaa story was all about. “This show is a collaboration of many people among whom we have felt especially honored to be working with,” DCK’s founder and artistic director, Cooper Rust tells BD Life. “We are especially thrilled to have brand new music composed for us by Andrew Tumbo who also assembled five brilliant instrumentalists to perform his shujaa music live during the ballet,” she added. Noting that there are so many outstanding Shujaa stories, the Sunday show is likely to be the first in a series of performances linking storytelling with Kenyan history, and ballet. The first one would include super-heroes from all over Kenya and beyond. They would represent Shujaa visionaries coming from the Kamba, Embu, Nubian, and El-Molo to the Luo, Kikuyu, Giriama, Maasai, and Makondi. Each story was dramatized through dance, or more specifically through a series of short ballets, each one of which was choreographed by a member of the senior DCK troupe of dancers. The shujaas whose lives were revealed through vibrant music and swift-footed dance included legends like Wango wa Makeri and Maketilili wa Menzi, both of whom were leaders who ‘broke glass ceilings’ long before ‘feminism’ was understood. Wangu’s (Jamila Yunus} appointment as ‘Headman’ in Murang’a was unprecedented but generally accepted until she made demands in defiance of men’s double standards. After that, she became a freedom fighter for women’s rights. In contrast, Mekatilili (Rebeccah Sun) led a full-scale struggle against the British who she could see meant to take over her Giriama people. She was a visionary and fierce freedom fighter who the British arrested twice, but twice she escaped to fight the occupation of her people’s land. She was finally exiled to Somalia, but her tenacity and freedom-fighting spirit live on. There were several other women shujaa’s whose heroic moments were told and dramatized through ballet. They included tales about Queen Amanirenas, the archeress and leader of her Nubian people who eventually came and settled in Kibera; Syonguu, another prophetess, this one from Ukambani, and my favorite, Anyango Nyalolwe, () daughter of the Lake [Victoria] whose magical powers were revealed after she married a humble fisherman and helped him to get rich. He misused his wealth on drink and more wives. Anyango warned him to stop, but he didn’t listen. So she left with her co-wives and returned to the lake while her husband lost everything. Moral of the story? Respect your wife and listen to her wisdom. But the shujaa stories were not only about women. In fact, all the prophetic men were just as colorful and courageous as the women. For instance, Ireri wa Irugi, the prophet of Embu foresaw the coming of the British in a dream. He even saw them coming with a peculiar animal that had an iron mouth. It was that metallic mouth’ that would be used to overpower the Embu people. Still, they remember Ireri for his prophetic vision and voice. Then there was the story of Muyaka Bin Haji who was a skillful, pioneering poet from the Coast. All the shujaa have very different ways of serving their people. But these stories can also be seen as part of a wider process to decolonise Kenyans’ consciousness. That’s because many of them are about characters whose leadership and special skills came to light either before or during the early days of colonial development [disruption] in Kenya; before people were persuaded that colonial culture was superior to African ways of life./ What was also exciting to note about the show was the number of young Kenyan guys who have gotten involved with ballet and other forms of contemporary dance, many of whom are coming through DCK’s scholarship program which has enabled many youth from ‘underserved’ communities to attend dance classes with Cooper whose loving, disciplinarian style of teaching has shaped and re-shaped the lives of youth; many of whom can now see dance, and specifically ballet as a career course that might lead to a way forward in this life. In the final assessment, Cooper admits that the shujaa stories are a project that’s involved a large chunk of her students, many of whom became dance instructors as well as dance students under Cooper.