We think alike on stage at Goethe

By Gregory Austin Nwakunor
THREE people are on stage, looking every bit agitated. Their movement is quirky, but balanced. They reel around the stage in a signature style of contemporary dance: twisting and turning on feet, as music plays at the background. The sequence is the rather popular ‘boy meets girl’ tale. However, rather than the usual parental restrictions, the alternative control: another girl.
The 35-minute piece, We Think Alike, will be on stage today at Goethe Institut, Lagos and tomorrow at the University of Lagos.
The time for the dance piece, which is the product of a workshop facilitated by Adedayo Muslim Liadi is 6pm.
The piece will see Liadi, Rachel Arianne Ogle and Jennifer Dallas replicate recognisable dance steps and forms: turned-in-feet, spastic jerks and head rolls.
The carefully crafted piece embraces stillness and challenges the dancers with restful chorus of unison. It is all about spatial and aerial communication in dance: The link and strength of togetherness, which grow from relationship. It asks pertinent questions, as, if I am different, does that mean I can’t blend? Because I am short does not mean I can’t reach with a tall man?
We Think Alike points out that in life, the post is very wide but with the passion that drives human beings, they forget that they can only score one goal together — mindless of colours and differences (faces, ages, styles). One movement, one people, and one dance are what bind humanity because we think alike.
Hosted by Ijodee Dance Centre, Nigerian, Canadian and Australian artistes have come together to discuss and demonstrate working methods, share generous and candid ideas about cross pollination of dance concepts, especially in the way their artistic inspirations and dance work might be read.
Ogle and Dallas come with tantalisingly brief resumes of the careers that had brought them to the current point.
According to Liadi, the relationship began as a student/mentor thing in 2005 at an African Contemporary Dance workshop, which he facilitated as part of the ImPulseTanz Festival in Vienna, Austria.
By 2006, Rachel and Jeniffer had come to Nigeria to perform in Dance meets Danse Festival and also to work with Ijodee Dance Center as artistes in residence.
"This cultural exchange through the art of contemporary dance aimed to expose them to the very heart of the language, which inspires and the very basic of their practise of West African traditional and contemporary dance," Liadi reflects.
By the time they (Ogle and Dallas) visited in 2007, a platform had been created for them to learn and co-create.
As part of the arrangement, Ijodee Dance Centre will provide 125 hours of apprentice work under the direction of Liadi, over a four- week period, including daily company class and an apprentice position in the centre. Then, participation in all rehearsals and activities surrounding the creation of We think alike.
Professional Development Apprenticeship period for the creation actually began in Lagos on December 26, and lasted till this moment.
Canada Council for the Arts, Ijodee Dance Centre and The Department of Culture and Arts/Government of Western Australia sponsored the creation.
Three dance companies — Kemi Collective, Canada, Ijodee Dance Company, Nigeria, Rechel Arianne Ogle, Australia — are collaborating.
Music is supplied by Saidi Ilelaboye, Isioma Williams (Nigeria) and John MacLean, Canada.
Ogle
Ogle, who is excited about the project, says, she "is very happy to return to Nigeria to perform with Ijodee Dance Company in this unique international exchange, which also involves."
A graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), Ogle has toured nationally and internationally with Phillip Adams’ Melbourne Dance Company BalletLab, and worked with Perth’s Kompany Kido, Buzz Dance Theatre, and Hong Kong’s City Contemporary Dance Company.
Additionally, dhe has worked with various independent choreographers including Sete Tele, Olivia Millard and Chrissie Parrott, and choreographed and performed in a number of dance festivals throughout Australia.
In 2005, she was the Australian recipient of a danceWEB scholarship to travel to Vienna to participate in a five-week workshop programme at the Impulstanz Festival.
In March 2006, Rachel was an international guest artiste at the Dance Meets Danse Festival, in Lagos, Nigeria where she taught workshops and presented a solo work.
Additional to her performance experience, she has co-facilitated numerous community dance residency projects throughout regional Australia and Christmas Island, and has extensive experience working with dancers with various physical and intellectual disabilities.
Ogle lectures at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts for both the dance and theatre departments, and later this year, will travel to Belgium to undertake studies in the professional training programs of Charleroi Danses and Ultima Vez.
Dallas
For Dallas, she is focused on collaborations and exchange of ideas through performance, choreography and travel.
Since graduating from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Professional Training Programme, she has travelled extensively throughout Europe and has engaged with and exposed herself to the various palettes of the European dance scene.
She participated in DanceWeb 2005, in Vienna, Austria where she had opportunity to study with a number of dance artistes from around the globe.
She also spent some time in Nigeria in March 2006, where she was exposed to both traditional and West African dance and contemporary African dance.
As a result of her travels and exchange of ideas through movement and dialogue, she now creates and interprets work with a multi-faceted understanding and dance language.
She seeks integrity in creation and humanity in presentation. To her, "there is no room for pretending in dance creation, no room for affectation. The choreographic works that most attract me pose a question or introduce a kernel of thought, which lingers."
She is in love with the process she is "working in, as much as its presentation, for, in reality, it is the process that is the constant. Moments onstage are fleeting and rare, particularly in the contemporary dance world, which must struggle to remain in the public eye in a very fast-paced, competitive climate."
She believes that love affair for her is in the creation and preparation of the work versus the unsustainable blaze of rapture, which she reserves for presentation.
She continues, "I am drawn to individuals who are, similarly, heavily invested in the creative process and recognize that it is an evolving journey affected by all facets of the creators’ lives."
The artistic work that she has dedicated her life to is a constant, relentless reaching for original thought and variation, "a concept which resonates on sociological levels as it becomes clearer that we are bound together as a species by a collective dependence on our ability to adapt to what we cannot foresee."
Dallas says that dance creators and interpreters are champions of invention whose future is secured by the sharing of knowledge. "There are few places where human interaction has the freedom to transcend age, race, and experience; the studio and stage should exist without boundaries," she muses.
While saying that in the coming years, it is her intention to engage with artistes who have a similar sensibility to her own, points out, "I will continue to seek exchanges both internationally and domestically as an integral part of my development as a contemporary dance artist and as a critical stepping stone to the evolution of dance. I will create and perform work that has relevance and meaning beyond beauty or logic."
MacLean
For John MacLean, composer and recording engineer, who is also involved in the project, says the search for original language was the reason for the collaborations.
The Juno-nominated composer, producer and woodwind player says through collaborations in modern dance and his current co-creative endeavor, Mr. Something Something, he continues to probe the areas where stage and studio overlap for genuine expression of the human condition.
He was a young clarinetist with classical aspirations when a chance introduction to Charles Mingus’ alumnus, Billy Robinson, led to a very fruitful mentorship.
He says that the disciplines of improvisation and creation just awakening in him responded naturally to Robinson’s living tradition and language of jazz improvisation and tenor saxophone.
Creation and originality provided the philosophical springboard for the next 20 years of his musical activity at home and abroad.
With hundreds of live performances yearly, he has made time to apply his collected technical and compositional knowledge in the recording environment as producer, arranger, and engineer of numerous albums as record label owner/operator (World Records).
Liadi
He is a choreographer, dancer, dance teacher, drummer, and acrobat of International repute. He is a graduate of the International Centre for Dance and Choreography, Ecole Des Sable, (JANT-BI) of Senegal/France. The winner of Lagos State government’s award, Generalissimo of Culture and Merit Award of the Guild of Nigerian Dancers (GOND), Liadi has enjoyed a French Government scholarship to France (C.C.N.N) Nantes. He was Best Nigerian dancer 2002/2003 (GOND) and two times UNESCO/ASHBERG bursary award winner, 2003/2004 and now a dance WEBBER.
His Ori was the first position winner of the 5th African/Indian Ocean choreographic contest in Madagascar 2003. He has conducted over 30 national and international workshops.
He has worked with notable directors and choreographers among whom are Pata Rosy, Claude Brumachon and Benjamin Lamarches, Germaine Acogny, Carlos Orta, Flora Teffen, Helene Cathal and Fabric Ramalingom, Muyiwa Osinaike, Ojo Bakare, Heddy Maalem, Sussane Linke and Fred Bendongue and also had a Master class with Salia Ni Seydou, among others.
He is the director/choreographer of Ijodee Dance Center and also the Director/Executive Producer of TRUFESTA International Solo and Duo Dance Festival Lagos, Nigeria. He has choreographed so many works, which includes Ido-Olofin; It’s me, New Age Transition, In-Imagination and Why Not…? His works are all on different tours as usual.
Williams
Williams is a total theatre artiste, with the drive to preserve, develop and promote the multicultural resource of Nigeria, started work on his goal as ‘Director of rehearsals’ of Akis Productions International. He experimented with the company around the nation down to Togo. He was the artistic coordinator with African Japanese Cultural Exchange Groupe in a project to Fukuoka Japan (2000/2001) and also Assistant Choreographer of Badejo Art’s Elemental Passion that toured UK. The second assistant choreographer to Peter Badejo OBE for the 8th All Africa Games opening and closing ceremonies. He also assisted Koffi Koko for Collective Artiste’s UK tour of Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka and till date, he remains the coordinator of Gongbeat Arts Company Nigeria and a choreographer with Badejo Arts Company UK. He is currently running a project with Osun Arts Foundation based in Liverpool UK.