Meet Emanuella. . .

Here's another profile of one of our star dancers, Emanuella.

Dansons Maintenant!

 As part of their acclaimed exhibition on photography of dance, featuring the work of photographer Antoine Tempé, Fondation Zinsou is bringing a variety of dancers to Benin to perform at the exhibition site. CIAMO was lucky enough this week to receive two of the dancers, Melodie Joinville and Celine Gayon, from le Compagnie Christine Bastin .

The dancers worked with our Troupe de Ganvé and our newly established Troupe d’Oke Agbere. With the two groups they did a variety of inspiring activities that especially encouraged the kids to creatively choreograph their own dances.

Thanks to Fondation Zinsou for bringing these fantastic dancers to Benin and for sharing them with us!

Let the Dancing Begin!

After recovering from our Christmas break, the center is finally getting several new projects off the ground, the first of which is a new dance troupe. The Ganve Dance Troupe is comprised of students from the school where CIAMO based. These 12 children were chosen because they were already well known among their teachers and classmates for being good dancers.

The students have two one hour sessions of class per week, and work with a traditional dance teacher and a popular (choreography) dance teacher. The teachers for these classes are local artists who are well known in Ouidah for being excellent dancers. We're hoping that by April we will be able to put on a variety show featuring these talented kids!

In the coming week, we will also begin a second dance troupe made up of students from other schools in the area. Six primary schools were chosen, and each provided a list of three students to participate. These students will follow a similar pattern, with modern and traditional dance, and learn percussion as well.

All I Want For Christmas Is You!

The idea of doing something for Christmas seemed almost impossible. We debated whether or not it was worth it. Only in our 2nd month of existence, surely it was too early to showcase our work in Ouidah, but at the same time, people might expect us to do something.

In the end, we settled on a little Christmas Camp. It was three days long and on the last day the students produced a 45 minute variety show with traditional and modern song and dance. It turned out to be a lot of fun.

We brought in four local artists, one traditional dancer and singer, two percussionists, and one artist who dances, sings, and plays the guitar. We selected a group of 8 dancers and invited the choral that was already in place to do the singing. We had some minor attendance problems, and by the time we actually had our variety show our presence was down to 20 (this is mostly the result of communication problems with parents, we’re working on it!).

Wednesday and Thursday morning, we divided up time between the different activities. The dancer, Stanislas worked with the dancers to teach two dances, and the choral to teach the accompanying song. Sim D, a local artist and student, worked on choreography to “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and I worked with the kids to prepare Il Est Né (unfortunately, the soloist didn’t show up the day of the concert, so I had to sing the verses) and Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen (not all of the music was Christmas music).

Working with children on a performance always causes frustration here and there, but the real trophy is the time of the performance, when the children become 100% serious and really pull off the event. I’m including a few pictures here of the show. Happy Holidays to everyone with love from CIAMO.

Here are a few videos: