Mali dance contest offers sense of unity
BAMAKO: All 3,000 seats in the cavernous Palace of Culture in Bamako had been snapped up, and the mood was at fever pitch as the TV dance competition reached its climax.
The three finalists took to the floor one by one, dancing alongside a celebrity – a format familiar to viewers of talent shows around the world.
But here’s the difference: the three hopefuls each had to perform a traditional dance from a region of Mali that was not their own.
To outsiders, the format may seem odd – rather as if, in France, one asked a Corsican to don Breton folk clothing and do a jig.
But in the landlocked Sahel state of Mali, the show has been a raging success.
And it has bred a desperately-needed sense of unity in a country burdened by militant violence and ethnic tensions.
The competition is the brainchild of dancer and choreographer Sekou Keita.
Just six years ago, he was wondering how he could reverse the decline of traditional dance in Mali, a country whose music is now achieving global fame.
“Our dances are so varied, we have a number of ethnic groups – we’re very lucky to have such cultural wealth,” he said.
But the sad thing is that all of Mali’s dancers have one thing in common, he said.
“If you ask them to do the coupe-decale, a modern dance from Ivory Coast – which I have nothing against, by the way – they all know how to do it.
“If they go to (Senegal’s capital) Dakar, they all know how to dance the sabar,” he said.
“But they don’t know the traditional dances of their own country.”
From this came his idea for a programme that explored ancient cultural roots and built bridges across ethnic divides – Faso Don or Dances of the Country in the Bambara language.
Over six weeks, TV audiences shared the fate of eight young men and women from different regions, who shared a house “Big Brotherstyle” in Bamako, the capital.
Each week they performed before an audience and cameras, their numbers progressively falling as a competitor was eliminated by a vote by the public and the jury – a device familiar to lovers of Britain’s Strictly Come Dancing or its US spinoff, Dancing with the Stars.
The final took place last weekend. The eighth largest country in Africa and one of the poorest in the world, Mali is a sprawling state whose external borders were defined by the French colonial era, often cutting communities in two.
It has around 20 ethnic groups, ranging from Arabs to the Bambara and the Songhai, each with their own language and customs. — AFP