If you missed the Kulu Mele piece on ABC-6’s “New Visions” – you can see it here:
http://www.abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=resources/tv_listings&id=5803934

original article here

Kùlú Mèlé’s two-weeks in Guinea, West Africa, result in premiere of African-ballet and documentary film, May 8 at Freedom Theatre
Kùlú Mèlé African Dance and Drum Ensemble will perform the U. S. premiere of Mali Sadjo: The Legend of the Hippopotamus, a theatrical ballet from Guinea, on Friday, May 8, at 8:00 p.m. as part of its 40th Anniversary Concert at New Freedom Theater, 1346 N. Broad Street. The premiere of a documentary film on Kùlú Mèlé’s recent residency in Guinea, providing insight into the creative process for learning this ballet, will be shown in conjunction with the performance. Tickets for Mali Sadjo are $25 and may be purchased at www.kulumele.org.

In December 2008, fourteen members of the Kùlú Mèlé African Dance and Drum Ensemble traveled from Philadelphia to Conakry, Guinea, West Africa for an intensive, two-week residency with internationally-recognized artists M’Bemba Bangoura, Mariama Touré, and Yamoussa Soumah, as well as dancers from the Les Ballets Africains and Les Merveilles D’Guinea.

Master classes in the dance and drumming styles of Guinea were followed with rehearsals in which the company learned choreography for the first portion of Mali Sadjo: The Legend of the Hippopotamus.

(Photo: Kùlú Mèlé’s artistic director Dorothy Wilkie and company member Ama Schley select fabric for costumes from a wide array of colorful patterns at the market in Conakry, Guinea)

A tale from Mande, West Africa, of a young girl who falls in love with a magical hippo, Mali Sadjo shows how relationships between human beings are often reflected in nature, and how the environment can be cultivated to meet their needs.
Upon returning from Conakry, Guinea, Dorothy Wilkie, Kùlú Mèlé’s artistic director stated, “Our mission was accomplished. The play has so much emotion, dance and drama. The songs and music are so beautiful. We had some highs and lows in Guinea, but for the most part it was fantastic!”

According to film producer Pamela A. Hooks, a high was “being surrounded by the beautiful people and culture of Guinea; a low, the lack of human services that hindered a basic quality of life.”

(Photo: On day three of rehearsals for Mali Sadjo: The Legend of the Hippopotamus, Kùlú Mèlé’s Ama Schley works with master choreographer Yamoussa Soumah, a former member of Les Ballets Africains who now directs his own company in Guinea.)

A day for Kùlú Mèlé in Conakry was filled with approximately eight hours of training and rehearsals in the inescapable heat.

When they were done in the studio some dancers, including James Wilkie and Edward Smallwood, would take to the streets where they infused their native hip-hop with traditional African dance while passersby gathered to watch.

The company of dancers and drummers performed for U.S. Ambassador Elizabeth Raspolic and guests in her home; were honored guests at the Dundunba Festival, a celebration of dance; shopped the markets in search of colorful fabrics for costumes and handmade drums and balafons to accompany performances in the U. S.; and along with filmmakers Gabriel Bienczycki and Pamela A. Hooks visited Kindia where the sites included huge waterfalls and sunset over Mount Gangan.

In addition, they met with elders and griots (historians) from whom they learned about the local cooking, language, costume design, drumming, songs, and history.
Kùlú Mèlé’s time in Conakry, Guinea (December 1-16, 2008) was chronicled online at blog.kulumele.org.

The site will be updated as the creative process for Mali Sadjo continues and concludes with the premiere screening of a longer, thirty-minute documentary film of the trip and residency, scheduled for June 16, 2009 at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute.
This screening will be accompanied by a panel featuring Kùlú Mèlé company members, the filmmakers, and Dr. Debora Kodish, director of the Philadelphia Folklore Project.

This project has been funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance with additional support from the Marketing Innovation Program.
Kùlú Mèlé African Dance and Drum Ensemble is the longest-lived African dance company in Philadelphia and is dedicated to serving the community by presenting and preserving the culture, dance and music of the African diaspora.

Since its creation four decades ago, it has established a national reputation as a unique and dynamic performing arts ensemble. Kùlú Mèlé has built a repertoire that is an exciting blend of West African ancestral tradition and African American creativity. Performances include the music and dance of Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, and the United States.

A force behind a vital African cultural renaissance in Philadelphia, it teaches and performs both new and traditional works. Kùlú Mèlé offers high quality and authentic workshops, performances, residencies, apprenticeships, and study tours that seek to reclaim traditional cultural practices.

Bryn Mawr Film Institute screening

read the story here

Dear friends,

Please join us next Wednesday, January 21st, from 6 – 8 PM to hear stories about the recent 2-week trip to Guinea taken by members of the Kulu Mele African Dance and Drum ensemble. They will talk about their adventures, their study with master artists Mariama Touré, and M’Bemba Bangoura, internationally recognized performers of traditional Guinea drumming and dance. And they will talk about the new dance they are working on. Welcome them home and get a first-hand view of what was a life-changing trip for many. Hear about how these local artists continue to school themselves in traditional culture, making it accessible to a new generation.

Kulu Mele: Travel Stories
January 21
6 – 8 PM
FREE
Philadelphia Folklore Project
735 S. 50th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19143
215.726.1106

www.folkloreproject.org

‘Mission accomplished,” Dorothy Wilkie announced last month when she and her company returned to Philadelphia from a two-week dance residency in the West African nation of Guinea.

The mission had been to acquire new choreography for Kùlú Mèlé African Dance & Drum Ensemble, which Wilkie directs. But in Guinea, where temperatures were high and political tensions higher, company members also had their eyes opened, their artistic and cultural horizons expanded and – with one exception – just missed experiencing a coup.

The trip, a dream of more than seven years, had begun early Dec. 1 with a dozen company members assembled in the luggage-filled living room of Wilkie’s East Oak Lane home, excitedly awaiting the bus to their Royal Air Maroc flight from Kennedy International Airport.

Amid the suitcases, Wilkie, 64, who won the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Choreography in 2007, related how she came to be involved with Kùlú Mèlé, which means “voices of our ancestors” and whose mission is to reconnect with authentic African material.

In 1971, she said, she first saw Philadelphia dancer/choreographer Arthur Hall’s Ile Ife African American dance ensemble. “After seeing Arthur Hall, I wanted to be in a company. My husband took me to Kùlú Mèlé and introduced me to the founders, Baba Crowder and his wife, Saudah. She doesn’t dance anymore, but Baba” – she nodded to the 79-year-old Crowder – “is still drumming. He made me dance captain back then, and I’ve been executive and artistic director for at least 20 years now.”

Thirteen dancers and musicians, a film crew and a costumer were headed to Guinea’s capital, Conakry, where they were to learn a Guinean dance from M’Bemba Bangoura, a former drummer with Guinea’s Les Ballets Africains, and his colleagues. The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, through Dance Advance and with support from the Marketing Innovation Program, funded the trip.

“The dance we’ll learn is called Mali Saido,” Wilkie said, “about a woman who falls in love with a mystical hippopotamus only to have her jealous husband kill him. We want to come back with the ballet, to bring it to the community, and tour with it.”

“This is the signal achievement for Kùlú Mèlé because Dorothy was able to take the ensemble with her,” said Dance Advance’s executive director, Bill Bissell. “. . . Philadelphia is a historically black city where African Americans have been dancing since the Revolution. Dance is our most exported art form, and the artists are the true ambassadors.”

Flash forward to Dec. 17, Wilkie’s “mission accomplished” day. Now home in Philadelphia, her 24-year-old son, company dancer James Ali Wilkie – whose arm bears a substantial tattoo that reads “Mama Dottie” – was so exuberant about his first trip to Africa, he was still airborne.

“It was the time of my life,” he said. “It took us a day and half to learn the dance, but I had to become an actor too. I have the leading role, and it demands a lot of emotion.”

In their free time, he said he and fellow dancer Eddie Smallwood had visited tumultuous Conakry’s clubs at night. “It was scary, but there’s a lot of love there. They were teaching me and Eddie some of their dances and they knew we did hip-hop, so we had a little battle in the dirt. I was filthy but I didn’t care.”

More somberly, he said of his experience in West Africa, “I cried when I saw the poverty there. It changed me. I’m dreaming about going back every year.”

His mother was tired but talkative, with the inevitable stories of hotel glitches and wearying waits. She said that after a day-long delay, they finally arrived at Conakry at 3 a.m. to drumming on the tarmac. “I said, ‘Look, you gotta stop the drums ’cause the girls are dancing and we can’t get to our quarters.’ ”

They found themselves in a land of dicey plumbing and police shakedowns, but also of rewarding collaboration and choreographic revelation as they worked with the Guineans on their project.

The days began with three to five hours of rigorous rehearsal in oppressive heat, on leg-torturing concrete. Then lunch and afternoon visits to mosques or markets in search of fabrics for the costumes they will wear for the premiere of the 45-minute ballet – which, it turns out, will tell only half the hippopotamus story – in Philadelphia in May.

The residency came to an end on Dec. 16, and all but one of the troupe departed for home, just days before Guinea’s ailing president died and a junta seized power.

Dancer Angela Watson, 34 and a 10-year Kùlú Mèlé veteran, stayed behind with her toddler son, Sulayman (he turned 2 en route to Conakry), visiting with relatives of the boy’s godmother in a nearby village. Watson had studied traditional dance in Guinea on a Fulbright in 1997.

“Sulayman had a great time,” she recalled after returning to Philadelphia late last month. “He turned everything over and made it into a drum.”

But there were some disturbing moments after the coup.

“The gunfire frightened Sulayman,” she said. “He cried and trembled in my arms. I heard many babies crying. The coup leader went on the air and told the soldiers to fire only in the large streets where it could do no harm. But the soldiers came right into the small neighborhoods just to scare people and one night fired in front of our door.”

Nevertheless, she, like the rest of the Kùlú Mèlé company, wants very much to return to Guinea.

As Dorothy Wilkie said, “I’m going back in 2010 to learn the other half of the dance.”

link to the original article

He had ruled the West African country with an iron fist since 1984, when he took power after a bloodless coup, only the country’s second president.

The precise circumstances of his death are not yet known, but he had been suffering from diabetes. He was also a chain smoker.

National Assembly Speaker Aboubacar Sompare announced the death in a late-night statement on state television.

“I have the heavy and difficult task of informing you, with great sadness, of the death of General Lansana Conte, President of the Republic of Guinea, head of state, on Monday 22 December at 1847 (on Monday)after a long illness in Conakry,” Mr Sompare said.

The president “hid his physical suffering in order to give happiness to Guinea,” he went on.

Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare and chief of staff of the armed forces General Diarra Camara confirmed the news.

As speaker, Mr Sompare will now take over as president for 60 days during which time a presidential election should be held.

Three times elected

President Conte came to power in 1984 at the head of a military coup to fill the power vacuum that had been left by the sudden death of his predecessor, Sekou Toure, who’d been president since independence from France in 1958.

He oversaw a return to civilian rule and was elected three times.

He followed a political path familiar to some of the old school of African leaders, says the BBC World Affairs correspondent Mark Doyle, when he dabbled with democracy but then appeared to change his mind.

He let some political parties operate but intimidated or jailed other opposition leaders.

During his time in power Lansana Conte held his country together despite the maelstrom of wars in neighbouring states including Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast.

But Guinea, a country of eight million people that is rich in minerals and blessed with fertile soil, never really reached its economic potential.

And repression under President Conte meant that Guinea couldn’t join the new generation of African states which could boast political pluralism, our correspondent notes.

There is no obvious successor to him as president.

(from BBC News)