Kùlú Mèlé in Africa

By Merilyn Jackson
For The Inquirer

‘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.”

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