Percussions.org

[François Kokelaere]

The artistic concept of Wofa ! fits into:

- very individual history of the Guinean ballet initiated by Fodéba Keïta and its "ballets africains" in the 1950s

- its anchoring in the various multiethnic traditions of Guinea and in particular of the Low-Coast

- the technical reality of the "théâtre à l'intalienne", of this black box which has its specific rules and its codes

- context of the international market

The artistic problems are not the form which takes its speech but well its contents what it conveys "the artist, the inventor, the artistic designer, have something with saying". That is the question !

This is why chose we, through the narrow staff member of a show catalogued "any public", accessible to all and a remark minimalist, to make pass feelings, soft or strong, simple or complex, intimate or brilliant, which speak directly to the directions and the heart. No easy effects, not of spectacular free, no useless athletic performance, of self-centrisme not exacerbated. A solid scenographic structure but which allows major spaces of freedom and moments of improvisation.

A consistency of the unfolding of show with structured but live parts where the personal creativity is still present, a dramaturgy without theatre and history, a succession of tables, party-taken scenographic, which imbricate one in another with an obviousness which makes it possible to the witness never not to disconnect a trip, with a certain way of managing the pulsations in movement or the movement of the pulsations which catch its attention without ever releasing it.

Wofa ! do not say all! He suggests rather than he does not show, he does not reveal, he not proposed but is to the witness to make the remainder of the way.

The emotion felt at the time of a show of the group in scenic condition in a theatre, does not involve of the sentimentality but well something very personal which belongs to each participant. The witness becomes a genuine case of resonance which amplifies and postpones the vibrations generated by the artists. It is enough "to be allowed to do" and it is the ensured trip ! With each one to write its own scenario, its own dream according to its imaginary.

It is important to point out these some basic postulates in order locate the group in his contextual reality better.

Wofa ! is a group of percussions and dancing which develops in a style that one be could define of "neo traditional", with all the possible inverted commas, even if its step is quite different of the groups labelled under this label and that it generally positions in rupture with the kind, but one would not have therefore making the error to oppose this kind to the African contemporary ballet which emerges recently. The two fall under the history of the dancing in Africa, of the dancing of Africa, the African dancing and their change. Cleavages of type and label are always made to the detriment of the history and are only used to set up systems of value which generally
go against the work of the artists.

The public' s perception

In Africa

With more than fifty years of existence, the neo-traditional ballet adapted to the scene and its frontal relation to the public has a real anchoring in Africa. Its popularity is not the fruit of the chance and corresponds well to a expectation of the African public.

It is too early for saying how the African public will react to the contemporary ballet but the period of discovered and of adaptation will be probably very short coach this new aesthetics for an average African public finds sufficiently its anchoring in the gestural one and the imaginary traditional one to become very quickly accessible.

In Occident

There exists still today a very substantial demand for the neo-traditional ballet in Occident which is not without relation to the success growing of the djembé drum. The problems which the major ballets know are due primarily to the production cost enormous because of the number of artists (between 30 and 40) and to the esthetics out of date which they convey which corresponded to the image of Africa that the Western ones in the years had 60-70.

The African contemporary ballet knows for its part, an enormous had success, on the one hand, to the African-European esthetic synthesis in which the Western ones find their codes of reading perfectly and moreover, to the real intrinsic artistic value of the remark of the African choreographers.

Both kinds, styles, currents, fall under a history clearly identifiable. They are the result of meeting, changes and transformations.

Intrinsic problems of limits of both types

- the neo-traditional ballet is born in Africa from the meeting from African dancers become choreographers and foreign scenographers (ex-USSR, Europeans, American)

- the African contemporary ballet is born in Europe from the meeting from African dancers become choreographers and European contemporary choreographers.

These meetings raise several underlying ideas

- What is the share of the external influence and surface joining?

- do the African artists incorporate really the meeting or fold with docility with the requirements of the Western designers ?

- do they appropriate really the style and techniques which they discover?

- do they Have the intellectual and cultural tools necessary for the good comprehension of the concepts ?

- To what extent the African artists reproduce don't by mimicry (and this for years) of the concepts whose petrol escapes to them ?

- What is their real margin of freedom of expression and creation vis-a-vis the diktat of the Western designers ?

- What is their room for real manoeuvre vis-a-vis the production which is generally in the hands of the Western ones ?

- What is their room for real manoeuvre vis-a-vis the production which is generally in the hands of the Western ones ?

- Until where the conditions of the show-business and the international scene and have be able they accept the artistic, cultural means and financiers to discuss equal to equal with those?

- aren't the artists of the South yet more fragile than their colleagues of the North vis-a-vis the power of silver held by the producers or the institutions ?

- do the artists and the managers of the South have well all the codes of the single international market and that they occur when the European framework is withdrawn?

A African and cultural identity very strong

Both kinds however state a African and cultural identity very strong. In fact only the ways change. In the spirit and beyond the effects of method, both steps are close. Much more that ballet afro-jazz or afro-modern which tends to imitate other techniques and other designs without in in it knowing the mysterious ones perfectly and without relocating them in their historical and cultural context. The same is true for the neo-traditional ballet generally completely enfeoffed to the reducing criteria and assimilationnists of the major international "show-business".

Wofa ! in all that?

Wofa ! has its own artistic identity, its own aesthetics, its own personality. It is by the unclassable fact.

- It is not a traditional ballet, to the direction inheritance of the term but its matter results from the tradition.

- It is not a modern or contemporary ballet in the direction where it falls under an aesthetics resulting from a kind already identified.

- It is not really either, a neo-traditional ballet insofar as it explores continuously new ways of creation and insofar as it has its own artistic vein.

Wofa ! its own creativity, its own margin of invention has, its clean feeling which only belongs to it. Its own universe, its own operating mode, its techniques of creation. A personal approach of the human relations within a collective of Guinean and European artists. The artists work in a real serenity and that is felt in the regularity of their scenic benefits. Indeed, shows of Wofa ! are of an astonishing constancy because the artists know each other well and feel a true pleasure to practise their art within the group.

Wofa ! knows its limits and prefers the choice of a solid team which gains, firmly anchored in her Guinean cultural reality. This does not prevent it to carry out its own searches but in the context, within the framework which is his. In plain language, the group does not take itself what it is not, it "is" quite simply, itself with his high qualities, his small defects, his own limits inherent in the kind and the very individual context of the social origin of the artists. It is its major strength to know its limits and to leave to others, better armed intellectually, the care of exploring the delicate ways of the innovation.

At the hour where the majority of the neo-traditional ballets are exhausted or are in perdition too to have sunk on the ground of the caricatural image that the Western ones of Africa have, too to have made concessions with their identity first, too to have been diluted in the marxist design of art
to the service of the ideology, not to have be been able from the insidious yoke of cultural neo-colonialism and arrival on the international market of a new African aesthetics (Salia nor Seydou, Sikulu, etc..) or ballets neo-traditional young people, fresher, more effective (Yelemba), fewer and
therefore is still there and was never asked as much throughout the world, so much so that he is the African group today all kinds together which turns more on the international scene.

François Kokelaere