West African dancing is a good way “to discover your own passion for moving your body and feeling the beat,” says instructor Nadjema Soro.
Soro was in Errington Aug. 13-17 for the annual youth and adult world music camps. On Thursday, she taught an introduction to west African dance for the adult camp, specifically on a dance called jolé.
Jolé, Soro said, is a dance from the Ivory Coast, where her father is from. She said it is typically danced under the moonlight and the village would have a “huge celebration of life” and sing and dance and eat around the fire.
“Jolé is this name of a beautiful, beautiful woman who is not from the village, but she would come every night and do the most amazing dance with the most beautiful moves,” Soro said. “Everyone was just in love with this woman and they never knew where she was from or how she came to their village.”
Each night, Soro said, the woman would disappear, but one man needed to know more about her.
“So she came (again) and danced under the moonlight and she went back into the forest, and so this man followed her into the forest,” said Soro, adding the man caught up to her and asked her questions. It turned out the woman was a goddess.
“She saw how beautiful the community was and how nice they were and how beautiful the celebration was and how she wanted to be a part of it.”
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While teaching the dance to a group of about eight or nine women with Chris Couto playing the djembe drum, Soro said the movements were meant to be beautiful, describing one move as admiring your beauty while looking at yourself in the mirror.
Soro said west African dancing has a lot of similar movements, but it’s mostly centred around the rhythms that are played. She said the dances follow the rhythms.
“The rhythms that we were playing, it’s not a rhythm that’s specifically for jolé, but it’s one of the basic west African rhythms.”
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