Theater Review - From the
front row
Tokounou all-abilities dance/music
ensemble
Hopkins High School Auditorium: seen May 3, 2008
by Raymond Luczak
How’s
this for a recipe for exuberance?
Imagine a concert where there are no computerized light-works and
a dance production where the dancers are not synchronized. Then toss
in some amazing West African musicians to spice up the salad. Sprinkle
with the charisma of Sidiki Conde, a brilliant drummer and vocalist
who happens to be disabled. That was quite a meal.
At first the bare stage
(save for a row of African drums and xylophones) didn’t seem
all that appetizing, but soon the musicians, decked out in their
eye-dazzling native garb, took command with their instruments,
which included a 21-string traditional West African harp. The ensemble
of five men played a traditional drum call, which made it abundantly
clear that drums could be used to create a melody of sorts beyond
its obvious function of rhythm.
From this point on,
the first half of the show was turned over to students, both disabled
and not, who had only five hours of training over a two-week period
to learn more about West African music and experience some choreography.
The three groups of students came from Transition Plus (Hopkins),
Marion W. Savage Elementary School (Savage), and Folwell Middle
School (Minneapolis). Each group had studied their dance movements.
Given the fact that they had only five hours to learn, one couldn’t expect them to be professional but their
genuine attempts to follow the choreography lent a heartwarming exuberance
to the show, particularly near the end of the first half. The Folwell
students were clearly in love with the music surging around them,
and it was a thrill to watch them match their movements to the intensity
and rhythms emanating from behind them. At times, as with most first-time
efforts, the students’ performance felt truly anarchic, bringing
to mind the best Marx Brothers, who were always about controlled
anarchy in their films; here, onstage, their anarchy equaled joy.
The musicians simply kept the show moving forward with their propulsions.
Behind all this was
Sidiki Conde. Having lost the mobility of his legs due to polio
at the age of fourteen in Guinea, West Africa, Sidiki had to learn
how to get around on his hands. He became so adept that he traveled
to Guinea’s capital city and recruited
an orchestra of artists with disabilities from the city’s streets.
From there he’s become an international phenomenon, even more
so when he’s onstage. When he danced on his hands and moved
around, he truly challenged the notion of dance being confined to
the ability of feet moving. Of course, many outside the disability
community are disabled in their way of viewing dancers as limited
to their feet’s ability to move to music. But Conde easily
demonstrated that there were other ways of dancing as powerful, if
not more, as traditional able-bodied dancing. He seemed like a whirling
dervish, joyous and pleading at the same time, particularly when
he sang “Dounougna,” which was about how “disabled
people are truly fine,” and “N’na,” a tribute
to his mother who carried him twice—first as a baby and then
when he couldn’t walk. Gretchen Toay ably interpreted the spoken
English portions of the show into ASL.
Finally, the fact that the musicians onstage were constantly watching
each other while playing made their rapport warm and inviting. It
was not about how cool they looked but how much fun they were having
together. That is what made this particular event a joyous family
meal, a true dance of life. ![end of story bullet]()
Editor’s note: Access
Press is pleased to welcome author and playwright Raymond Luczak
as our new theater reviewer. Mr. Luczak www.raymondluczak.com will
be reviewing an ASL-interpreted plays the heading “From
the front row.”
