The dancers shake their hips, kicking their feet to the beat of the age-old “dance of the caterpillars”, typically performed in the south where the insects are gathered for food.
Three times a week the National Ballet rehearses traditional dances of the many ethnic groups making up the Central African Republic (CAR).
“The creations they ask of us are based on the particularities of each ethnicity. I’m Banda and I have to suggest dance steps from the Banda ethnic group,” Sidoane Kolema, 43, said.
They aim to preserve the heritage of the CAR, a mosaic of ethnic groups that is scarred by decades of conflict and instability and is among the world’s poorest countries.
From behind the scenes, 26-year-old Intelligentsia Oualou began singing in Gbanu, the language of her native southwestern Ombella-M’poko region.
To the jingle of bells and rhythmic thud of the drum and xylophone-like balafon, the spinning silhouettes of the other dancers soon appeared across the dilapidated stage, set up on waste ground in the capital Bangui.
“All my relatives are artists and I’ve dreamed of being an artist” too, said Oualou.
She is one of 62 dancers in the National Artistic Ensemble, created by CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera in 2021.
“Promoting our cultures means going to the hinterlands to find the different dance steps of the Central African Republic in order to create a show that is diverse,” National Ballet choreographer Ludovic Mboumolomako, 55, said.
He spent three weeks living among the Pygmies in their ancestral forests in the south in order to enrich his choreography with their dances, songs and ways of living.
‘Brought us together’
The National Ballet archives movements, sounds and rites that were the hallmark of traditional village communities to preserve them “for future generations”, Culture Minister Ngola Ramadan said.
“The aim is to collect, preserve and pass on,” she added.
The company is often called upon to perform the ancestral dances in public at political gatherings, inaugurations and official ceremonies.
In front of officials or at festivals, they dance in costumes of raffia skirts topped with pearl belts and patterned wax-print fabrics.
“We need to raise awareness among young people… by dancing the different dances of our different ethnic groups in front of everyone. Tomorrow, if we are no longer here, it will be up to them to take over,” Kolema said.
The dancers were even recently integrated into the civil service, just like the actors and musicians who also belong to the National Artistic Ensemble.
One of the upsides is that the dancers “have, not a subsidy, but a salary”, the minister said.
National Ballet director Esaie Gonissere acknowledged that he was over the moon at the development as “it was our most pressing wish”.
Kevin Bemon, 44, said he had been able to put his former “difficult” life dancing at neighbourhood wakes behind him thanks to the monthly salary of 76,000 CFA francs ($124, 115 euros) — just over twice the minimum wage in the CAR.
The ballet company is now gearing up for its show during the World Expo universal exhibition in Osaka, Japan, which begins this month.
For a decade until 2013, the CAR was wracked by civil wars and intercommunal conflict and although the violence has lost intensity since 2018, tensions persist.
“Traditional dance has brought us together. After the recent wars, different ethnic groups were divided. Thanks to dance, we’ve become children of the same family,” Oualou said.
