Excerpts from the Peanut Gallery

Talk about Culture shock

1. Chepe is definitely not an iguana, but a gecko with a voracious appetite and solid digestive tract. I have seen him far too many times. I am sad to bid adieu to the phantom iguana.
2. The Angolan National Ballet is not, um, the same type of ballet one would find in a Nutcracker production from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Last night Keith took us to the Ballet at the gorgeous Teatro Nacional Ruben Dario. When we approached we walked through these three story columns in the dark because of the power outages that are scheduled nightly. It was pretty awe-inspiring- and that was just the outside. Inside we were treated to a couple hours of the Angolan National Ballet- Kilandukilu. It really wasn't ballet in the Western sense at all. No, come to think of it, it was about as close to Swan Lake as a pot is to a garlic press. Both for food, that's about it. But it was certainly entertaining and they had some mad skill.
My thoughts were musing most of the time on how starkly visible the cultural differences are through dance. Moves that in Canada would be interpreted one way, may not have meant anything close to what I was thinking in the Angolan context. Then, just to really mess things up, I thought of how it appeared to the Nicaraguans in the seats around me. It was odd to think of it through not just one cultural filter but essentially three.
Final point, Keith, one of the guys who works for MEDA here, who grew up in Africa said after that it was more what he figured they perceived the western perception of traditional African dance to be, and not what they might preform there, ceremonially or artistically. I wondered what would possess them to modify it like that in an exhibition performance such as this? I also would have loved to see the real thing just to be able to compare it.
The highlight was when one of the guys put out a fire- that he had already swallowed and brought back -with his backside!
The Angolan dance in Nicaragua. I can't wait to get into a conversation that starts with "yeah, when I saw the Angolan National Ballet in Managua...."

posted by Kiki @ 3:24 p.m.