When I got the call from Donald Glover’s manager, asking me to choreograph his video, I didn’t know much about him. I said: “Let me go and research him”, which is when I realised I knew loads of his songs. My friends were like, “That’s Childish Gambino, yo! Tell me more!” But I couldn’t. I didn’t even say I was making a video with him. I’m serious about non-disclosure agreements – even my mum didn’t know about it until it came out, on 5 May.
I was born in Rwanda and have been performing all my life. I’d always wanted to be an actor or a singer, and dance was a bonus for me, so it’s interesting that I’ve ended up doing it professionally. I moved to the UK in 1999 when I was five years old, and grew up in south London: West Norwood, Crystal Palace and I think possibly Clapham at one point. I went to Stagecoach classes and my school specialised in performing arts, but I didn’t do any African dance – just standard stuff like contemporary and modern. It was only after going back to Africa – Uganda, South Africa, Rwanda – and feeling the vibes and the culture, that I got into it. In African churches there’s a lot of dancing, too.
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In my teens, I had the opportunity to dance for the president of Rwanda, which led to a role in a film [Africa United] about the World Cup in South Africa. But I only started taking dance seriously at university: teaching classes, travelling abroad and – from around 2012 – putting tutorials online, which is where Donald’s manager found me.
The shoot was in Los Angeles. I created a routine that mixed moves like the gwara gwara from South Africa [swaying your torso while rocking one leg towards your body], which was one Donald was a fan of, with my own favourite, the neza [sidestepping with fists on hips], which I created. Neza means “good” in my country – it’s just happy, and I feel like it represents me. Donald is somebody who likes to learn, so that made my job easier. I changed the choreography quite a few times. It was really complicated at one point, then I made it simpler, then I changed my mind again and called another rehearsal. That’s just how the creative process works.
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The song has done amazingly well. It won three MTV video music awards, including best choreography, and has been nominated for four Grammys. I’ve been a lot busier [recent projects include a World Aids Day campaign and a Vogue video with supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid]. I’m touring the US and Canada with Donald, too, as a dancer and choreographer.
I don’t want to say exactly what I think the video means. Donald should be the one to do that, as he worked so hard on the ideas. [Critics have analysed references to the racist archetype Jim Crow, the 2015 Charleston church shooting and the film Get Out, among others.] But I do feel that my style of dance fitted it well. And it has a purpose: as much as people are seeing my style or Afro dance as a fashion, my aim is also to educate people about the culture. Africa is not just a poor place, it’s a positive place – I want people to see the bigger picture.
As told to Hannah J Davies
Source: https://t-tees.com
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