8 minute read
TADHI ALAWI
Dancer’s body of work speaks beyond words
As co-founder of the Nantea Dance Company, Alawi ‘Tadhi’ Saidi has been instrumental in building a platform for contemporary dance in Dar es Salaam while the dancer and choreographer’s awardwinning own work is becoming globally recognised
Alawi Saidi – ‘Tadhi’ to everyone who knows him – has always had a natural talent for dance. When he was just a young boy growing up in Dar es Salaam, his older brother brought home a video of a live performance by the legendary US singer and dancer Michael Jackson and Tadhi was soon able to mimic all the moves, even the famous antigravity lean and moonwalk.
The dazzling dancing impressed his friends and Tadhi hoped for similar results when, as a teenager in 2013, he attended Dar teaching programme Haba na Haba (in the early tears before it became an international dance festival). Among the international artists invited to teach at the event was renowned Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire, who was impressed with Tadhi, but saw the potential for more.
“She told me: ‘You dance like Michael Jackson, but this is not you. Find something that is you.’”
The advice struck deep and Tadhi has been on a quest for authenticity through dance ever since. Michael Jackson will always be an inspiration, but in developing a style that is truly his own, Tadhi has also looked to other influences that have shaped him, from his Makonde origins to the singeli and hip-hop rhythms of modern-day Dar.
“My roots lie in the Makonde tribe, based in southern Tanzania. It’s a tribe rich in dances. I believe that me being a dancer is partly because of the spirits that I carry within me as a heritage.”
Dance journey
Key to the now 26-year-old Tadhi’s new direction as a dancer was being among the first intake of students at the non-profit MuDa Africa dance school in Dar in 2014. Here he began a three-year course in contemporary dance – a genre that is open to many possibilities. Here was that freedom of expression in dance Tadhi sought, something new to Tanzania and set apart from traditional ceremony or having fun in nightclubs.
“You can say whatever you want,” Tadhi tells me. “You are putting across a feeling and feelings have no boundaries. So many things happen on the streets of Tanzania and I want to present them in my dances.”
Tadhi was a voracious learner. He attended every course going to add to his understanding of movement as expression – from modern jazz through Angolan kizomba, Brazilian martial art-infused dance capoeira to the African dance-inspired Germaine Acogny Technique – led by experts from the US, Norway, Germany, Madagascar, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and many more. At the same time, he primed his body to be the most flexible, strongest conduit possible for his ideas. He is a yogi, completing three years of study at Africa Yoga Project, in Nairobi, as well as devoting time to karate and strength training in the gym.
The years honing his craft have given Tadhi a physical vocabulary that he believes is capable of expressing something beyond speech. It’s a belief at the heart of his latest award-winning work, ‘Body vs Mouth’. This fascinating 10-minute film was shot by Dar film production company Fuad and is choreographed and performed by Tadhi, who we see dancing among the fruit stalls and crowded lanes of the city’s Kariakoo Market. Stripped to the waist – his small, lean frame revealing every sinew of muscle – Tadhi stands out, his movements starkly graceful and measured despite the shoppers bustling around him. Some women stallholders shoot him furtive, admiring glances, some look on in bemusement and one older shopper even spots the camera and dances along. However, the lasting impression is more connection than contrast. Tadhi is well aware of thosearound him, elegantly adjusting his dance to weave among the crowds and gazing at passers-by in wordless communion. There is something open, vulnerable and loving about it that is unutterable. Tadhi says: “For me dance is a tool that I can use to express my feelings and thoughts, sending messages to people without using verbal languages that can exclude too many in too many different ways. I dedicate my art works to the communities surrounding me as to face and show common challenges.”
The film is one of five shortlisted for an award at the Jumping Frame International Dance Video Festival in Hong Kong and also won the Best Interface with the Public award at the US-based Dare to Dance in Public Film Festival this year. Tadhi was due to introduce a screening of it along with a new solo performance at the Laois Dance Platform festival in Ireland in April, but the event was cancelled due to the global pandemic.
Like all performing artists, Tadhi has been hit hard by measures to restrict the spread of the virus. He has not performed in public for 10 months and collaborations with film makers have been crucial in bringing his work to the public. Recent streamed releases include ‘Stay at Home’ – a short film that expressed how torn he was by social distancing directives that protected Dar residents from the pandemic, but put their lives at risk from poverty – and a solo performance filmed on Mbalamwezi beach that begins on the sand and ends in the waves of the Indian Ocean. It showcases the rich variety of dance Tadhi can draw on as he flows with fluid grace between frenzied Makonde sindimba dancing, hip-hop body popping, acrobatics and balletic poise – all set to the stirring music of the late Hukwe Zawose.
‘A Moment’, the latest collaborationbetween Tadhi and Samwel Japhet, will also premiere online as part of MuDa’s annualTime2Dance Festival, which is going ahead in virtual form this year through October and November.
Tadhi and Japhet met as students at MuDa and became founding members of non-profit organisation Nantea DanceCompany when they realised they would have to get proactive in staging their own contemporary dance productions in Tanzania and across East Africa.
Nantea Dance Company
“I was about to graduate, but there were no contemporary dance companies in Tanzania so we had to create our own,” Tadhi says.
Nantea Dance Company – Tadhi named it after the Makonde word for ‘traps’ – found a supportive home at Dar’s Nafasi Arts Space.
Here there were opportunities to teach, show and exchange new contemporary dance forms with studios for rehearsals and workshops and space for Tadhi to teach yoga and Africonte, his mix of African and contemporary dance, to the public. There was also a stage to host Nantea’s biannual live showcase, Contemporary Dance Nights, at which some of the company’s latest productions, including last year’s Tadhi choreographed ‘Fake It Until You Make It’, have been premiered. The shows are spreading the word on contemporary dance in the commercial capital. Attendance has doubled since the events began in 2018, with the latest dance night attracting an audience of 500. Other sympathetic Dar venues such as the Alliance Française and MuDa have staged Nantea productions.
International festivals
The company has also shown its work beyond Tanzania’s borders. Tadhi and Japhet took their early dance duet, ‘Short and Tall’, to festivals in Kenya and Uganda while Tadhi performed his solo show ‘African Ways’ at the Black Box Theatre in Holstebro, Denmark, in 2018. The latter took place during a two-month residency at Black Box Dance Company – a stay that also included teaching African traditional and contemporary dance fusion at Danish Talent Academy (DTA). Tadhi has also helped give respected international contemporary dance artists a platform in Tanzania, recently working with choreographers such as Yolanda Gutiérrez and Johannes Wieland on projects in Dar.
It all seems a world away from Tadhi’s early years dancing with friends on street corners in Mwananymala, where he grew up. Dedicating himself to dance has transformed his life and that he is now able to light that fire of creativity in others is a huge motivating factor to his work with Nantea. The company’s outreach project NjeNdani (‘In and Out’) offers contemporary dance workshops, seminars and performances across Tanzania. Planned eventsfor Arusha and Zanzibar fell victim to the pandemic, but it is hoped they can soon be rescheduled. For Tadhi, the work has been crucial in opening minds to new forms of dance in the country.
“We have our own dance roots growing up,” he says. “At the beginning it was weird for many of the dancers we were working with to see what we were doing, but now they want to learn more.
“With Nje Ndani we are reaching people who before had no idea about contemporary dance. Now, they are really pushing themselves.”
Tadhi can identify with those who are unaware that dance is a career option. His mother died when he was five years old and his father took him and his older brother on, raising them in the teachings of Islam. “Nobody expected me to be a dancer,” Tadhi says.
In fact, when his brother brought the Michael Jackson video home it was done very much in secret. ‘He was not supposed to, but I’m very glad he did,” Tadhi says.
For more information on Tadhi’s work andto watch his ‘Body vs Mouth’ video, visittadhialawi.wixsite.com/mysite To keepup with the latest events at Nantea Dance Company, visit its Facebook site.
