Next best thing to liquid sunshine
By Laura Fraser August 22, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Classes
African drumming and dance
Lamine Thiam
Starting Mon, Aug 25, 7:30pm
El Sindicato
Recreo 4

Walk by El Sindicato on Recreo on some evenings and you can hear the complicated rhythms of African drumming drifting from the dance studio.

Inside, master dance and drumming teacher Lamine Thiam is marking the steps of the traditional dances of his people, the Wolof tribe of Senegal in West Africa.

“Fire!” he exhorts his students, flinging his long limbs and lanky 6’4” frame into elegant, technically precise, loose-jointed movements to demonstrate. His students follow along, low to the ground, moving their bodies to the rhythms as best they can. “Very good, very good!” says Lamine. “Now, tempo.”

From his low-key style on the streets of San Miguel, greeting passers-by with a brilliant smile, nod of his dreadlocks and hand to his heart, few people might guess what an impressive résumé Lamine has as a professional teacher, choreographer and dancer.

 He has danced and taught with the Mark Morris Dance Group and performed at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center and Symphony Space in New York City. He directed and choreographed his own traditional African folkloric dance company, Bousso, which performed worldwide—and on Sesame Street.

Lamine, 36, grew up in Dakar, where he studied traditional dance and percussion at the Conservatoire National du Sénégal and performed with the Songomar African Dance Company and Ballet Jo-kolly throughout the region.

The dances and rhythms he teaches and performs, such as Sabar, Djembe and Bougarabou, are folkloric ones used as warrior dances, or for weddings, coming-of-age rites, welcoming visitors, or the possession and summoning of spirits.

 They are high-energy, polyrhythmic dances, with whole body articulation—and a great workout.

“African dance is the best medicine,” Lamine says. “It heals you and makes you healthy.”

If you ask Lamine, who is the second son of his father’s second wife, and like most Wolof, a Sunni Muslim, whether he danced these traditional dances in his village, he might be teasing but kind. “Yes, and there are lions and elephants walking around the streets of Dakar.” The capital of Senegal is a city of more than a million people—Lamine says colonia Independencia, where he lives, reminds him of his neighborhood there—and he has danced in villages only when his troupe has performed. “These are the dances of yesterday,” he explains. “We are preserving the traditional dances and keeping them alive.”

Many of the traditional dances were in danger of being lost during the colonial period in the West African townships.

The French colonists discouraged dancing and displaced the natives from their villages as part of their campaign of repression; the dance centers were often turned into beer halls. The African residents responded by creating traditional and often clandestine dance clubs to keep their dances alive. “You can take away someone’s home and all their possessions, but you can never take away their dance,” says Lamine. “That lives in here,” he says, touching his heart.

Today, West African traditional dances are taught in universities throughout Africa, the US and in dance studios in other parts of the world, including here in San Miguel de Allende. As someone who has studied West African dance intermittently with the department of ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University and at dance studios in the Bay Area, I was astonished and delighted to find an African dance teacher of world-class caliber in San Miguel.

Lamine emigrated to New York City in 1993, where he taught at the Fareta School of Dance and Drum, the Djoniba Dance and Drum Centre and Jacob’s Pillow Dance School. In 1996, he formed his own Bousso Dance Company, which focused on preserving the dances of Senegal, Guinea, Mali and The Gambia, in the traditions of the Wolof, Bambara, Jola, Mandinke and Serer ethnic groups.

In 2001, New York City dance reviewer Rosa Mei described Lamine’s movement as “a cross between a gazelle and Giacometti’s Walking Man.” She wrote, “As a teacher he is gracious, kind and challenging, the next best thing to liquid sunshine. As a performer, he is nothing short of dazzling.”

Lamine also has an acting resume. In 1997, he appeared in the Steven Spielberg film Amistad, an epic based on the real-life insurrection aboard a slave ship in 1839, where slaves overcame the crew in hopes of returning the ship to their homeland, but ended up in Connecticut, fighting for their freedom.

Originally cast as an extra after auditioning with his dance troupe, Lamine became a principal actor in the film when Spielberg noticed him and asked him to stand in for another actor, trying a scene where a slave is being whipped in chains aboard the ship. Lamine, who also studied acting in Senegal, nailed the scene on the first take. The scene, which focuses on Lamine’s anguished face, eyes rolled back, blood streaming down and spurting onto other slaves, is awful to view for its authenticity. During the scene, one slave mother who is watching drops herself and her baby overboard rather than continue to suffer their obvious fate.

As a principal, Lamine was one of the seven actors who portrayed the slaves who took over the ship and appeared before the court. He is in numerous scenes throughout the film—standing on a block at a slave market, oiled, to be sold; fighting on the ship; appearing in jail and in court; and in almost every scene throughout the movie where the slaves appear—though he has no speaking parts. In the film, the slaves speak Mende; Lamine speaks Wolof (as well as French, English and Spanish). He traveled to Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, Connecticut and other locations over the four months of shooting, flying everywhere first class and spending time with Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey and other actors. At the film’s premiere in Washington, DC, he met former President Bill Clinton.

Lamine also appeared in the 2002 film Tears of the Sun, directed by Antoine Fuqua, in which he gets shot in the head by Bruce Willis. He has worked as a fashion, runway, and photographer’s model in New York, his sharply-angled face appearing on numerous billboards.

“I’ve done a lot of things, when I was younger, and they were great experiences,” he says. “But you can’t let experiences like that hang on to you, pulling you back. You have to live your life and thank God for what he puts in front of you every moment.”

He began coming to teach workshops in Mexico a few years ago, invited here by students he knew in New York. He has taught classes in dance and percussion at the Festival Afrocaribeño de Veracruz; in workshops in Xalapa; in Mexico City with the African dance company Yanga; at workshops in the Centro Cultural la Pirámide; in Tepoztlan; in the Escuela Nacional de Danza Folklórica; and in classes and workshops in Oaxaca, Puebla, Tulum, Veracruz, Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara.

Lamine is at home in San Miguel between his travels because, he says, it is tranquilo. 

He performs here with drummers occasionally, doing shows at the Biblioteca Pública, the Limerick, private parties and other venues. Whenever he is in San Miguel, he teaches at El Sindicato.

 It is a rare opportunity for students to have personalized lessons with such an accomplished teacher, who always adjusts his teaching to the levels and abilities of his students, including children.

“Don’t insist on taking such a big step, it is not comfortable,” he tells one student, who is tired and sweating near the end of class. “You must be comfortable to dance, so it will be fun. It’s for the spirit.”

El Sindicato classes with Lamine start August 25 (“Inshallah,” as he says.) To be informed about when he is in town and teaching, send an email to nelisa50@hotmail.com  so you can be put on the list. He is available for private drum lessons and parties at thiam-lamine@hotmail.com. 

Laura Fraser is a freelance writer who lives here part-time, and is the author of The New York Times bestseller An Italian Affair.

Who says real men don’t dance?
By Leonardo Rosen

Danzón
Orquesta marimba “Tono 13”
Sun, Aug 24, 1–3pm, 7–9pm
Sun, Aug 31, 1–3pm, 7–9pm
Jardín Principal
Free

Danzón classes
Beginners, Tue, 6pm
Intermediates, Wed, 6pm
El Sindicato
Recreo 4
Info: Leonardo Rosen, 154-5840

Some years ago, I wrote an article for Atención: “NDH: Dreaded Women’s Disease” (NDH is “Non-Dancing Husband”). It dealt with a phenomenon that has been worsening in the US, Mexico and many other countries—the unwillingness and even outright refusal of men to dance with the women in their lives.

I must note that I have some male homosexual friends who are far more willing to dance with women than many heterosexual men are. Oh, how things have changed. When I was a teenager and young adult, if you didn’t dance, you didn’t get over with the ladies.

Why has this happened? If any good analysis of this problem has appeared, please let me know. Some people have put forth the hypothesis of an ultra-machista thinking that dance is somehow “sissy.” Other people claim that with a resurgence of the religious right in various countries, the idea that dancing is somehow sinful has reappeared. Many women have expressed to me that men are afraid that they might look bad trying to dance and/or afraid that they might not be able to learn to dance. In that case, there is motivation to avoid it completely.

Dancing is certainly not sissy. Social dance is one of the last areas in a modern, progressive society where the man “leads” the woman. This is most definitely a traditional male role that is very well accepted by women if the man plays it in a respectful and caring manner.

I don’t think the idea of the dance as sinful has much to do with the current problem. To me, the most difficult theme is the last one mentioned. Much too often, the so-called modern man is mortally afraid of not being able to learn something and of looking bad in public. Thus, he denies his lady and himself the pleasure of dancing. This fear is so profound that it ceases to matter to him what the woman's feelings and desires might be. 

Listen up, guys. I am not young, I am not handsome and I am not Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. However, I love to dance. If a woman is happy dancing with me, it makes me happy. Here in San Miguel, nearly my entire social life has to do with dance. Through dance, I meet intelligent, charming, attractive and vivacious women. Not a few of them are the wives and girlfriends of men who don’t and won’t dance.

Are you getting the picture? My hat is off to all the gentlemen who certainly do make the effort to dance with the people who just happen to be our wives, lovers, and in so many ways, the light of our lives. Bravo! They are the real men. Now for the rest of you: I am asking you to reconsider your position on this matter. You can become a hero, a knight in shining armor. Right now, at this very moment, there is a woman waiting for you. You can make her, oh so very, very happy simply by saying the magic words, “Would you like to dance?”

Flamenco: 200 years young
By Luis Clemente

Flamenco Dance
Me Embrujaste
Anis y La Yerbabuena Flamenco
Fridays, Aug 22, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
200 pesos

Teatro Santa Ana is proud to present the flamenco show Me Embrujaste (You bewitched me), starring flamenco dancers Angela Garcia “La Yerbabuena,” Maridel García “Triana,” Ana Maria Camargo, Alfredo Enriquez and their famed accompanists and soloists, including the internationally acclaimed Cuban musician Josue Tacoronte on guitar and the vivid percussion of Victor Monterubio. Tickets are on sale at the theater box office.

A movement that carried over from nineteenth century romanticism, it is one of the richest and most singular forms of music in the world. It cannot remain stagnant, because its eclectic origin is an undeniable fact. The passing of time has defined the limits of the word flamenco.

Flamenco’s origins are shrouded in darkness. Following a hazy period of mythology and mystery, the initial references, which at first seemed so closed and hermetic, are being pushed aside to reveal the most genuine product of Andalusian culture.

All folklore comes from old traditions, from collective creations, but it is thought that flamenco is a little over two centuries old.

In the nineteenth century, flamenco was defined as we now know it. The word ‘flamenco’ was first applied to the art around the middle of the century. According to researchers, the first flamenco artists arrived in Madrid in 1853, and in 1881, the first “Colección de cantes flamencos” was published, written by Antonio Machado y Álvarez. By that time, an ongoing dispute had already become apparent between two groups: When flamenco became professional in the cafés cantantes, one group defended the uncontaminated purity of the art form, and the other defended its projection through new channels.

The twentieth century was a period of re-creation, copy, restoration and interpretation.