In Which I Gush More about the Show in Tanga

It may take me a while to stop, actually.  The show was put on as a fundraiser for the Tanga International School, and several people involved with the school took the opportunity to make it a multicultural performing arts show on the very reasonable grounds that Tanzania needs more venues for the performing arts.  The talent is there.  Tanga in particular has the Tanga Peace Union, which is a group who rehearse traditional Tanzanian dances and acrobatics together, but have nowhere to perform.  Anywhere you go in the evenings, you can find young men practicing acrobatics.  People like to dance here, and they want to perform, but there just aren't venues for it.  If there was, it would be another life option for people who don't fit into the horrid memorize-stuff-for-standardized-tests-or-go-farm-make-babies-and-die-young box that is the educational system here. There is a market for dance performances from around the world--South Africa has a world-touring dance company that I saw in Houston, Texas, and they were absolutely fantastic--but right now in Tanzania the only real venue for performing is in the church choirs, which have limits as far as possibilities and outreach go.  Also, I maintain that access to the arts just makes for a merrier world.  So anyway, good on the organizers for doing this!  It actually was multicultural, with involvement from not only the ex-pat community, but the Tanzanian and Indian (there is a large population of Indians along the coastal regions) communities as well.  A local NGO in Tanga also enjoys the services of one of our volunteers, my friend Nicole, who used to be a dancer in New York, who in her spare time teaches dance to the children of the international school, choreographed for some adults who wanted to participate, and did a brilliant job of stage-managing the event.

Nicole prepares her students for the stage.  

The kids prepare to portray sea creatures. 

Some Masai dancers showed up.  Unfortunately, I have no photo
of them arriving wearing large plastic sunglasses with their
traditional attire.  

Then some tumblers that I didn't take pictures of because I was sitting quietly and trying to think energetic thoughts rather than feeling sick and tired.  Based on the applause, they went over very well.  Then it was me!  Me me me!  All me! 

They call me monkey-toes.

I put my costume together by pile-shopping, and had nothing but cheap makeup, and not much of that.  My favorite comments included "that was the most graceful thing I have ever seen!" and "Loved the silk dance--it was extremely superb!"  Not to mention "wow, you are really tiny when you take off your clothes" from someone who saw me come out in leggings to practice a little before the event.  So I spent a while after my performance just wandering around finding people to tell me how awesome I am.  It happens.  

Two volunteers from Lushoto rock out their Kiswahili songs.

I pose for a photo with the band members and the fabulous Nicole
before the production.  Shortly after this was taken, I realized my
corset was on upside down.  These things happen. 

An incredibly cute Bollywood dancer with a fabulous outfit followed us dirty Peace Corps types:

Several people then performed a modern interpretive piece, which some of them seemed quite nervous about, particularly as it was a first performance for them. Not a huge fan of modern interpretive dance, but I will absolutely support people who want to dance to music that they find moving.  So good on them!

I largely missed the finale because, well, I was off stage jumping up and down and gushing over the phone to some friends of mine who supported me with motivational speeches as I was angsting about being sick and a 2 day bus ride and a lack of rehearsal, so what makes me think I can go perform what is a very physically difficult art form?  Just to continue talking about myself, it really was hard to go do this, and I'm glad that I wasn't asked to belly dance as well.  I don't think I could have.  I also didn't do anything to help set up the show, for all that I was there early because I was trying to muster all the energy I had to strut down the stairs and perform.  Fortunately, I was not required to help in any way so I could sit under a ceiling fan and paint my nails purple and just be a diva, which was great.  Anyway, the finale was a bit controversial.  The performing group was a bunch of traditional Tanzanian dancers and their drummers.  I don't particularly like Tanzanian dance myself; it involves mostly internal hip circles and is very repetitive.  Also some of the hip circliness gets past what I would feel comfortable doing on stage myself, but that doesn't matter.  There's quite a few things I personally don't do on stage, and I am not the measure of dance.  This is the traditional dance of Tanzania, performed by dancers in traditional attire, as part of a multicultural festival, and this is a much better space than the flat-out sex-object version done in Tanzanian music videos, which is not at all a respectful presentation of the culture.  Many in the Indian community here, however, strongly dislike Tanzanian dancing.  Differing cultural versions of modesty combined with a refusal to be respectful to something that isn't hurting anyone.  Brilliant.  The organizers included the Tanzanian dance despite resistance from the Indians, which I approve of, but decided to put the dance at the very end, so totally offended people could just leave.  I don't particularly agree with this logic, since I believe in starting and ending strong, and putting anything weak or dislikable somewhere in the middle.  In this case, probably right before the Bollywood piece so that the Indians would feel a need to stick around to support their own.  But I was not an organizer, I was just a guest performer (and introduced as such!  With special thanks for coming all the way from Mbeya!) and as it turned out, no one seemed particularly upset.  Maybe they just kept their wrath for their homes, I don't know.   I hope this didn't in any way damage future prospects for very inclusive shows, which by definition of inclusivity, will feature things that not everyone likes.  Believing as I do that world peace will not  happen until everyone can stop being jerks about others' dances, I hope that more multicultural shows like this can happen in the future without such controversy.