'Kaira Kafo' (Peace Gathering) - exploring and expressing vocabulary of the mature dancer

We are thrilled to have been awarded a further award from Arts Council England to develop our Creative Team’s music and dance co-creation and performance skills.

Kaira Kafo, meaning ‘Peace Gathering’ in Mandinka (a widely spoken langauge in West Africa), will be led by Performance Artist and Teacher, Jokeh Sillah. Jokeh is from The Gambia and grew up within a family of dancers and boasts decades of experience of choreography development in traditional West African dance.

Alongside BeatFeet’s Creative Director, Jude Winwood, Jokeh will provide the baseline genre input of West African dance, upon which a rich team of dance practitioners will add their own lifetime of dance ‘vocabulary’. Also taking part in developing Kaira Kafo’s dance section is Janet Rose (Middle Eastern and North African dance), Tina Carter (Contemporary dance), and Rachael Hodgkinson (Embodied and Contemporary dance). We’re so excited to be drawing on all participants’ creative skills to co-produce this piece.

The project, due to begin in March 2022, will kick-off with a series of interactive workshops in Bilborough College, where Performing Arts students will explore aspects of dance through the medium of West African dance. A series of community-based dance workshops will also take place, where live music will accompany the workshops. These will include facilitation and leadership from Jokeh and the BeatFeet Creative Team, and will feature artists playing djembe, dundun, kora and balafon.

After a phase of creation, devising, and composing, we’ll be performing Kaira Kafo at three public events, as well as having the piece filmed by STUDIO Softbox. We can’t wait to get started with the creative process and step into the development of our first performance piece, Kaira Kafo!

See below for details on our workshops: