17 Feb 2014

 The artistic motion embodied with swift swirls and movement of arms like a swan adorning her beauty, that is the sight one sees when a contemporary dancer is working their magic.

The Mophato Dance Theater is a marvel to watch, when they grace the stage. They do not only incorporate mind, body and soul in their performance but they depict a soulful story rich of culture to their audiences.

Their main ambition was to diversify the dance genre and transform these western performing arts and fuse them with translations and exuberating Tswana culture and rituals.

Mophato Dance Thearter embrace dance as an art with a lot of aspects defined in the world of movement and sound motions.
He lives and breathes dance. Since his early childhood, Andrew Kola was destined to be a performer though contemporary dance came to interest at a later stage his path was already laid out for him.

As the artistic director for Mophato Dance Theatre, Kola wanted to spread his talent and the art of contemporary dance to Botswana youth across the country in partnership with the Department of Arts and Culture. He will be doing all this, in a form of conducting dance workshops in Lobatse, Maun, Francistown, Mahalapye, Palapye and Gaborone.

Zealous about contemporary dance, he believes it is the cradle of many dance genres hence the choice to spread the rhythm of this genre. To date, the dance theatre had been to four towns and was conducting a workshop in Gaborone, where they alluded that they have received praises, and a good reception.

Adding that, the youth are hungry for dance and there was a lot of unearthed and raw talent that is undiscovered. Kola said the workshops were a platform to recruit new dancers for their group and also provide a platform for the University of Botswana, which had Visual Performing Arts programme and Oodi College Applied Arts and Technology foundation programme for learners to be easily absorbed into the market.

“We want to raise awareness of contemporary dance, this is because it is easy to do, and the style is absorbed in tertiary institutions and adhered to professional international standards.

One of their rising star dancers,Aubery Molefhi, who joined the group previously as a hip hop dancer’s exclaimed that he used to dance for fun, but contemporary music has grounded him with his social life, time allocation and discipline.

He had this to say, “There is life in African Contemporary Dance, one feels the movement before presenting it to audiences, you show feelings and great emotion” Ends