Project Detail

Dance Is Us and Dance Is Black

Mike Downing

Synopsis

The film is a love duet about a girl and her lover. Slave resistance at times included the slaves’ refusal to dance their African traditional dances aboard the slave ship at the beck and call of the Captain. Inspired by the print by Isaac Cruikshank, entitled 'The Abolition of the Slave Trade', the inhumanity of dealers in human flesh is exemplified by the cruel treatment of a young negro girl of 15. This is all happening in her imagination.

Details

Year: 2008
Type of film: Shorts
Running time: 5 mins
Format: 16mm/digibeta
Director: Rodreguez King-Dorset
Producer: Graham Cooper
Editor: Graham Cooper
Composer: 'VIMBA'-Women of Mambazo, 'HIMA' N. Mlanao
Principal cast: Tyrone Singleton, Celine Gittens
Production Associates: Emmanuel Kingsley and
Assistant Producers: Miller Nketia, Angela Opoku
Choreographer: Rodreguez King-Dorset
Camera: Nick Frend
Lighting: Dominik James
Production Manager: Victoria Wilson
Production Assistants: Daniel Kohler, James Nowell, Charlotte Moore
Contact: officeofrodreguezkingdorset@gmail.com

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

Black Solidarity Films

Rodreguez King-Dorset

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The documentary film explores an unknown chapter in post South African liberation. In 1993, Lady Anya Sainsbury, a former principal ballerina at Royal Ballet in London, met Nelson Mandela at a party in South Africa. They both agreed for her to set up a dance scholarship programme at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London, which provided 23 of South Africa’s talented young dance students between 1995 to 2003, with the opportunity to follow their dance dreams. <br /> The film highlights the personal experiences of six of those dancers that subsequently met Mandela in London at a dinner party in Lady Sainsbury’s house in 1999, they are Mandela’s Dancers. <br /> The film combines archival dance photographs and video footage spanning over fifteen years, with excerpts from the student performances and candid recollections. Mandela’s Dancers is not about the triumph of the human spirit or any other of the top 10 favourite dance clichés. It’s about something far rarer and of vastly greater significance – it’s about real life. It’s about how Nelson Mandela changed the face of contemporary dance!

Rasta

Director: Rodreguez King-Dorset

Year: 2007

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri was the senior military and spiritual leader of the Mau Mau uprising. He led the armed military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his capture in 1956 and execution in 1957.

Drama

The Black Dance Movement in London 1730-1850