Angolan dance festival connects cultures in Prague
Kizomba is a partner dance originating in the central African nation Angola. Balumuka Events organized a Kizomba Festival in Prague on the first weekend of November this year, and brought together dancers, designers and artists from across Europe.
The three-day festival took place mainly in the city’s Slovanský dům and featured Kizomba DJ, dance and musicality workshops, an afro tribal dance art installation, night parties and even a fashion show presenting Nigerian designer D.A. AYO’s most recent collection.
I visited the Kizomba festival on its second night to see the collection, listen to some Afro music and watch the attendees dance Kizomba across the elegant ballroom at Slovanský dům. I met event organizer Pablo Nzo Conzo to ask him about the unique African festival in Prague. Conzo is originally from Angola but currently lives in Switzerland. Following the African Fashion Show I met with Conzo backstage and began by asking him what I’d missed of the first and now second days of the festival.
“Yesterday, today, and the whole weekend we have workshops where the people can come to learn about the dance from Angola [Kizomba]. To bring together the Kizomba community and to link art, dance and fashion to show not only in the dance what we are but also to show the art because we work with all these Pan-African things to show how cultures connect to dance.”
The Angolan festival featured a Nigerian fashion designer, afro music from across the continent, and attendees who flew in from across Europe. There were many people at the festival with African ancestry but also many with European roots. I asked Conzo why they chose to include so many different cultures in the festival.
“The base is really Angolan, but we don't want to just keep to our culture. We try to involve and link with all of the people who do the same art; that can be African and also not African people. We had this opportunity to meet this beautiful girl who gave us this beautiful show. We watched what she’s been doing and it was the same as what we want to share with the people. It was not our first time doing this [fashion] show, every time we try to change designers, the last time it was one of our friends, she's Serbian but she works also with the Angola culture.”
After the catwalk, I pulled this year’s fashion designer D. A. Ayo aside to ask her about her newest collection and what bringing together different cultures means to her. We shouted to hear each other over the Afro music booming in the background from the second DJ playing in the hallway, where a growing group of people danced together.
“My first collection was me just really wanting to bring out the [Nigerian] culture through the fabrics. But this time I wanted to change the designs to be a little more modern, because a lot of the designs that I see, especially when I went to Nigeria again were classic, traditional clothing and you could really rarely see some modernized ones. But the more I went into Instagram and looked through the whole world of Instagram, I saw other people, from other countries combining modern designs with traditional clothes and I thought ‘this is so cool I'd like this to be in Prague as well.’ I wanted to combine where I grew up, Prague, with where I'm from and bring both of us together, that's kind of my inspiration with everything I do.”
Balumuka’s Kizomba Festival was Ayo’s second fashion show, I asked her what her plans are for the future.
“I'm just beyond grateful for everything that happened. I hope to create my third collection next year, to make it a little bigger and organize a fashion show for it myself. My dream is to have a little cafe here in Prague where, on the ground floor, you’ll have some goodies from Nigeria and then on the top floor you'll have my clothes. I’d do it with my family and have a modern African kind of story in Prague.”
The name of Conzo and his partner Mumba’s event organization, Balumuka, means ‘trouble’ in their native language Kimbundu, one of many languages spoken in Angola.
“When we chose the name Balumuka it was meant to get people up, let them know we are here, enjoy together, be together, party together, share together. Just make noise and show we are here.”
What kind of impact are you hoping these events will have?
“When we speak about the story we speak about why we dance because kizomba also means party. Kizomba was not only dancing but also the meeting with the family, sharing food, being together every Sunday in the kintao [backyard]. The mummies cooking outside, the cousins coming and taking something, just being together. For the people who don’t know our culture, if you just dance you don't really know the feeling that we have because we cannot teach the feeling but we can try to push people to know who we are. Now we have a lot of people that have started to go to Angola and to know more about the culture. They started with the dance, then they started to understand the music and then they wanted to know more about the culture and so they travel to Angola just to go to the roots.”
Why did you choose Prague?
“My partner Mumba has lived in Prague for 20 years. It was the best place because people here love culture. People in Prague really love music, they love many cultures. They've really been very open. Also for people coming from outside the country they can come not only to dance but also to visit Prague, it's two in one, dance and tourism.”
Balumuka events recently began hosting parties under the name Afrorave. The new concept combines different styles of music, and similar to the Kizomba Festival aims to bring people from many different backgrounds together in the city of Prague.
“Afrorave is just the younger brother of Kizomba. In Angola we do a lot of Afro house which combines electronic music and Kuduru which is an urban dance from Angola. Now the world has started to really listen more to afro-tribal which takes the European electronic music and links it with the roots from African instrumentals to make this fusion. This is for both of the sides [of the world] to recognize themselves in the music and Prague is one of the cities where you feel that in the atmosphere.”
