Adugna Community Dance Theater Company
SOLO AND DUO
WITH JUNAID JEMAL AND ADDISU DEMISSIE (ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA)
JULY 30 and 31 2009
Hamburger Sprechwerk, 8 pm
(ca. 60 minutes) • Public discussion with the artist(s) after performances.
Junaid Jemal
Ethiopian dancer, choreographer and teacher with the Adugna Community Dance Theatre Company. Adugna means “fortune” or “fate” in Amharic, one of Ethiopia’s main languages.
Jemal was 12 years old with little education and few prospects when he was invited to join an innovative dance training programme for poor children in Addis Ababa. Ten years later, the 22-year-old, praised for his incredible range of accomplishments, is playing a leading role in the development of contemporary dance in Ethiopia.
He is often commissioned to choreograph work, creating such pieces as Triticale, about famine, and performing at dance festivals in Africa and Europe. In 2003, along with other members of Adugna, he performed his own work, Yemot Guzo (Death’s Journey), about his grandfather’s death, at a choreography festival in Madagascar.
Junaid leads classes in contemporary, African and traditional Ethiopian dance for people throughout his country – rural and urban, young and old. As part of the Adugna Potentials project, he also works with disabled children, mirroring Teshigawara’s involvement with the vision-impaired.
In 2004 he won the Rolex mentor and protegé arts initiative with the mentoring fror one year from the choreographer Saburo Teshigawara. And in early 2005, Junaid performed with Teshigawara’s company, KARAS, in Tokyo and Hong Kong and joined the troupe for a tour of Kazahana.
Addisu Demissie
born in Addis Ababa in 1985. Since 1998, dancer, choreographer and teacher for the Adugna Community Dance Theatre Co. Employed by the Ethiopian Gemini Trust, an indigenous Ethiopian NGO, to teach in a variety of projects. Work with children and youth, adults and the elderly, the disabled, and the police, using all forms of dance, drama and forum theatre for education and empowerment. With Adugna, choreographs and performs professionally in Ethiopia and abroad. Primary teaching responsibilities include community youth classes, Gemini Youth Club classes, dance and drama instruction for local kebele HIV/AIDS clubs, as well as special project work, including the Adugna Potentials project, which involves the entire company in teaching and performing with eleven young disabled Ethiopians. He graduated with distinction from the five-year training program with accreditation from Middlesex University (London, England).
Training included study in: choreography; contemporary dance; traditional Ethiopian dance; ballet; African dance; physical therapy; massage; yoga; teaching methodologies; set and costume design; drumming; lighting; management; English; and computers.
DanceKiosk Hamburg 2009 is funded by the Kulturbehörde der freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung, das NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ aus Mitteln des Tanzplans Deutschland der Kulturstiftung des Bundes and Goethe Institut. Supported by: Kampnagel Hamburg, Theater Sprechwerk and K3 – Zentrum für Choreographie / Tanzplan Hamburg.
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