Hidden Movement: Contemporary Voices of Black British Dance by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Serendipity
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CREATING AND SUSTAINING A DANCE COMPANY IN A CHANGING ECONOMIC CLIMATE - HENRI OGUIKE

In the last few years I have found myself needing to reflect not just on my career so far but on my life as a whole. Not necessarily with regret or as a means of searching for answers, but to reconnect myself with my past; the person I was and the person I am now. I have found some of these reflective moments emotionally difficult and having developed mental health problems as an adult and failing to find real solutions with therapists, it felt natural to begin to trust in a built-in ‘survival mechanism’.

I was born in West Glamorgan in Wales to a Welsh mother and a Nigerian father. As an eighteen month old I moved to Nigeria with my parents and I think the idea was that my father, a geologist, wanted to start his business and my mother to begin her career as a librarian.

During the 9 years before my return to Wales my memory of events are mostly hazy. One day, at age 6, it seemed to me that my mother just disappeared, which I later realised had been a divorce resulting with her being sent back to Wales with minimal possessions. In later years she sent me a book about the boxer Muhammad Ali - this was the only way I knew of her existence during my early years in Nigeria.

One key factor was that I developed no connection with either parent including those on my father’s side. I was in boarding school, stayed with our neighbour and her children during breaks and never really learnt my home language - the school was English speaking.

I roughly recall one visit to see my grandmother baptising someone in a river in Owerri Imo State where my father’s family lived. I later discovered that she was stopped from travelling to see me in Wales due to ill health and she passed on in the early nineties. I often wondered, if I had known my grandmother better, I might possibly have identified with spirituality earlier.

In Nigeria, I was not black but yellow. Other kids often sang a song about a yellow pepper, this was always in jest and I never felt there was malice even through it could be considered a racist comment.

Then, in 1981, I was back in Wales living with my mother in a single room having been dropped off by my father on one of his business trips. I later understood that it was because my schooling in Nigeria had deteriorated, through lack of motivation, and it was hoped that this might improve if I went to a school in Wales for a few years. Time went by; school was good; when the time came to return to Nigeria the politics there had taken a turn for the worse and my return was cancelled.

My mother pretty much committed her life to bringing me up the best way she could. She worked extremely long hours, gave up her relationship and extended herself to give me a chance in life.

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