Dancing with military precision

THE ARTS: Dance became a form of therapy for this ex-soldier, whose great achievement is being brought to the Project, writes Michael Seaver

'I am a dancer. My life is changed." The quiet words of Sebastiaõ Mpembele Kamalandua aren't what you normally hear in an interview. Most artists are media-savvy and fluent in PR-speak, and rarely talk to the press with such humility and honestly. Kamalandua is on his way to rehearse Irish Modern Dance Theatre's The White Piece, but for now, within the calm surroundings of the Hugh Lane Gallery, he is just talking about himself. A one-time architecture student and Angolan army conscript, he was imprisoned and tortured for five months before escaping to Ireland. But now he is a dancer. And his life is changed.

He discovered dancing while a client at the Centre for Care for Survivors of Torture (CCST) in Dublin when he signed up for a project with choreographer John Scott. Although he had danced socially back in Angola, somehow he felt that dance could now help him to forget his past and discover hope.

"Sebastiaõ was one of several ex soldiers in the group," says Scott. "They did not have dance technique but they had extraordinary discipline, precision of movement and stamina."

The workshops continued into the winter and on some wet nights people with injuries or allergies would struggle to make the workshops. "One night the weather was so bad I called to cancel, and they told me Sebastiaõ was waiting there for two hours. I had to go. When I suggested we postpone the class he burst into tears, so I taught an entire workshop for him alone."

They made a solo that night, based on some of Kamalandua's military exercises and movements, and a sound and movement breathing exercise Scott had learnt from Meredith Monk. Depressed and physically tense, Kamalandua relaxed when Scott asked him to simply walk and talk in one of his languages. "He spoke Lingala [ although he also speaks French, Portuguese and English] and as he started to speak he closed his eyes and went into some special place. He started moving his arms and head like a strange bird, he jumped like a wild animal and did one of the most extraordinary dances I have ever witnessed."

The solo became part of Fall and Recover, a performance that grew out of the CCST workshops with Scott and dancers Aisling Doyle and Philip Connaughton. Proud of the solo and its performance, Kamalandua still remembers the emotion behind its birth. "I was thinking a lot about the past so I just thought about breathing and moving my palms," he says.

"When I finished I was crying. I was thinking about myself and my life, where I am now, where I have come from. Now when I do that solo I see hope for the future. My last words are "thank you". Thank you for listening to me and watching me."

The physical memory of the military exercises also unlocked strong emotions and, even though thoughts and feelings are considered abstract and invisible to the naked eye, some research suggests that thinking consists of "embodied concepts" that are made through the body. In the words of movement analyst Carol-Lynne Moore: "Thinking rests upon bodily action, and through bodily actions thinking becomes visible."

Father Michael Begley is director of Spirasi, a centre for refugees and survivors of torture, and has seen the benefits of dance as part of the services it offers its clients. "I am certain that dance is very powerful for the individual viscerally processing painful memories," he says. "It helps them to hold them and express them, when there are the cultural and linguistic barriers that even therapists come up against."

The therapeutic and rehabilitating power of movement is undeniable. But should it be left in the workshop and kept off the stage? The achievement of Fall and Recover lay in its avoidance of "victim art" and in applying the same technical and performative standards of a professional production. Similarly, Kamalandua's performance in The White Piece is based on what he contributes to the company as a performer rather than any altruistic motive.

"Sebastiaõ is free of the European stereotypes of a dancer," says Jean Christophe Paré, a French choreographer and former dancer with Paris Opera Ballet, who has seen him in rehearsal. "His stillnesses are not moments of pause or rest, but of increased energy and concentration. His gestures are generated by emotion and psychological necessity rather than by aesthetics, and possess an emotional 'veracity' and power. Yet his comportment at times resembles a veteran professional dancer who has worked in contemporary dance for many years. When he inhabits the space and moves it is a real, true event."

Cherryl Therrien, a former dancer with Merce Cunningham, will dance alongside him in The White Piece. "What I find interesting about Sebastiaõ after watching him in rehearsal for three weeks is how he maintains such an individual interpretation of everything," she says. "When learning a phrase he doesn't copy anyone. It's clear he has some kind of natural personal interpretation of things and still has his own insight. Even though he is surrounded by professional dancers who might influence him, he has his own way of seeing things in movement terms."

On the opening night of Irish Modern Dance Theatre's (Like) Silver last November, Kamalandua received a deportation notice, and when he reported to the Garda National Immigration Bureau, he was instructed to come back the following week to arrange his deportation from the State. Since his arrival to Ireland in August 2001, he had claimed that he would be killed if returned to Angola. His initial appeal to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner in May 2002 was refused on the basis that if he was in danger of being killed he would not have survived for five months in jail. But a person who works regularly with torture victims told The Irish Times, "torture is completely different from killing. There are different motives and different means of torture, physical and psychological."

An appeal to the Refugees Appeals Tribunal, in September 2002, was also rejected. Peter O'Mahony of the Irish Refugee Council, while acknowledging the appeals system is good on paper, claims it can fail some people. "The chances of success at a hearing depend more on who hears a case than on any other one thing. Two people with almost identical cases could end up with polar opposite results. While many people are lucky enough to get the correct result to their hearing, whether that's success or failure, all too often there is the situation where a person will be refused because they are going to be refused anyway."

But on December 9th Kamalandua was granted a High Court injunction against the deportation order on grounds that he was given insufficient time to consider the matter between the serving of the order and its implementation. Although the injunction only lasted until January 17th, the state has not issued another order.

In the meantime, he can dance. And dancing might also help his legal case. "It's a tricky one. The fact that someone is particularly talented isn't directly relevant to someone's asylum case," says O'Mahony. "That would be my position and the position of the Refugee Council because we are just involved with the asylum system. Where it may be of some relevance is that people who have been refused asylum - rightly or wrongly - might qualify for discretionary leave here on the basis of exceptional circumstances."

Back in a suburb of the capital Luanda, other Angolans have also begun dancing again. Bitter struggle between MPLA - now the government forces - and Unita for more than three decades has left more than one million dead and more than four million displaced. But in the fragile peace, groups such as the Kilandukilu Traditional Ballet troupe has re-awakened to dancing. They dance about life, whether a joyous celebration of the wood harvest or working as a waiter.

In the split second before he dances here in Ireland, Kamalandua's thoughts return to Angola. "When we are improvising I always start with an image in my head. I close my eyes and might picture my family, or hear the sounds of the bush. Then I move."