2018 Zaouli African Dance ignites a ’Secret Garden’ party

Kaagô turns up the heat at a super cool summer garden party with the UK’s only performing zaouli dancer, Marie Laine, and drummers Henri Gaobi, Peter Phillips, Norbert Szekeres, Simon Rowe, Laura Cuch, Adrienne Ming and Salif Bamba. Master drummer Henri Gaobi brought this particular Gouro mask back from Ivory Coast in February 2018 and this is the first time it has been used in performance. Zaouli is a traditional dance of the Gouro people involving a masked dancer representing a female deity and was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Kaagô, founded by Henri Gaobi and based in Brixton, has been bringing African performing arts to the UK for over 25 years and is probably now the most long lived of the UK’s traditional African performing groups. This performance was held in the ’Secret Garden’ of the Atherfold Hemberton Landor Road TRA & Garden on 21 July 2018 in Lambeth, London.