When I got the call from Donald Glover’s manager, asking me to choreograph his video, I didn’t know much about him. I said: “Let me go and research him”, which is when I realised I knew loads of his songs. My friends were like, “That’s Childish Gambino, yo! Tell me more!” But I couldn’t. I didn’t even say I was making a video with him. I’m serious about non-disclosure agreements – even my mum didn’t know about it until it came out, on 5 May.
I was born in Rwanda and have been performing all my life. I’d always wanted to be an actor or a singer, and dance was a bonus for me, so it’s interesting that I’ve ended up doing it professionally. I moved to the UK in 1999 when I was five years old, and grew up in south London: West Norwood, Crystal Palace and I think possibly Clapham at one point. I went to Stagecoach classes and my school specialised in performing arts, but I didn’t do any African dance – just standard stuff like contemporary and modern. It was only after going back to Africa – Uganda, South Africa, Rwanda – and feeling the vibes and the culture, that I got into it. In African churches there’s a lot of dancing, too.
In my teens, I had the opportunity to dance for the president of Rwanda, which led to a role in a film [Africa United] about the World Cup in South Africa. But I only started taking dance seriously at university: teaching classes, travelling abroad and – from around 2012 – putting tutorials online, which is where Donald’s manager found me.
The shoot was in Los Angeles. I created a routine that mixed moves like the gwara gwara from South Africa [swaying your torso while rocking one leg towards your body], which was one Donald was a fan of, with my own favourite, the neza [sidestepping with fists on hips], which I created. Neza means “good” in my country – it’s just happy, and I feel like it represents me. Donald is somebody who likes to learn, so that made my job easier. I changed the choreography quite a few times. It was really complicated at one point, then I made it simpler, then I changed my mind again and called another rehearsal. That’s just how the creative process works.
The song has done amazingly well. It won three MTV video music awards, including best choreography, and has been nominated for four Grammys. I’ve been a lot busier [recent projects include a World Aids Day campaign and a Vogue video with supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid]. I’m touring the US and Canada with Donald, too, as a dancer and choreographer.
I don’t want to say exactly what I think the video means. Donald should be the one to do that, as he worked so hard on the ideas. [Critics have analysed references to the racist archetype Jim Crow, the 2015 Charleston church shooting and the film Get Out, among others.] But I do feel that my style of dance fitted it well. And it has a purpose: as much as people are seeing my style or Afro dance as a fashion, my aim is also to educate people about the culture. Africa is not just a poor place, it’s a positive place – I want people to see the bigger picture.
As told to Hannah J Davies
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