Cooper Rust’s Artists for Africa now has three studio spaces in Kenya.
Pamela Atieno, like many children, dreamed of being a ballerina growing up. She remembers watching dance performances on TV with her parents, imagining herself one day “dancing on my tippy toes” just like the flickering images that danced across the screen.
This seemed unlikely for Atieno though. She was from a poor Kenyan village with substandard schools and little in the way of the arts. Ballet was a foreign concept.
Her fortunes changed dramatically thanks to Artists for Africa, a nonprofit established by former Columbia City Ballet dancer Cooper Rust in 2013. Two weeks ago, Atieno, who turns 15 later this month, flew across the world to dance at the summer intensive program at the University of South Carolina. Back in Kenya, she trains at Dance Centre Kenya, the school Rust established in Nairobi that brings in promising dance students from poor families on a full sponsorship each year. Artists for Africa, in partnership with the UK-based Anno’s Africa, pays for their room and board. Rust plays surrogate mom three nights a week for the young dancers.
Rust first traveled to Kenya to teach English and math in 2012, where she eventually met Atieno’s first teacher, Mike Wamaya, a traditional African dancer.
“He had no background in ballet, and really no expertise, so when I got there and met him, I offered to come help a bit,” Rust recalls. “He was pretty much over the moon. That’s when I started getting ideas.”
She returned to Kenya the next summer, focusing solely on teaching ballet. Returning to Columbia City Ballet that fall, she felt at a crossroads.
“I just kind of thought about my life and where I wanted to go,” she explains. “We were doing the same ballets next season that we did two years before. I knew I was going to have to retire eventually, and right now I see this path, this thing that I really wanted to do.”
Artists for Africa, and Rust’s studio in Kenya, grew gradually but determinedly in the years since. With a fully engaged 12-member board that organizes a performing arts event each year that brings in local dancers, musicians and actors to raise money for the organization, Rust’s dance studio and various partnerships have made headway. Ballet in Kenya is now a thing.
Rust found that she could run a genuine dance studio by balancing students of more average means, many of them from international families in Nairobi because of United Nations or embassy work, along with a sponsor program that aids the most promising Kenyan dancers who come from impoverished backgrounds. She now boasts three studio spaces (soon to be six), 15 teachers and 600 paying students. The studio has also launched the first full-length ballet productions to be created in Kenya, including classics like Cinderella, Midsummer Night’s Dream and, of course, Nutcracker.
And each summer, Rust brings dancers like Atieno to the United States to train. There’s an obvious affection between the student and teacher. Atieno calls Rust her “second mom” and clearly looks up to her.
“When I grow up I want to be a ‘magnanimous,’” she says excitedly. “I want to be a ballet teacher like Ms. Cooper, help people from poor backgrounds like me become dancers.”
Rust is quick to point out that it’s dancers like Atieno and Joel Kioko, a 17-year-old who went from dancing with Rust to becoming the first Kenyan to ever attend the Royal Academy of London, that make her work magical. Images of Atieno dancing have been featured in stories by National Geographic and Al Jazeera, and Kioko’s story has been covered by a host of national and international publications as well.
Rust is pleased with the success and thankful for her supportive board here in Columbia. The harder part, she says, is being the sole person in Kenya, where in addition to teaching and operating the dance studio she takes care of the sponsored dancers in their boarding house and must grapple with the Kenyan bureaucracy to make sure everything goes right. Still, the momentum is clearly there.
“Hopefully with more funding and time we’ll be able to spread to other countries,” she posits. “Ballet is taking over East Africa!”
What: Artists for Africa Performance Event and Fundraiser
Where: Washington Place, 1208 Washington St.
When: Wednesday, Aug. 1, 6:30 p.m.
Price: $35 (includes hors d’oeuvres and silent auction)
More: artistsforafricausa.org
