„Kyendi” – kim jestem?
“Kyendi” – Who Am I?

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with experiencing a performance given by Ugandan break-dance performers from the “Break-dance Project Uganda” at the “Brave Festival” held in Wroclaw (“The ritual starts in Africa” edition from 2008) and the essence of the dance within its Ugandan context. The author of the article, who is also the co-author of a documentary film about Abramz Tekya, the founder and leader of the project, shows the role of the dance as a tool making it possible to act for the sake of social transformation in the marginalised urban youth communities of Uganda. Educators apply the dance to build an attitude of tolerance and social responsibility. An essential part of the text is about the globalisation motif of break-dance, which emerged in American ghettoes inhabited mainly by the successors of African slaves upon the basis of, i.a. Central African dance motifs. Several centuries later, Central African dances in a syncretic form expressed via the break-dance arrived, together with their hip-hop culture foundation, in Central Africa, and for numerous young Africans rapidly become the basis of demystification. The text also analyses the performance given by the Ugandan artists at the festival, concentrating attention on the introduction of tribal motifs into the dance and accentuating the dialogue character of the show based on the expectations of the Polish recipient. Finally, the author analysed the idea of the ritual and tradition in reference to the performance of the African artists and conducted a polemic with the vision harboured by the organisers of the festival relating to the socio-cultural ideological framework of this theatrical-cultural event.

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