By Yunus S Saliu
A Gambian Creative Director-cum-Actress has promise to change the face of entertainment industry in The Gambia to a sought-after sector as she held an open-air theatre performance tagged Performing Arts an Entrepreneurial Tool, last Saturday, at the Alliance Francaise located along Kairaba Avenue.
Ndey Fatou Jabang is the Founder and CEO of Flex Fuzion Dance Academy and Entertainment – The Gambia Premier Dance Company and School. She is a creative director, actress, media personality and 2019 Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni.
She owned the only dance academy in The Gambia and Saturday, 4th June 2022, Flex Fuzion Dance Academy awarded 75 students of the academy who had concluded an intensive training under a project titled – Performing Art and Entrepreneurial.
Under the Performing Art and Entrepreneurial project, 75 young pupils were target and this comprised dancers, actors and actresses; scriptwriters; models; and singers.
“These areas (people) targeted and selected because they intertwined and almost all of them except modelling which standouts but also an element of theatre because models tell story through their movement or vocal cord,” Madam Jabang explained.
The space Flex Fuzion Dance Academy and Entertainment is going, she said her academy and team performance will bring a positive change into the creative and entertainment industry in this country.
Madam Jabang who is optimistic about the performance of her students disclosed that they are always ready to stage top-notch show taken to consideration the recent stage performance on ‘Arts an Entrepreneurial Tool’ event.
The creative director-cum-actress, among other things, used the event to exposed the talents of the new certificated students to the world of entertainment, the event also helped her to achieved success, connections not to herself alone but for the over seventy trained pupils in different areas from the academy. This is because The Gambia entertainment industry is still considered as untapped area.
Among other initiative, she is the founder of Dance Gambia Championship, Dance Awards Gambia and Co – Founder of Kids Glitz and Glamorous Talent/Modelling Agency, all grooming children through arts.
However, “Flex Fuzion Entertainment is a dance company that organizes event to promote dancers, which also has a management label underneath. We work with professional dancers that want to take up dance as full or part time career,” she explained.
Furthermore, “at Flex Fuzion Entertainment we are dance talent management agency we sign them under the Flex Fuzion label for period of years to work with them to grow artistically, brand them professionally and market them to clients that might be interested to have them for their activities or events.”
Flex Fuzion Entertainment is the parent company and Flex Fuzion Dance Academy is a branch under the Flex Fuzion Entertainment, so, the Dance Academy focuses on training both professional, amateur or none dancer but that are interested to take up dance classes or classes for fitness purposes, cardia walk out.
At Fuzion Dance Academy, they train their students in various dance styles being cultural, afrobeat, hip hop, jazz contemporary, ballet dance and whatever they are interested in. They have instructors that have basic training in these dance styles, “meaning we are specialist in teaching them and aside from teaching general classes to anyone interested we also offer private sessions for clients that want to have home service session and also to artists that are interested in developing their presence on stage performance while we coach artistes on performance skills, too.
On just concluded project named Performing Art and Entrepreneurial, it was used to build capacity of young creative industry. We brought them all together to do the training which was centred on basic business and performing act skills training. And the training was made up of both practical and theory.
It is a Flex Fuzion Initiative and in collaboration with Gambia Union of Theatre; Alliance Francaise, French Institute, Embassy of French in Dakar and NEDI.
The artistes (actors/actresses) were trained both on stage and screen acting and performance and during the course of their training they were given different assignments while they all come up with different business ideas/concepts using their business module canvass.
“This is because we want them to understand how they can monetize their crafts. That could be a starting point for them to continue after the training for sustainability. So, they all have business ideas brought in and discussed with the facilitators and they were all given guidance and we are hoping to register success stories from the 75 participants in doing the best to monetize their crafts,” she explained with confidence.
However, Ndey Fatou Jabang is the current President of the Dance Association of The Gambia, Vice President of The Gambia Union of Theatre, President of the Gambia’s National Creative Industries Roadmap team and the Assistant Program Officer of the US Exchange Programs Network in The Gambia. She is an Executive Board member of the Universal Care for Africa Foundation, Chapter Chair of the Women Leadership Forum and a board member of Women in Arts Network.
