Young, Vibrant, Energetic dance queen, Kafayat Shaffau-Ameh is indeed
a big player in the Nigerian dance industry. With a dance company,
countless musical videos, choreography and shows to her credit, Kaffy
remains a force to reckon with as far as contemporary dance is
concerned. In this interview, the recently wedded mother of one shares
with NET the many battles she faced in her quest to turn an activity
that soon turned into a passion, into a career.
You have been involved in a lot of projects recently. What would you
say is responsible for that, and how are you coping?
It is God. It's just awesome, but sometimes there is so much
happening, so much pressure, everybody wants the best for whatever
they hired me for, different things are happening at the same time,
but at the end of the day, God has been so great that at the end of
the day it will be good, I thank God.
After the PFA and the Malta Guinness dance campaign, what other
projects will you be working on?
A lot of things are coming up that I can't really reveal right now. I
am going to be really doing something really major soon, something
that is going to take Lagos and Nigeria to another level and it's
coming up really soon. This project is one of my life-long dreams and
I'm putting a lot in place to make sure the project actually works
out. The next step for me after Project Fame and all is my reality TV
show. I am going to America soon to start the filming of some of the
shots that I plan to do. I am trying to bring the reality of the dance
business, both behind the scenes and on stage, to people's knowledge,
because when they understand the trade and the people involved in it,
they won't look down on it. Since dance has become an entity in the
entertainment industry, and we need to build and find a structure for
it.
You recently had some of Arsenal's soccer stars under your tutelage,
what was it like, coaching footballers in the art of dance?
The effect hasn't even dawned on me yet; you know when you are passing
through a stage with high performance speed, you don't even know the
effect of what you've done till later, so I'm still waiting for that
effect. I'm an Arsenal fan, and for me to have the chance to actually
stand next to these guys, and not just standing next to, but I
happened to have them listen to me, be coached by them, at some point,
I was famzing in my mind, me self want take picture o, but before I
knew it, an assistant to one of them came to me saying one wants to
take a picture with me. I was like okay, I'm the man here! It's
awesome. I thank God for that opportunity, I thank God for allowing me
be in the position of making it good because some people have the
opportunity but don't deliver.
Did you ever think you were going to raise the bar so high for dance
in Nigeria, and in such a short time?
I dreamt to be this big and bigger. This is not how big I want to be,
this is not how I dreamt to be. This is like the world unfolding one
layer at a time, and I am taking it one layer at a time, but I am
taking it with a lot of passion, with a lot of prayer and with a lot
of force.
What challenges were you faced with as a young dancer 10 years ago?
A lot of challenges, I must confess, because they [family] saw me as
that A-class girl, that science student that was supposed to be an
engineer, a doctor or something. They never expected it, but after
some time they began to understand the success that started coming in
from what I was doing and the respect that followed. They were
expecting their daughter to roll with ministers, doctors, engineers,
governor and all; but I'm still doing that even as a dancer, so today
I might have a meeting with Governor Fashola, tomorrow Governor
Tinubu, or a meeting in Cross River and they are like 'is it this
same dance?' As a result of that, they started realizing that their
child can actually be someone great. To top it all off, I got married,
and I have a child. They didn't believe I could be that settled. Even
my own parents thought I was doing dance because I wanted to be out
there and be promiscuous, but it's not their fault, it was because
that was all they understood about the trade and the entertainment
industry itself, especially the women involved in it. They see them as
promiscuous and loose, [but] for me that can't be said; I'm focused
and now I'm married, so that was a blessing for them.
Speaking of the image of ladies in entertainment, are you making
efforts to erase this notion and help create a better one?
It's what I am doing right now. I think my life is a conscious effort.
What I am doing right now is a conscious effort too, because I always
try to push myself to do something better and I always get good
results. There is always someone saying that the story inspires them,
even someone that does not have anything to do with dance. I have been
to a bank before and somebody told me I was the inspiration for him
doing what he was doing, that I was the one that inspired him to get
up and do that work, so it's not really about dance, it's about
telling young people that there is no excuse not to be a success. If
you want to be successful, you have to work hard. I mean, there are
different ways to get it; some people get it easy, while some get it
hard, but hard or easy, success is the same plate they are going to
eat from. Let's strive to achieve success, that's what I am always
preaching about. I had parents that were billionaires, they were rich,
but at the end of the day the money couldn't help me out, they lost
everything, so that's all about not planning properly. It's not about
your parents' money or your parents' being there, it's about what you
want to do with your life.
How do your parents feel now, seeing that you have made a success of
your career choice?
They are great. They're older, and understand me better now and
understand life better now. They have adapted to God and life in such
a beautiful way and I am happy for them.
What are some outstanding memories you have from your formative years
that pertained to dance?
It was fun doing dance as my hobby, going to parties and everybody had
to sit down and watch me or I get to win all the medals, but it got to
a point in my life when I never even danced. When I went to secondary
school I never danced. People in my secondary school never knew me as
a dancer, because I was more into sports; I played soccer, I played
basketball, and ance was just a part time thing that helped me enjoy
my sport. I started bringing that into the workout for the ladies in
my basketball team, then into the Lagos Island basketball team, the
Warriors basketball team; we used to work out together and stuff like
that. They really enjoyed the fact that apart from the rigorous
training, we brought in some other fun and exciting ways to work out,
and that was where it all started.
When did you decide to make it into a career?
It was more or less like when something in life tells you to be
focused and decide quickly. I was going and keeping up with different
jobs to stay afloat, the pressure became so heavy I had to drop out of
school at a point, because I was the one funding my academics and it
got to a point where I couldn't meet up anymore. I was working in
Lagos state, schooling in Ogun State, four-five days a week, I
shuttled between both states, and it wasn't easy. Things were tough
because of the countless expenses I had to bear, include mine and my
siblings school fees. Then I told myself; if we are going to school to
help us adapt knowledge to apply in our life, I have adapted knowledge
to entertainment and dance, let me push further and use that as a
medium to make money right. Then, I decided to be serious with it, so
all my knowledge in Physics, Biology, Mathematics and everything, I
just applied it in dance and that's where I am today.
What course did you study?
I had a short thing in Mechanical Engineering in Yaba Tech, and then I
did something in IME (Industrial Maintenance Engineering) in Yaba
Tech. From there, I went to Ogun State and I did an ND in Computer
Science, [specifically] Data Processing, then I continued with Sport
Science which I didn't finish, and that was when everything started
going offside. I didn't really have an excuse not to excel; I just
wanted to find another way. You know, sometimes it's not about paper
alone, but the application of that knowledge and how many lives you
can touch, and I wanted to prove that if you go through school and it
doesn't want to go through you, find another channel and make it work,
because going to University is one channel of success, [but] there are
so many channels, and people shouldn't limit themselves to school as
an excuse not to excel.
Even if you are not schooling, you are studying, you are studying
every day. You learn in your field every day, you are working. Even
the internet allows you to study on the go with the web, Google,
Wikipedia, and encyclopaedia. I don't think anybody cannot acquire
knowledge outside a tertiary institution, except you just want to be
ignorant. I did some certificate courses online for my fitness thing
as a fitness instructor, group instructor and as a personal trainer.
These are the things I did out of school, and I teach people that
claim to be in 200 or 400 level in Sport Science stuff they should
already know. In secondary school, it got to a point my teachers
donated school fees for me many times because I repeated classes due
to funding. There were many times I had to stay back at home so my
sisters could go to school, and when it got to a point we couldn't
afford that anymore, we started borrowing books from our neighbours
that went to school, so there was no reason not to study; we might not
be in school, but we are studying, and that's how education life has
been.
You decided to found a dance company, Imagneto. What inspired that?
I wanted to be taken seriously. You need a structure so people can
take you seriously, and so things can move forward.
What is running a dance company in Nigeria like?
It's not very easy, because the dance is still on the popularity
commercial side. We need to be structured to make it work. This is
what people like me, Span (Society for the Performing Arts in Nigeria)
and Ijodie are trying to do every day. It's not easy to bring it
together. [With young people] some of them don't even bother to train,
they are just there for shows, so what we do in my company is that we
try to instil work ethic, professionalism, and the ability to be very
disciplined. I create an avenue, a place for them to work, and I train
them so I can expose them to the ethics of the place.
What are some of the greatest career challenges you have faced so far?
Apart from individual challenges from the young people themselves that
I am training, money doesn't come sometimes the way you want it,
either because they are paying too little or you don't want to accept
what they are paying because the job they are offering is not what you
want for your image. You have to be careful about the kind of jobs you
do, how you do them and stuff like that, and those are the things I
want to showcase in my reality TV show, so that people can understand
the reality behind the work that we are doing.
Let's talk about Danceathon. Tell us what the experience was while
preparing for the dance competition.
[You] don't prepare for a danceathon. If you train, you will just kill
yourself; instead, you just think about it and go. The only thing that
we did was run a race that qualifies you, then I assisted in
co-ordinating the fitness. A week before, we were doing small
workshops and seminars on what people should do and expect, and that
continued even though we were later split into different groups.
What was on your mind when you were on the dance floor after everybody had left?
Nothing was on my mind, I wanted to go home and sleep, but my body was
just going. I just had to stop because everybody was tired, even the
cameramen had been filming for days, I just had to stop
Did you ever feel like stopping while the competition was going on?
Yes, I had pneumonia, because it was during the month of Ramadan
fasting period and I was fasting, that was like the third day of the
fast and I wanted to continue the fast, but that pneumonia just
started, and my temperature was so bad that even the doctor said 'you
can't go back in there' but we were the only group left, so I couldn't
quit, because if I did, a lot of guys and girls would not keep up that
level of energy, so I went to meet one of my trainers Steven, I spoke
to him I was like 'omo mhen, I won comot, my body dey ache me' and he
was like 'let's go if u commot I go commot' and I [thought to myself
that] if he, who was supposed to be my strongest person, says he'll
leave, what is the hope for everybody else? Let me just stay, so we
just pulled through.
Do you still hold that title?
It's not about the title, but about breaking the record. It's not a
title really, it's a record, and I am sure it has been broken again, I
haven't checked, but I don't think we still own the record. The
Guinness Book Of Record gets updated every year, so I think it must
be. The last time I read, I think over 40 thousand entries every year,
different records are made every day. So many people are trying to
achieve that record and now that we have, we have to look up to what
next, that doesn't change the fact that we won. If you go to their
record Guinness book of record danceathon 2006, they will find our
name there.
Would you like to break it again?
It's not a wish now; if I'm ever going to break it again, maybe it's
because I am going to save 20,000 people on the street or [do it] for
hungry children, it has to be [for something] beyond money for me to
do it again.
Finally, what's your advice for young women who see a mentor in you?
It is important that every woman place a worth on herself and refuse
to compromise. Ladies in the entertainment sector stand a bigger risk
but with a lot of self-respect and determination, a lot can be
achieved.
