A dance guru shines in his trade

On meeting Julius Lugaaya, the co-founder of Dance Week Festival and Theatre factory, his jovial personality stands out. He smiles as he ushers me into his office at Uganda National Cultural Centre popularly known as National Theatre. He speaks with a faint American accent and often makes facial and hand gestures to emphasise a point.
The grey-striped suspenders, a black necktie, matching black shirt and trousers complement the slender dancer’s look.

Background
Born and raised 40 years ago in Entebbe, Lugaaya attended Mwiri Primary School and Namasagali College for his O-Level and A-Level. Namasagali gave priority to music, dance and drama and Lugaaya says he was active in the school’s entertainment groups. With other members, he often came to perform at the National Theatre.
At A-Level, he read Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics (PCM) hoping to become a test engineer; his childhood dream. Unfortunately, he did not qualify for the course. He thought of repeating Senior Six but Father Damien Grimes, then head teacher of Namasagali College and some teachers, encouraged him to opt for drama. “They had watched me grow in the Arts since Senior One and hence advised me to do performing Arts,” he recalls.

Studying performing arts
The news that he was going to pursue a degree in Performing Arts was not music to Lugaaya’s parents ears and his friends. Much as his parents had often watched him dance and act, he says, they were skeptical about his choice of profession. “They didn’t imagine what I was going to be after school because then performing arts was not yet that popular or even recognised as a profession in Uganda,” he explains.
Despite the cold shoulder, he was convinced that he had made the right decision and therefore did the course and graduated in 1998. After graduation, he says he had the zeal to apply his acquired knowledge in society. “My colleagues and I wanted to change the face of Kampala as far as the Arts was concerned but didn’t know where to start from,” Lugaaya says.
After university
Lugaaya together with his friend Rogers Masaba started a dance group of 20 people called Footsteps. “The first years were tricky because the group did not fetch money and because we all had just left university, there were no major bills or responsibilities, so we hang in there.” The group later picked up and even started doing performances in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi.
To enhance his techniques, he often attended several residences and festivals in Nairobi because the arts industry had already grown.
“Through Footsteps, I nurtured many dancers and after sometime, some members, moved on. Others went abroad hence the end of Footsteps,” he says.

Other trainings
Even when his friends moved on, Lugaaya says, he wanted to further his career in dance. In 2002, through British Council, he won a fellowship to the Centre for International Theatre Development in Moscow. While there, he further learnt about stage use, how to run festivals, different dances and techniques.
“With the techniques acquired, I partnered with Phillip Luswata and we started the Dance Week Festival and Theatre Factory in 2003,” he says.
The festival provides a platform where dancers in the central region meet and exchange ideas about techniques and train through performing different dances. Lugaaya says they wanted to change local content and bring together dancers.

Future plans
With support, he hopes to establish a centre where artistic works can be exhibited. He wants to be remembered as a person who created opportunities for people in the Arts.

Some of his gigs

As a dancer, Lugaaya has started the dancers’ network, instructed and taught dance at Kampala Ballet School.
He has done projects with Alliance Francaise Kampala and worked with Maria Grace to start the first ballet school in Uganda.
He has worked with Multi-choice in coordinating comedy club shows, conducted team building entertainment in banks such as Barclays and Housing Finance as well as personal gigs, for example, surprise parties, birthdays and weddings.
In 2012, he won the mentorship programme at Kennedy Centre for Arts managers and came up as a culture specialist.
At the moment, he has left active dance and is into mentorship of young people in the arts circles. Lugaaya can dance partner dances, creative, modern, contemporary and most traditional dances.