About

Aguibou Bougobali Sanou is on a mission to share his love of dance with an unexpected group of students - the inmates of Bobo-Dioulasso prison in Burkina Faso. The Burkinabe choreographer aims to give them something that is in short supply in their overcrowded cells: Hope. "Open up as you dance," Sanou says to his students as they practise their moves, their shoes piled outside the rehearsal room door. Drummers play in a corner, and the men move in steady rhythm across the room. "Open up and dance big. Now come back, we are all too close to each other," he says. Sanou hopes that in his classes, he can help his students work through their emotions and reflect on their pasts. He aims to provide them with skills that will stop them from reoffending once they are free citizens. "I don't do anything but dance," he tells his students. "It has given me everything. Now we need to prepare psychologically, mentally and intellectually. So when you leave, you will be prepared no matter what people say." But throughout the months of dance practice, Sanou faces his own critics. He hopes to take his students outside the prison walls and perform in public, but those closest to him advise him against it, and prison staff say the inmates cannot be trusted. He secures the approvals needed to take them out, but in the weeks leading up to their performance, his plans threaten to unravel. Will the authorities let him take the prisoners outside the prison walls? Can Sanou himself make sure he can trust them? And if they do go, will the world beyond their jail cells respond to these dancing prisoners of Bobo-Dioulasso the way Sanou imagines they would? - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/