Itw with Aicha McKenzie, Creative Director of AMCK Talent Agency
It’s a Thursday morning and despite a busy schedule, Aicha is on the ball and friendly as she reminisces about her gymnastics days and transition to professional dancer: “I got into dancing by touting gymnastics,’ she quips, “I was like, I can do some back flips, or dance with my ribbons. I’d learn by watching other dancers and their style.”
Performing for Take That at the MTV awards brought Aicha her first professional job. The move to choreographer, a role mostly dominated by men, was not an easy one. She admits her introduction to the job was: “kind of crazy and a fluke really. My partner Paolo had another agency and the dancers were doing stuff for Kylie (Minogue) and Geri (Halliwell). Meanwhile, I was like: ok I actually need to eat…can I have a job in the office? One day somebody called, no one else was in and they needed a concept for Levi’s. So I sat there and wrote it and they were like, Ok you got the job.”
Levi’s then approached her to create concepts for their 150th Anniversary, staged in Berlin. A string of trade and fashion shows followed. Then came the Brit Awards and Kanye West. She explains: “Kanye said ‘We want models but they need to move, you’ve seen the Gold Digga video, this is what we want.’ Knowing the fashion thing, I knew I could get them to dance. So we had these tall leggy girls, (and) we did Kanye, the whole UK TV promotion and he loved it.”
US-based choreographer Fatima Robinson, who has worked with the likes of Snoop Dogg and Black Eyed Peas, is also a good friend and colleague of Aicha’s and has sourced her dancers for her when she has come to Europe on numerous occasions.
Starting AMCK was a chance for Aicha “to take control and put commercial dance and dancers forward in the way that they should be respected,” she insists passionately. “I want to be the Gucci of the dance world. I just want everything high quality and the dancers are the people who make the show work and look good. I want them to be respected like models and actors are because (after all) they’ve trained really hard.”
In times of a recession, the entertainment business can often be the first to suffer but people still want to be entertained so it means “I have to work a bit harder to make simple things look good!”
Aicha is proud to have been listed as one of Britain’s 100 Most influential Black People . “For someone to come from above and say, you know, what you’ve been doing is alright and we want to accolade that. It was absolutely magical.”
And what changes has she seen for young, black dancers? “There are more opportunities definitely. There’s not just one token black (girl). If you had four girl dancers you’d be lucky if you had one black girl, but she’d have a nice weave like Naomi (Campbell). There were no afros going on,” she says grinning whilst twisting a lock of her mane. “The girls used to cuss me at Pineapple, they’d be like go and relax your hair child… Now people want more of an ethnic mix and that’s a great thing. It’s not strange to have three or four black dancers in a group but before that didn’t happen.”
I draw her attention to the AMCK logo, a sheep with a crown. She explains that it represents a shepherd – the English translation for Pecoraro – the Italian surname of her business partner Paolo. “We’re also husband and wife and we have a son who’s five, so you know it’s a family run company. People ask: ‘who backs you?’ but no it’s (just) us, we’re doing this for ourselves… working really hard… for our family.”
Michelle Harris
nice interview. aicha’s an inspiration. thanks for sharing.