By Princewill Ubani · Published
Research ID: PA-ART-623847016729346048
How Two Maputo Street Dancers Choreographed Beyoncé's 'Run the World'
Mario Abel Buce and Xavier Manuel Campione were hired to dance at a wedding in Maputo, Mozambique, the way they had danced at dozens of weddings before. Someone in the crowd filmed them on a phone and put the clip on YouTube. That upload, showing two men known locally as Kwela and Xavitto moving through a style they had built themselves by fusing pantsula and kwaito with Mozambique’s own marabenta rhythms, ended up on a Los Angeles choreographer’s desk.
Frank Gatson Jr., who was working with Beyoncé on the video for “Run the World (Girls),” saw the footage and wanted the two men who made it. Finding them took real effort. Buce and Campione lived in Maputo’s poorer neighborhoods, without agents or a way to be reached by an American production company, and it took a monthslong search, with help from the US Embassy in Maputo, before anyone tracked them down. Once they did, managers Guido Fabris and Caroline Khouri arranged the trip: Buce and Campione, performing under the name Tofo Tofo, flew to Los Angeles for the first time in their lives to teach their choreography directly to Beyoncé and her dance team.
Only the two of them, of the group sometimes described as a trio, ended up on camera in the finished video, released in 2011. Their movement, unmistakable amid the video’s stylized African-inspired staging, stood out enough that the choreography team behind the video, including Gatson and Jeffrey Page, went on to win the Best Choreography award at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards.
Buce and Campione have talked since about how disorienting the trip was, describing a jump from home to a Los Angeles soundstage with almost no transition, and pointing out that the arrangement ran in the direction least expected. They were not learning Beyoncé’s steps. She and her dancers were learning theirs. Both men returned to Maputo after the shoot and built W-Tofo, a dance academy that trains the next generation of Mozambican dancers rather than chasing the international touring circuit their video appearance might have opened up.