Intore is the famous warrior dance of Rwanda, originally performed at the royal court by young men chosen and trained for the purpose; the name roughly means “the chosen ones”. Dancers wear long, flowing headdresses resembling a lion’s mane, beaded bands and ankle bells, carry spears and shields, and leap and stamp to powerful drumming. It is also performed across the border in Kinyarwanda-speaking parts of south-west Uganda, especially around Kisoro near the gorilla parks.

The dance and its costume

A full intore performance usually combines three parts: the drummers, playing large ingoma drums in complex rhythms; the women’s dance, graceful and slow, with arm movements that echo the shape of long cattle horns; and the men’s warrior dance, with high jumps, rapid footwork and mock combat. The men’s headdresses, made of long pale fibres, swing with every leap, and bells on the ankles add to the rhythm. Songs often praise cattle, courage and history.

History

In the Rwandan kingdom, intore were young men trained in dance, oratory and martial skills for the king’s court, and their performances celebrated victories and ceremonies. After independence, the dance became a national symbol, performed by troupes such as Rwanda’s national ballet and at weddings and public events. In Uganda, Bafumbira communities around Kisoro keep similar traditions, which developed in the same cultural area before the 1910 border divided it. See our guide to the Bafumbira people.

Where to see it

Near Mgahinga and Bwindi’s southern sectors, lodges and community groups often host evening performances of dance and drumming, sometimes including intore-style dances. In Rwanda, performances are common around Musanze and at the Volcanoes National Park headquarters before treks. Watching and paying fairly supports local groups. See our guides to Ugandan music and music and dance near Bwindi.

Other dances in Uganda

Uganda has many dance traditions: Kiganda dance with its fast hip movements in Buganda, the leaping Bakiga dances of Kigezi, the Acholi bwola royal dance and the Karamojong jumping dances. The Ndere Centre in Kampala shows many of them in one evening. The gorilla permit costs US$800, or US$600 in April, May and November. See our guide to the Ndere Centre.

Frequently asked questions

Intore Dance’s Cultural Origins

The intore dance — originally the ceremonial dance of the Rwandan royal court’s warrior elite — has spread across the Rwanda-Uganda border through the shared cultural heritage of the Banyarwanda and Bafumbira communities whose territory straddles the political boundary. The dance’s warrior context is visible in its physical vocabulary: the high-speed footwork, the warrior costume’s impressive headpiece of dried grasses, and the competitive physical display that the group format requires all derive from the war dance tradition that the royal court used to demonstrate the military capacity and cultural refinement of its warrior class. Contemporary intore performances — at cultural centres in Kigali, at the Bafumbira community halls near Kisoro, and at the cultural events that Mgahinga’s tourism programme incorporates — present the dance in a concert format that is choreographically faithful to the traditional form while removing the competitive warrior selection function that the original context embedded it in.

The intore dance’s transition from court performance to tourist cultural presentation has maintained its physical vocabulary remarkably intact compared to many traditional performance forms that have been simplified for tourist consumption. The training that intore dancers undergo — typically beginning in childhood and continuing through adolescence in formal or informal apprenticeship with experienced performers — produces a specific combination of speed, precision, and coordination that cannot be acquired through casual participation or short workshop exposure. The headdress, which is made from dried grasses and sisal fibre and may extend 40 to 60 centimetres above the dancer’s head, requires specific practice to carry at the speeds that the dance demands without it displacing. Visitors who watch an intore performance and then attempt the basic footwork at a community participation section of the event discover immediately that the apparent ease of the professional performers conceals a technical difficulty that years of training have made invisible.

The intore’s competitive spirit — the original war dance’s function was partly to display the warrior’s superiority to his peers — is preserved in the contemporary performance’s intensity, which audiences consistently identify as the most physically demanding theatrical performance they have witnessed.