The world focuses on Africa now!

The night of contemporary African companies invited to nternational events including BAM, Working Dance Festival(U.K), Danse l’Afrique Danse(France) and DIES DE DANSA(spain)
3 African young dancers create great sensation by boldly transgressing the boundary of genres with strong rhythm and choreography against convention!

They are the best dance companies of Danse l’Afrique Danse (France) in 2003 & 2006. Experience contemporary Africa’s portrait through its explosive energy, introspection and fresh wit. See the imaginative power rising from various backgrounds such as jazz, hip-hop and contemporary dance, rising from the land of great potentials and power.


Mona Mambu

One of the traps in which we confine African dance is to allow it to be torn apart between tradition and modernity, by suggesting that the former mainly stems from inertia while the latter is a result of progress. The Congolese choreographer, Orchy Nzaba, is not prepared to accept that. He named his piece Mona-Mambu. It is a Kongo expression describing the ability to see and approach the realities of life with clearsightedness. And what do these realities tell us: that the Kongo people have always known how to retranscribe their daily life through proverbial scenes and original body movements. We fail to see when it could ever have been fixed in unchanging forms.
In fact, Mona-Mambu is a piece in constant movement whose impact is enhanced by its cast of five boys. One of them starts on his own and commits himself to it with a firm step, treading backwards and forwards with arms windmilling overhead, like a furious animal. Chest first, rhythms cut by clear breaks between slow and fast sequences, great spiralled spins: this boisterous dance is not scared of itself.
Then, the piece is built up with numerous sequences set end to end. The next one sees the dance’s guide giving vigorous gestured commands in a firm voice. Unisons follow unisons, with few transitions, rebounding spectacularly. The body moves with very balanced steps, clear segmentations, separate jumps and heavy stamps. So what sets this Congolese company apart, as a quick glimpse of this dance might give the impression of something “typically African” (if that concept exists)? What is truly specific is the continual shift between the grand dance sequences and situations from daily life which are sometimes almost trivial, as if these two levels have become impregnated with each other, without a warning.
There are impressive forward dives. The next moment sees the same dancers methodically rubbing each other. There are high, whipped jumps, then legs are flung across the legs of the others. An unusual embrace ends in bursts of laughter. They shake hands, two by two, but it is only the prelude for recomposition of a grand geometrical scene.
Thus, the whole group seems to be a flexible, expanding material and many barriers, mental one at least, also start to shift.

Impro-Visé_2

The theme of Impro-Visé_2 is born of the situation street kids are living in Dakar.
Ouamba has created a workshop with these children, following them through their daily lives.
This work belongs to an abstract presentation of the emotions and balance of power the kids maintain in the streets (called ‘talibé’ in Dakar) with ‘the rest of the world’ ; there’s the
passage of the always sad character who begs and that of the character who justifies the sad one’s existence.
The hassles and fights, the changings of condition, situation and location are always there, unseparable from the emotions emanating of them.
An encounter between dancers happened during the improvisation sessions on this theme.
The most important in this proposition is not that a story is told but that the dancers are allowed the freedom to get in touch with their emotions, to create a connexion between nothing and the space or the gaze. It is very important to me that this encounter should remain free, even if its meaning isn’t obvious to you. The choreographer states that "We can’t always tell stories or explain what our dancing means or what we are dancing. We are simply expressing ourselves."
After the duo Impro-Visé_2, company 1er Temps will invite, each time, two ‘native’ choreographers in order to share the improvisation spirit in a show.
The choreographers thus reunited will build under the audience’s eyes the 2nd part of the show in a period of time that will let each one discover their own limits as well as those of other’s.
An encounter between artists in show.

Errance

Kettly Noël has chosen to give rise to different characteristics through only one character by emphasizing the roles and the presence of each of them in more or less isolated and spare scenes.

"To be willing to say, and to be unable to find the words; to be willing to account for, without being too sure of accuracy:

Cuttings, wounds, bruises

Love, deep pains, intense joy, madness?

Carefree, innocence?

Explore different metamorphoses of the body.

To drive into the corner?.

Twisting and contortions

Gestures hung and held

The time to give and see short stories, traces of life?"

Cie 1er Temps

Choreography: Andréya Ouamba
Assistant choreography: Fatou Cisse
Lighting design: Abdoulaye Diouf
Production manager: Thérèse Coriou
Duration: 25min
Music: Richard Bona, Omar Bashir, Cie 1er Temps
Co-production: Cie 1er Temps, Association Kaaay Fecc

Cie Li-Sangha

Choreography: Orchy Nzaba
Technician: Léon Babakila
Lighting design: Victor Mbilampassi, Orchy Nzaba
Text: Orchy Nzaba

Cie Kettly Noël

Choreography: Kettly Noël
Performed by: Kettly Noël
Music : Ivo Malec, Bjork